Help! Laptop won't boot!

[KlumpDud]

Windows XP on an HP Pavilion 5000 series laptop:

I made no changes and it was working fine when I last shut down.

Now when I power up, before Windows even loads, I get an error. I think it's during the POST (black background, white text).

Intel UNDI, PXE-2.0 (build 082) Copyright (C) 1997-2000 Intel Corporation For Realtek RTL8139(X)/8130/810X PCI Fast Ethernet Controller v2.13 (020326) PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM

Those last two lines (with PXE...) repeatedly flash and it will keep doing this forever.

Normally, in a desktop, I would start replugging stuff in, checking cables, etc. However, I'm totally clueless as to troubleshooting a laptop. I've never opened it up before.

Any help is greatly appreciated! Also, my apologies if this should go under software but I wasn't sure...

[juppy]

That's usually due to either a bios setting that's wrong or a bad hard drive. Go into the bios and check your boot order first. The CD (if it has one) and the hard drive should be booting first ahead of the NETWORK. Basically make sure NETWORK is not first. If that's it, you might have a bad battery that isn't holding your bios settings and that could be how it got changed. If that doesn't work, try the default bios settings option.

[LaptopExtreme]

Yes, make sure it's not booting off the network. Also if there's a selecting for try other boot devices, just switch it to NO or Disabled.

[KlumpDud]

The boot order was still how I had it before:

1. Hard Drive
2. CD ROM
3. Network
4. Floppy

I tried disabling network booting and now when I power on here's what happens: After it flashes the HP logo and the "Press F10 to enter setup", it just goes to a black screen with a blinking cursor and nothing else.

[juppy]

Does the hard drive even show up in the bios or does it list hard drives as "none"? If it doesn't see the hard drive, it's possible the master boot record might be corrupt and need the FIXMBR command entered in the Recovery Console. I Googled around for some other answers and something that seemed to come up alot with HP laptops was taking the hard drive out of the laptop and reinstalling it, making sure the pins all lined up with their respective contacts. Apparently they have a really touchy connection method (I personally wouldn't know what that is because I've never worked on one before either.....that's just what I read).

[KlumpDud]

Strangest thing. It just started working again! However, I'm not taking any chances, so I'm backing up my hard drive as we speak. I have no idea what caused this and no idea why it started working again, but I'm afraid it will happen again without warning.

Do you think I should open it up, take out the hard drive, and put it back in to readjust the connection?

[juppy]

As long as it's working, I'd leave it be (kinda the old "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" thing). Did you bump it or move it around at all between when it wasn't working and when it started working again? Why I ask is because on a couple of those pages I mentioned about people saying to take the drive out and reinstall it again, there were a couple posts in there that different people said they just whacked the computer and it started working again. I've always been told it's not good to just haul off and whack a computer, but I'm guessing those people had the same physical connection problem as the uninstall/reinstall people. As long as its working though I'd just let it go. Good idea to back up while you can though too.