Acer Aspire 5100 Boot issues

Hello,

I am new to this forum, and I have actually never used any forum before. In hopes to fix my notebook I have decided to post here for help.

I have an Acer Aspire 5100

Turion 64 X2 Mobile Technology (TL-60) 1.6 GHz
160 GB IDE, 4200 RPM
15.4 in. WXGA TFT Active Matrix
Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition
Wi-Fi Certified
ATI RADEON XPRESS 1100
DDR2 SDRAM
Dual Layer DVD±RW
ATI MOBILITY RADEON XPRESS 1100


The problem with the thing is that it is not booting. At first it would show me the Acer screen and then jump to a black screen that would say PXE-E61(media test failure, check cable) and also PXE-M0F(exiting pxe rom). I did some reading and other people said to disable the boot to network. I did this and now when I boot it shows the Acer screen and then shows a black screen with a curser in the top left corner. I have set the boot order to default and then I have also tried with the HDD set as number 1. I have also tried to set the CDROM as number 1 in the boot order, and tried to boot a windows XP disc. This did not work either. I took the HDD out and put it in my cousins Acer and it booted just fine. When I press the f12 button it shows me there is nothing to boot from.

PLEASE any help would be nice. I have had it with this thing!

 

Try going into your bios and have it load the default settings/configuration.

 

Yes I have tried this already and it still does not work.

 

What happens when you put in a windows xp disc and boot from it?

 

The same thing, the Acer screen loads and then the black screen with the curser. I have also tried to press f12 for the boot option and it shows nothing is there to boot from.

 

By cursor do you mean a white dash blinking?

 

Yup, it is in the top left corner.

 

your laptop is trying to boot off the NETWORK card, using PXE transfer to access setup info from a network server...

that is generally due to your HARD DRIVE suffering some type of problem ( loosing boot sector, partiton info, or just dying)

have you tried to invoke the D2D recovery by pressing ALT & F10 when the ACER power on screen comes up??

that will wipe out any data that MAY BE LEFT ON THE C: partition.

or if you made your recovery disks... put disk 1 in and boot off the CD

(you may have to change BOOT order in the BIOS SETUP)

 

Hi J-in the B:

If you are still active on this forum, i would appreciate knowing what finally happened to your laptop. I have exactly the same model and exactly the same thing has happened. When I talk to acer support here in spain they say its a HDD problem, that the garantie ran out a month ago. If it really is a HDD problem, I suppose I'd rather junk the computer.

 

This must be a major problem with this laptop, cuz I am having the same exact error message. I tried to hit alt and F10 on boot up but it did nothing, just sitting on that Media Test failure check cable. My laptop is also out fo warranty. Thanks to anyone who has any answers for us.