Intel D850MV PXE-E61 Media Test Failure

[Snappy69]

This seems to be an area of difficulty for everyone that I've spoken with. Here's the story:

I've ordered two identical sets of hardware and BOTH have precisely the same error, so this leads me to believe it's a configuration issue.

Intel D850MV motherboards with P4 1.8Ghz 478 PIN PROCESSORS and Rambus PC800 RIMM's. All connections are good. RAM has been removed and reseated in the appropriate order and the simulators have been reseated as well.

The hard drives are brand new and unformatted.

After assembly of components on initial startup I entered the BIOS setup and observed that the BIOS has correctly identified all of the peripherals. I reset the settings to factory defaults and all of the peripherals are still identified correctly. Exited and saved settings.

On the reboot, both machines come back with this:

Intel Boot Agent 4.0.19
Intel Base Code PXE-2.1 (build 083)
PXE-E61 Media Test Failure, Check Cable
PXE-MOF Exiting Intel PXE ROM
Boot Failue, System Halted

The motherboard had a built in LAN connection, and the best information that I can get is that the PXE-E61 error message means this:

The adapter does not detect link. Please make sure that the cable is good and is attached to a working hub or switch. The link light visible from the back of the adapter should be lit.

The PXE-MOF message means this:

Ending execution of the ROM image.

Neither of these machines are connected to a network yet. Right now I'm just trying to partition the hard drives and install OS's. Surely I don't have to be connected to a network to initially set up the machine, what if it was a standalone?

Apparently the PXE is Intel's Pre-Boot Execution Agent and ostensibly can be turned off by pressing Ctrl-S on the initialization screen. I cannot get that part to work.

The best answer that the Reseller can give me is "I don't know." Imagine that! It's UnitedMicro if anyone is interested. http://www.unitedmicro.com/index.shtml

I could really use some help here if anyone is familiar with this problem.

Kind Regards,
Scott

[HAL9000]

So what happens if you try to boot from your OS CD or a boot disk? If that works, don't worry about the failure posted.

[Snappy69]

Initially I did try to boot from the OS (W2K) disk and received a Disk I/O error that stopped the install. Ultimately, I discovered this: On both of these machines, there were two unformatted hard drives. When I disconnected the drive on the secondary IDE and left the first drive connected as the master on the primary IDE, the OS disk would successfully boot, partition and format the new drive. Once the OS was finished installing of course I used the Computer Management/Disk Management MMC to partition and format the second drive. After properly reconnecting it as the master on the secondary IDE.

Moral of the story is this: Although I don't know precisely WHY the system got so confused with both drives connected, it's understandable that it did. Install them one at a time and the "User Error" is rectified.

Thanks for everyone's help and I hope this might help someone else.

Kind Regards,
Scott

[rogerchristmas]

Just a had a Dell technician ( Unisys tech) fix my laptop - new mother board and the above error/message came up.

He was confusefd too! but all he did was change the boot sequence to HDD - as I'm not on a LAN.

Done.




Roger

[glc]

Roger, this thread is 4 years old and the issue was solved then.