Boot and detection · job notes · ADR-2025-3153
The Machine Powered Up and Found No Disk.
Press the button and the laptop went looking for a network to start from. On the screen: PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
, and under it No Boot Device Found
. He had already been into the setup screen and tried specifying boot from Hard-Disk in the BIOS
, and he had opened the machine far enough to satisfy himself the drive was securely attached
. Both were sensible, and neither made any difference, because a machine only falls through to a network attempt once nothing in the boot order has answered. Pictures and videos were what he was after.
Same story on yours? Tell us what it does — the look is free.
0203 0868633
What failed, and why.
PXE is not a fault. It is the last item on a list. A machine works down its boot order, and when every disk entry has failed, the final entry is the network — so it broadcasts, finds nothing, and reports a media test failure. It names the network because that was the last thing tried, not because the network is the problem. What it reports is a disk that did not answer in time. Setting the boot order by hand changes none of that: an entry can only be chosen if something replies. Nor does checking the cable, though that was worth doing. What is left is the disk, and the useful distinction is between one that will not run and one that runs perfectly well while no longer carrying what a machine needs in order to start. From a boot screen those look identical. On the bench they are nothing alike.
What the bench did with it.
The order of the job →| Equipment used | Its work on this job | The reason for it |
|---|---|---|
| ACE Lab PC-3000 Express | Health measured first, since a disk that is not found may be failing or merely unbootable | Gets into the manufacturer's service area, where ordinary ATA commands cannot go |
| PC-3000 Data Extractor | The copy taken with retry limits, before any further start-up attempts were made | Works with the drive's firmware and controller directly rather than around them |
| R-Studio Technician | File system parsed on the copy, boot structures rebuilt, picture folders first | Puts an array back together from the images, and reads nearly every file system |
What the bench did with it.
Take it out of the laptop and measure it
The disk came out of the laptop before anything else was tried, because every further start-up attempt is another set of reads spent on a disk whose condition nobody yet knows. On vendor-level equipment it identified, and it read. That already separates two very different jobs: a mechanism that has stopped, and a healthy one carrying a boot record that no longer works. This was the second of those.
Just one copy, with the retries limited
Nothing at all was repaired on the disk itself. It was copied behind a hardware write blocker, with a fixed ceiling on attempts at any one address so an awkward region could not hold the run up, and those regions kept back for a sweep at the end. Every start-up attempt made before he rang had been spending reads on the areas that mattered least. From that point on the disk was read once and then left alone.
Rebuild the boot structures on the copy
The file system was parsed on the copy rather than on the disk, and the damaged boot structures rebuilt from what had survived elsewhere on the volume. His picture and video folders were taken first, as he had asked, and each file was rendered rather than listed.
What went home.
The pictures and videos went back on new media, and each of them was rendered here before it left. Nothing was done to the laptop, which did not need anything doing to it; the fault had never been the laptop's.
Begin here if yours is doing the same thing.
Other jobs that began at the mains.
Yours doing something similar? Power it down first.
Prices are published and fixed. Memory cards and USB sticks are priced at £250 + VAT. A drive on its own comes to £300 + VAT. Anything holding a second disk, whether RAID, NAS or a server, opens at £500 + VAT. The first look costs nothing, and the figure that follows is fixed and in writing before a penny is charged. Switch it off and post it in. Most jobs carry no fee where no files return.