[anapathist]

What a mess...

I took apart my Gateway 750M to clean it. I took out the Hard Drive, Battery, and cooling fan. I cleaned it with canned compressed air and I was sure not to shake the can while spraying so only air would come out. I got a lot of gunk out of the fan (it was making a weird noise) and I put it back together and fire it up only to get:
--
Intel® Boot Agent Version 4.1.08
Copyright © 1997-2002, Intel Corperation
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel Boot Agent.
Operating System not found
--

I changed the boot order in the BIOS so hard drive was first and that just gives me a black screen with a flashing hyphen-cursor in the lop left corner. I put in the windows restore disc and booted from the CD. I selected "format computer" and "yes" to all data being lost. This brought me to the black screen with the hyphen cursor again except the hard drive light notification was on (I don't know the name for the light, the one that comes on when the hard drive is being read...)
I restarted and booted from dos on the disc, and tried to change directories to "C:", that gave me a Bad Command or File Name.

So then I went back to BIOS and looked to see if my Hard Drive was there. and here is what it says:
--
IDE 0 Master: IC25N040ATMR04-4- (PM)
IDE 1 Master: Slimtype COMBO LSC-24082k- (SM)
--

I then removed the Hard Drive and went to the BIOS again. I got this:
--
IDE 0 Master: None
IDE 1 Master: (same as above)
--
(I am no hardware guru but I'm guessing maybe #0 is my HD and #1 is my cd-rom?)
Booting to the hard drive without the hardrive in gives me the same error as the first one mentioned in my post.

I'm at a major loss here. I don't care if I lose the data on my HD... But I'm afraid I damaged the HD somehow (Or even worse: some other part that I don't know). anyone have a solution for me?

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I took out the hardrive to examine it for damage. I was looking at the pins and noticed there is no jumper pin. I looked at the diagram on the HD and it showed that with no jumper pin in in it uses device 0, Device 0 is the one I want, right? I don't know where the jumper pin is, maybe I lost it when I opened it... maybe it was never included at all... no idea.

I'm not going to mind buying a new hard drive as much as I am going to mind buying a new notebook...

thank you for your time.

[anapathist]

I took out the hardrive to examine it for damage. I was looking at the pins and noticed there is no jumper pin. I looked at the diagram on the HD and it showed that with no jumper pin in in it uses device 0, Device 0 is the one I want, right? I don't know where the jumper pin is, maybe I lost it when I opened it... maybe it was never included at all... no idea.

I'm not going to mind buying a new hard drive as much as I am going to mind buying a new notebook...

thank you for your time.

[anapathist]

I tried a few boot orders with no luck... always keeping boot from LAN the last item.

[anapathist]

I've got some bad news on my part...

While searching the table I worked on for that jumper pin (that I don't even know if it exists) I found the bane of all existance:

A MAGNENT!

And what's worse is that I actually used this magnent to take out some of the screws to my computer. I would think that I'm OK because I would hope laptop cases are magnetically sheilded, however there is the possibility that I set the magnent down right next to my HD thus destroying it.

HD's aren't megnetically shielded, are they?
have I answered my own question?
eh, sorry for all the spam and thanks in advance.

[Tyger]

Murray-S tells us you are trying to boot from the network cable, hence the reference to cable. Go into Setup and change the boot order to C: or A: (if you have a floppy) first and network last. Your operating system was likely installed by networking the computer to one that had the installtion files, using a floppy that installed the network drivers.

[anapathist]

I've tried numerous BIOS BOOT combinations having LAN always be the 4th (last) method.

boot from cd (I have no CD inserted)
boot from removable storage (I don't have any removable storage)
boot from Hard drive (I'm going to say my hard drive is now garbage)
boot from LAN (No network is connected)

As of right now I think the HDD is now garbage because of the magnetized item I set next to it. It looks like my solution is to get a new one. I am hoping for this scenario because it is the best and cheapest possibility especially when considering the alternative: a new computer.

[Tyger]

I've tried numerous BIOS BOOT combinations having LAN always be the 4th (last) method.

boot from cd (I have no CD inserted)
boot from removable storage (I don't have any removable storage)
boot from Hard drive (I'm going to say my hard drive is now garbage)
boot from LAN (No network is connected)

As of right now I think the HDD is now garbage because of the magnetized item I set next to it. It looks like my solution is to get a new one. I am hoping for this scenario because it is the best and cheapest possibility especially when considering the alternative: a new computer.

The magnet may not have damaged the hard drive, but may have corrupted the data on it. At the cost of laptop drives you may want to try reformatting and reusing it. But before that even, I would replace the CMOS battery, which may be dead and only costs about three bucks, and reset the BIOS to default.

Edited by Tyger, 31 August 2005 - 06:34 PM.

[anapathist]

I've tried reformatting as stated in my first post... I put in the disc and hit "format" and "yes" when it says, "doing this will remove all data", and itjust sits on a black screen with the flashing hyphen cursor in the top left corner of the screen.

I've read around some websites and they say it takes a really powerful magnet and thatonly corrupts some data, not makes it totally useless.

is it possible the magnet ruined another part connecting the HDD to the computer?