xp tries INCESSANTLY to boot from network

[Kael]

I have a Toshiba Satellite p10-s429 laptop from early 2004 with windows xp on it. I don't know the circumstances of its arrival at its current condition, but it has a very peculiar problem when booting:

I hit the power button, the startup screen shows as normal, then it goes to a black screen that says

"For RealTek RTL 8139(x)/8130/810x PCI Fast Ethernet Controller v2.13 (020326)

PXE-E61: Media Test Failure, Check Cable.

PXE-MOF: Exiting PXE ROM."

That just keeps repeating and repeating.

I've seen this issue on a lot of other forums, but never specifically for a toshiba laptop. Nonetheless, I tried everything they said (excepting the removal of the cmos battery, as I have not yet discovered how to take this stupid machine apart, though I've been trying for some time). Nothing has worked so far. I tried to toshiba restore disk, which appears to format and install, then says "remove all disks and restart the computer," at which time it restarts and then either does the same thing or sits there at a black screen with a blinking cursor.

I've changed the boot order in the CMOS settings, I've disabled the network boot completely, I've forced a hard drive boot at startup, I've even tried to install it with a new WinXP CD, but that gets to the blue CD startup screen, runs all its tests and programs and things, then hangs at "Starting Windows..." (right before it gives you the "repair disk, install new OS, quit" screen). I just got the laptop apart (after an hour and a half of hitting it with the bones), and found out that the CMOS battery is soldered in. I'm out of options.

If anyone knows anything about this, please do share.

Thanks,

Kael

[Kael]

Nevermind; I got it. For future reference, here's what I did:

Took the ENTIRE laptop apart (not fun).

Found that the CMOS battery was soldered in (also not fun).

Then found out that all I had to do to get to the harddrive was take the CD-ROM out, which is achieved via the removal of a screw (F6) at its foot.

I put the harddrive in a different laptop and ran the WinXP disk.

I reformatted the disk, then installed WinXP (note: this step may not be necessary, as the installation doesn't work on the other computer anyway).

I then put the original harddrives back in the original machines and ran the Toshiba recovery disk in the problem machine again.

Everything went as expected, and my error was gone.

I hope for anyone else's sake that i took far too many and complicated steps to remedy a simple problem, but I really couldn't find another way.

Thanks for reading!

-Kael

[nellie2]

Thank you Kael for posting your solution, I'm glad you got the problem sorted :flowers: