Thinkpads Forum

Hello everybody, I just purchased a W520 4284-a96 from eBay. The machine was sold as parts because it was missing an AC adapter. huh?

Anyway, I couldn't pass up the price, the box is in great condition, and the guy offers a 14 day return policy.

So, when I boot up the machine I get the following error.

PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent

I removed the HDD and replaced it to ensure it was seated
I check the boot order in BIOS and it is second only to DVD
I removed DVD
I removed battery and booted from AC unit

No luck, any thoughts?
Thanks, Mike

The PXE error is caused by the LAN adapter's boot ROM not finding a network to boot from.

Is there an operating system in the HDD?

Try a bootable USB flash drive, preferably one that can check the HDD and/or RAM.

If the BIOS StartUp menu does "see" a drive (ATA HDD0 <model number of drive>), then most likely the drive has been wiped.

axur-delmeria wrote:The PXE error is caused by the LAN adapter's boot ROM not finding a network to boot from.

Is there an operating system in the HDD?

Try a bootable USB flash drive, preferably one that can check the HDD and/or RAM.

I had ordered a set of recovery disks from the tech support people in Atlanta. They came today, and they appear to be installing normally. Thanks so much for your advice. I was focused entirely on the HDD. If all goes well, and we're in the middle of the 1st Op Sys recovery disk (2nd disk overall) then I think we're in business.

Thanks again, and thank you too to rkawakami for taking the time to answer. I didn't expect anyone to reply before the holiday.

Very much appreciate the solid guidance always received at this forum.
Mike

Thanks for the responses. I'm sorry that mine is so late. After installing factory image, I think I'm going to just do a clean install on a new drive. I'm looking at msata drives for the WWAN slot. It seems like putting one there would make a nice boot drive. And it gives me time to save up for a larger ssd for the main drive bay. The megabyte per second ratings of around 550 read and 520 write seem the same in either case. Not really sure what is meant by 6 gig per second drive descriptions that still show the same read/write speeds as msata. Is that a potential speed perhaps? Just curious. If this seems like a real dumb plan to anyone, I'd like to get suggestions on that.

Otherwise, this machine so far is great (I'm happy that I didn't go for the w530, as this has that great key board which might actually convince me that it's ok to let the T60 go into semi retirement.

Thanks as always for your help
Mike