PCTech Forums

Have a HP Pavilion ze5185. System bpowers up but I get an error message:

"PXE-EG1: media test failure, check cable"

This is followes by:

"operating system not found"

I can not find a listing for the hard drive in BIOS and the system will not read from the CD. Changed the boot sequence to start with the floppy drive and it read a 'boot 98' disk I have. This got me into DOS command but unit will not change drives to either C: or D:

Any idea what is wrong? How to fix it?

Thanks

Sadly it looks like your hard drive went South. Thats a pretty new laptop if I'm not mistaken--I'd contact the vendor for warrenty support

Its peculiar that you can't read the cdrom drive. Boot up with the cdrom listed as first in the bios boot order with you OS cd. Some of those old 98 floppy boot disks made the cdrom drive E not D as most people expect.

Thanks for the reply.

I've tried to boot from the CD with the first recovery disk but got no where. Even tried a 2000 Professional disk which I know is a bootable disk. Did not work either.

Also tried another HD but the system would either lock up or give me the same error message.....

As for warranty, system only had 1 year and that is gone.....

The error message says something about a cable connection. Are there cables in a laptop for the HD? Thought most of the connections were made directly to the motherboard....

If you can get to the power molex connector that powers the cdrom disconnect it. And then see if the bios reconizes the hard drive. There's a chance that the cdrom is bad.

I assume by power molex you are referring to a plug-in for the CD. Any idea where that would be?

If you have the system opened up and see the definition of the cdrom drive, it would be at the back of the cdrom drive. If there isn't some sort of molex connector (white plastic 4 hole plug), the whole unit might slide out. Meaning the the unit docks with the motherboard like the hard drive. If thats the case, you'd want to remove the cdrom.

With the cdrom removed or power to it disconnected, the computer should not see it. Hopefully at that point, boot up into the bios and see if the Hard drive is being reconized

I removed the CD, actually a DVD. When I powered up, got the same error message and the HD was still not showing in the BIOS setup.

You mentioned something about 'flashing' the BIOS. I've heard that expression before but do not know what it means. Is it referring to removing the BIOS battery so it will clear itself?

Any thing else I can try?

Thanks for suggestions and ideas.

If you can locate the cmos battery round flat smalller than a quarter, try taking it out and put it back in after 5 minutes. You might also look to see if you see any pins on the motherboard that say cmos or clcmos.

The other thing you might try is go into the bios and search for something like "clear NVram" or reset factory configuration.

I really don't recommend flashing the bios which would rewrite the factory settings unless your quite familiar with what you are doing.

You might be better off sending it in to HP for diagnostics--looks like they've had several hundred issues with this model.

Maybe one of the other Mods might have a suggestion of something I've missed

good luck

Thanks for your efforts. Guess it's about time to send it the HP guys. From what I've read, this appears to be a problem prone model... Wonder if all the heat generated by the P4 is causing a number of these.

Thanks again...