Gorman
Author Level
Right, we have had one or two of these so here is a guide.
What is PXE?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preboot_Execution_Environment
What does this message mean?
Well, not a lot. It means that for whatever reason you have the network card as a boot device and it comes above your hard drive in the boot priority.
How could this have happened, i have only had the machine a day etc etc
Lots of things could have caused this:
So whats the fix
Simple, go into BIOS by pressing "delete" on the first screen you see when you power the machine on.
In BIOS use the arrow keys to navigate and enter to select, navigate to the BOOT tab and select Hard Drives, using the keys listed along the bottom move the system drive (the one windows is installed on) to the top. This list specifies which order the hard drives will be booted to.
Press escape to get one level up in the menu and then goto BOOT DEVICE PRIORITY. Here you will see a list of devices such as CD / DVD ROM, Hard drive, USB and Network etc. Move the Hard drive to the top of the list.
Now you can go into the onboard devices menu, locate and disable the network or PXE boot rom, this will differ board by board, you may need to consult the mainboard manual.
Hit F10 and save settings once done.
There is no hard drive in the lists?
It might have become unplugged or rarely, failed. Open the machine and check the hard drive has power and data connections. If you struggle with this then give us a call on 0844 499 4000. If we are closed and you are not sure what to do. STEP AWAY FROM THE MACHINE. It will wait until morning and could get a lot worse through tinkering.
Ok, i thought i could fix it by loading setup defaults, now it crashes when loading Windows
This is why i said step away.
By default we will set the mode for sata controllers to AHCI, What is AHCI?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Host_Controller_Interface
We will install windows with this set on, when you reset BIOS it reset to legacy IDE.
Do NOT repair / reinstall Windows, set AHCI to on and it will boot.
Erm, that didnt work
Well you really really should have stepped away as it would appear you have RAID or some other complicated dual boot setup.
You can either proceed by setting up the array again and re-installing the dual boot etc if you know how or you can give us a call when we open.
What is PXE?
The Preboot eXecution Environment (PXE, and also known as Pre-Execution Environment) is an environment to boot computers using a network interface independently of data storage devices (like hard disks) or installed operating systems.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preboot_Execution_Environment
What does this message mean?
Well, not a lot. It means that for whatever reason you have the network card as a boot device and it comes above your hard drive in the boot priority.
- It is not an error
- Nothing is broken
- You DO NOT need to reinstall Windows
How could this have happened, i have only had the machine a day etc etc
Lots of things could have caused this:
- The network card is listed first in the boot device priority list
- The Hard drive has become unplugged during transit
- The BIOS has been reset to defaults
So whats the fix
Simple, go into BIOS by pressing "delete" on the first screen you see when you power the machine on.
In BIOS use the arrow keys to navigate and enter to select, navigate to the BOOT tab and select Hard Drives, using the keys listed along the bottom move the system drive (the one windows is installed on) to the top. This list specifies which order the hard drives will be booted to.
Press escape to get one level up in the menu and then goto BOOT DEVICE PRIORITY. Here you will see a list of devices such as CD / DVD ROM, Hard drive, USB and Network etc. Move the Hard drive to the top of the list.
Now you can go into the onboard devices menu, locate and disable the network or PXE boot rom, this will differ board by board, you may need to consult the mainboard manual.
Hit F10 and save settings once done.
There is no hard drive in the lists?
It might have become unplugged or rarely, failed. Open the machine and check the hard drive has power and data connections. If you struggle with this then give us a call on 0844 499 4000. If we are closed and you are not sure what to do. STEP AWAY FROM THE MACHINE. It will wait until morning and could get a lot worse through tinkering.
Ok, i thought i could fix it by loading setup defaults, now it crashes when loading Windows
This is why i said step away.
By default we will set the mode for sata controllers to AHCI, What is AHCI?
The Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI) is a host controller interface defined by Intel which defines the operation of Serial ATA (SATA) host bus adapters in a non-implementation-specific manner. The specification describes a system memory structure for computer hardware vendors to exchange data between host system memory and attached storage devices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Host_Controller_Interface
We will install windows with this set on, when you reset BIOS it reset to legacy IDE.
Do NOT repair / reinstall Windows, set AHCI to on and it will boot.
Erm, that didnt work
Well you really really should have stepped away as it would appear you have RAID or some other complicated dual boot setup.
You can either proceed by setting up the array again and re-installing the dual boot etc if you know how or you can give us a call when we open.
Last edited: