I apologize if this is in the wrong forum. It just seemed the logical place to post my en query.
For the past week now, whenever I boot up my pc, after the POST I get:
pxe-e53: no boot filename received
pxe-mof: exiting pxe-rom
invalid partition table
Then it will just hang there. Resetting results in the same thing. The odd thing: If I enter the boot menu, select hard drive, actually select my primary master (not by default but rather using arrow keys to highlight slave then highlight master then hitting enter) I will then get to the Windows boot manager screen from which I can choose my os (xp, 7, ubuntu). I have already tried the repair functions from my 7 dvd. And although the repair console assures me that all has gone well, it is simply not the case.
As far as user error. I must confess that in attempting to mount an ubuntu iso I unintentionally mounted my XP partition. Thinking the XP files had only been copied and not realizing the would-be-linux partition was linked to my XP partition I went and deleted the files instead of unmounting. There went windows xp.
I have since re-installed xp, though that pesky booting process still plagues me. Does anyone have any ideas as to how I could go about correcting this? I would seriously prefer avoiding having to reformat. Thanks in advance.
PC specs as follows:
amd sempron 2600+ @ 1.61 Gh
msi k8n neo v2 (nvidia nforce3 250 chipset)
geforce 6200 a-le (512mb ddr2, agp x8)
1.5 Gb memory
western digital 153.38 gb hd (master w/xp, win7 installed)
western digital 149.05 gb hd (slave w/ubuntu installed + linux iso mounted)
I know it's an old rig. But I like to think of it as the little pc that could. I mean come on, it can run mac os x (leopard) without a hitch.
your system is attempting to network boot.. which means it's either set wrong in the bios or the bootloader in bios isn't finding a valid MBR .. a lot of older systems will do this when the mbr is invalid.. PXE is a network bootstrap environment (I have a pxe server at home for notebooks.. hahaha)
reinstalling xp after linux ALWAYS causes this because windows does not respect anything but itself.. but chances are because the M$ bootloader is an antique and very fragile it hasn't done a proper job of setting it's locations.
reinstall grub and rtfm .. you will have to edit the partition table kernel locations manually if grub doesn't see them.
Thank you for your quick response. I've never had any problems before when installing any windows os after a linux install, but I suppose there's always a first time. Anyway, your assertion that the bios settings were wrong turned out to be correct. My second hard drive (slave) had been given priority in the boot order. I didn't realize it because my master was listed first in the boot menu, and so I foolishly assumed it to be so. Hahaha. The problem has now been resolved.
Thank you very much for steering me in the right direction.
no worries.. I have sat and scratched my head at this "pxe boot .. file xxxx not found" error a few times until I realised what it was trying to do and then looked more closely at the bios options.. Dell gx series do it by default when "search for boot devices" is set .. rotten swines.. You can force a bios to boot a certain setup by disabling every option except hdd's and turning "try (search for/hunt/whatever) other boot devices" off.
If you ever handle netbooks this might be interesting (there is a windoze way to do this also.. but I would never have a windoze server on my network) http://linux-sxs.org/internet_serving/pxeboot.html
It's really useful if you allow to boot a set of system tools into ram for diagnostics.. especially for systems which will not boot any other way.
