I have replaced original harddrive with a new WD ide drive. After installing it and turning it on I get the message PXE-E61. Media test failure. check cable. I can't get into the bios after hitting the F2 key. It is the master drive. Contacted the Western Digital and they said this drive could replace my old WD drive.

http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000706.htm



http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000229.htm

Steps to fix:

disconnect the HDD, and power to the hdd.

start computer, go into bios boot area and turn off Network card boot. PXE errors are listed when no network cable is attached or the boot rom for the network card cannot find a PXE boot server.

shut down

plug in the hard drive again, ensuring that the jumper is set as master if it is an IDE drive. retry, and let us know the results.

I have disconnected the power source to the hd. and reboot but still get the same error mesage and cannot get into bios that way either. I tried changing out ide cables, no success> I was told to see if I see the disc turning on the harddrive but I don't see anything moving on the bottom of it. I have another pc without a harddrive and it will boot up and I can get into the bios. I used it to test the old harddrive to see if it was bad or not. The message I got on it was "cannot find OS" I have also swaped out power source connections. P2 P3,P4. It doesn't seem to make a difference. If I could get into the bios I could then turn off the network card boot.

Have you tried using a bootdisk for your version of windows? http://bootdisk.com/ Has some I believe. Just download the extractor, and write it to a floppy. Then just throw the floppy into the floppy drive before booting up. With any luck, you'll be able to get into the bios.

My newer pc has no floppy and unfortunately I don't have access to one. I've already thought of doing this but with no working floppy drive available I'm out of luck. I need to check with a few friends and see if I can use theirs. Is there a CD bootable disk around? Thanks for your help

Try this unplug the computer and remove the clock battery for about 1 hour.

Did you disconnect the IDE cable and 4-pin molex power connector form the hard drive before trying to access the Bios?

I was able to use a bootable disc and get into the bios. I finally found someone who had a floppy drive. I'm installing windows 98 til I can replace my Xp that bit the dust. The pc is up and running now. Thank ya'll so much for your help....Cajunmom