Hey there, anyone help me?

Well first of all I would liek to say hello to you all as I am new here.

Now down to the problem I'm having. I have a Toughbook CF-29 Mk4, with Windows Vista installed on it which I do NOT want.

So I've been trying to get my toughbook to boot from a Windows XP CD so I can format the HDD and install Windows XP on it. Now when I try to do this I get an error saying something along the lines of :

PXE-E61 - Media Test Failure Check Cable.

This is as far as I can get and I have no idea what to do, so any help any ofyou can give me is greatly appreciated.

Oh and to add I don't have the recovery disks.

Thanks!

EDIT **

I think I may be trying to boot the wrong thing I'm not sure (Please bare with me I'm a bit of a noob)

Anyway I've tried to boot from USB CDD (which I'm guessing is CD) and it just carry's on to loading up Windows Vista not doing anything, The other things in the boot sequence are : IDE HDD, PCI LAN, IDE MP, Stand. Floppy Disk.

Any help appreciated.

 

You have one of maybe three things wrong...

First... Click on F2 at boot to go into the BIOS. If you have the DVD with the caddy in the side, set the boot priority for that. I don't think the CF-29 has USB in the boot menu but it can be installed that way... There are several threads about it around here... recent threads!

If you have the boot order right then it is either a bad boot device, either what you are loading it with or the actual hard drive.

Oh... If you are booting with the DVD caddy... Make sure it is pushed all the way in.

 

Second, your CDROM may not be set to the correct level. There was a mod that needed to be done (soldering 2 points to connect them) that allowed the CDROM to boot from. Not all are plug and play for boot priority and the toughbooks did not allow these changes through software. There is a thread about this mod as well in the stickies. Look for the CDROM mod.

 

you can always just hit "esc" at the post page to see a menu of what you can boot from and just pick the optical drive. Their solutions are prolly better and more efficient but we gotta remember we are talking to a self-proclaimed noob so we should keep it simple

Dan

 

3rd reason: your a NEWB! totally kidding ...

I know back when I had my 29 I had a modded/hacked/upgraded firmware dvd burner drive and it didn't boot from ANYTHING FOR BEANS, but burned dvd's single layer/DL and CD's - also played stuff just fine... but no boot.

Is the drive you are using altered at all with any firmware "upgrades"?

 

Al this soldering stuff seems a bit to complicated for me lol.

Yeah I have tried to boot from all possible locations and none seem to be the Windows XP CD.

As far as I know there has been no alterations I think it's just been put in

 

If it's defaulting to a PXE boot, odds are that's because it just can't find another physical boot drive. Have you tried the CDROM in another machine? Is it a known good drive?

mnem
Pizza is not good at chess.

 

Good call mnem... PXE... DUH!!! I think I might re-read the OP's first post

 

IDE MP is the "MediaPocket" otherwise known as the internal DVD drive bay. If you're booting off an external USB CD drive then select USB CDD.

 

An MK4 cf-29 can be booted up first to USB CDD as I owned one of this. During the boot up as most the guy mentioned hit the F2 to access on the bios, then go to boot order. There are an option below that says "Excluded from boot order" choose "USB CDD" and press "X" on the keyboard to bring it up(priority order menu). When it is on the priority order menu choose again USB CDD and hit F6 until it is at first order on the menu. then save changes during exit. Hope it helps you out.

ohlip