Help needed please!

[Joka91]

I have the following pop up (after about 10minutes of a black screen with just an underscore in the top left corner) -

Intel UND1. PKE-2.1 (build 003)
Copyright (c) 1997 - 2000 Intel Corporation

This product is covered by one or more of the following pae... (didn't catch the word) U35, 307, 459 , USS, 343, 872, U35, 732, 094, US6, 578, 004, US6, 115 - didn't get last few numbers.

Realtec PCIe FE family controller series v1.23 (07/20/10)
PXE-E51: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-MOF: Exiting PKE ROM

It then goes off, and eventually loads up the boot menu.

It says HDD/SDD but no name of the harddrive afterwards... normal?
Then says CD/DVD (with the drive name)
FDD
LAN

I saw shane commented on Unlimited Boot CD before on a similar problem (which was locked)

Would UBCD help me in any way? If so, which tool do I use?

I've downloaded it, and burned it to disk.

I booted the laptop up with it in, and the menu came up... but I don't know what to do next.

Any response would be really appreciated, and I apologise if this is in the wrong area.

Thank you in advance.

Joka91

[Shane]

The system isnt booting, when the boot menu comes up and you choose HDD does it boot?

If not then a couple of things might have happened.
1. Windows is corrupt, the boot manager isnt working.
2. Bad HDD and can't be read.
3. Do you have any USB drives hooked up? if so unhook them. Some mother boards will put the USB drive as the first HDD boot. Which is freaking retarded! lol
So the Mother board drives to boot off the usb drive instead of the hard drive. This is a pain for me when I setup external drives for backups on a customer system. I have to hook each drive up 1 at a time, go into the bios and change the usb off the first boot. Why they would take a new usb drive as the first boot is past me

Shane

[Joka91]

Thanks for your quick reply mate, really appreciate it.

The only 4 options are HDD/SDD
CD/DVD
FDD
LAN

In that order... although now I've just booted it back up with the UBCD disk in and the disk drive has now disappeared?

But yeah, I select to boot from HDD and it doesn't do anything but go back to the boot screen again.

And no, there isn't any external devices at all, just the laptop how it come.

I've tried the "take the battery out" trick too.

I consider myself to be decent with computers, but I'm at a loss. So I hope you can help.

Joka91

[Shane]

Doesn't look good. Might be a dead hard drive.

Go into the bios, does the drive show up there?

Shane

[Joka91]

I presume you mean bios on the boot menu...
Yeah, the HDD shows there, but selecting it does nothing but flash the screen...

Been trying a few things for the last 2 or so hours... running out of ideas

[Shane]

If the hard drive shows then we need to see if any files are showing up.

Download the ubuntu cd.
http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download

This is my tool I use when I need to get to the files.
This will let you boot the Linux OS right off the cd. From there you can view the hard drive, lets see if the files are there.
If so it may just need the boot repaired, if they files are not showing then the file system might be dead.

Lets go from there

Shane

[Joka91]

Thanks again for taking the time to help.

Due to not being on my home internet (sky being fitted tomorrow) I'm currently at my mate's, who's internet isn't brilliant. So with the file size being 693mb it says it will take an hour to finish. So if you're not online still then, I'll leave the reply when it's done, and hopefully you'll be free tomorrow, or soon.

So, basically, I'm downloading this tool, and burning it to a disk?

One last thing; is the UBCD disk of no use to me in this situation? If so I'll put it away, that's all.

Joka91

[Shane]

Shouldn't need it right now.

When you download the ISO burn the image to a cd. Boot of the cd. From there see if you can read the contents of the drive.

It is only 1 pm for me so I will still be on for a while. I am doing some programming right now as we speak

Right now our goal is to find out what is failing on the drive that it wont boot. By seeing if we can access the files will tell us if it is something simply such as repairing the boot files or more serious if the files are gone.

Shane

[Joka91]

Ah, ok then. It's done 222mb out of 693.

I'll comment again when that's finished, thanks again for your help, and enjoy your programming, only wish I had the intelligence to do things like that.. haha.

[Joka91]

Hello again mate, it's just loaded up, am I clicking "try Ubuntu" or "install Ubuntu"?

[Shane]

Try

Shane

[Joka91]

I'm on it... I clicked Places/Documents; nothing in there. Or any of the other folders either... where from here?

[Shane]

Go to the menu up top, I think it is places, you should see you drive there.

http://www.ipsure.com/images/wp-content/ubuntu-mounting-drive.jpg

Shane

[Joka91]

Had a look, nothing there. Under places I've got:

Home Folder
Desktop
Documents
Music
Pictures
Videos
Downloads

Computer


Network
Connect to server...


Search for files...


?

[Shane]

The drive isnt showing up.

If I am correct you said at one point the hard drive didn't show up under HDD on the boot menu and the other times it dead.

Going from what details you gave me it sounds like a dead drive.

Not to mention you have another OS up and running and it doesn't see the drive.

Right now I am at 90% that the drive is shot. Unless there is any more info I am missing.

1. No booting from the HDD
2. Drive disappears and reappears in the bios.
3. Other OS can't see or read drive.

Shane