T42 Missin operating system.

[FrancescoPinci]

Hi! I'm italian so apologize me if my english is not perfect
This is my problem. When i turn on my T42 it shows the normal ibm image and than stops on this:

Missing operating system.
Intel(R) Boot Agent GE v1.2.17
Copyright (C) 1997-2003, Intel Corporation
Intel(R) Boot Agent PXE Base Code (BA1217BC)
Copyright (C) 1997-2003, Intel Corporation
PXE-E61 : Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F : Exiting Intel Boot Agent.
Operating System not found

And it doesn't move on. Is it hd problem? Or what?
Thanks for the help!

Sorry i forgot the model of my T42! It is 2373 F2G

[Neil]

Hi! And, welcome to thinkpads.com. Sad that it's a problem that brings you here, but maybe we can help.

It could very well be a hard drive failure, but we've also see cases where failing Southbridge solder balls cause similar problems.

Perhaps you could try booting from a LiveCD and see if you can mount the hard drive. If both HDD and CD boot fails, you're likely looking at a motherboard failure.

[FrancescoPinci]

Hi! And, welcome to thinkpads.com. Sad that it's a problem that brings you here, but maybe we can help.

It could very well be a hard drive failure, but we've also see cases where failing Southbridge solder balls cause similar problems.

Perhaps you could try booting from a LiveCD and see if you can mount the hard drive. If both HDD and CD boot fails, you're likely looking at a motherboard failure.

Thank's for your answer! The other problem is that my CD reader doesn't work.. I could try with a bootable USB but how can i mount the hard drive?

[Neil]

Yes, booting an Live OS from USB would be fine. What OS will you be using? Most have a file manage of some sort included, which you can use to browse the files on the hard drive.

[FrancescoPinci]

How can i do it? Advices about the OS to use?

[Neil]

Read about it at www.pendrivelinux.com

They have downloads available for most all popular distributions ready to boot from a USB flash drive. I recommend choosing one of the smaller distros, like Puppy Linux or System Rescue, rather than one of the huge ones (Ubuntu, Mint, etc.) for what you are going to use it for, just testing your system. It won't take as long to download that way, but will still give you all the tools you will need to test your machine.

[FrancescoPinci]

Thank you so much i solved it!

[Easy Wind]

I'm curious, what did you do to fix it?

[FrancescoPinci]

A the end it wasn't a mother board problem but a HD problem! For some reason the OS had been deleted I used a non pae version of ubuntu and i checked that the HD was ok. Than i descovered that my dvd reader worked again and i'm now using windows 7 on it