XP: "Operating System Not Found"

What would make a ThinkPad (runnning Windows XP Pro) go black and then produce a message from Intel giving a Mac address, followed by

PXE-E53 No boot filename
TXEMOF Operating system not found

I didn't see this happen; I was out for a few hours, and found the dead screen when I got home. Pressing Esc produced the message quoted above, after a couple of minutes' delay.

Closing the laptop put it to sleep normally, but when it woke up it produced the same text as before.

Turning it off and then on again made it boot normally, using a restore point taken that morning.

This morning I ran the diagnostics and found everything working just as it was last time I ran them, a month or so ago. It's been fine all day.

The power comes through a UPS that is less than six months old and seems to be working normally.

The troubleshooting guide that came with the laptop isn't helpful. It mentions the existence of the error message, but just says to confirm that the hard disk is installed correctly (how would I know, other than four months' observation) and put a boot disk in the diskette drive (I didn't and it booted anyway).

Any idea what happened? And whether it's likely to happen more often now that it's proved itself possible?

 

It would appear your boot order is messed up. It is attempting a network boot isntead of the hard drive.

Check your bootorder in the BIOS.

 

New Developments

The system isn't behaving as normally as I thought. It still boots up and works happily enough, but Acronis refuses to image the hard drive. Message reads:

Cannot create image of logical drive C because it is currently in use by running applications or the logical drive contains bad sectors.

I've also started getting a message alleged to be from Windows Update every time the system starts up, offering "IBM Security Software ready for download December 19, 2003" -- ignoring the "remind me in three days" setting. If it's real, why didn't I hear about it last year?

The boot order is an interesting idea... but why would it happen only once in the four months I've been using this beast?

 

With the extra information you have provided, I am really unsure what the problem might be.

You think the hard drive might be going bad?

I would run a chkdsk /r from Recovery Console off of the Windows XP CD.

 

Just what I was thinking. My hardrive at work just went down and before it died completely its behaviour was somewhat similar to yours.

Make copies of what you must save and run the hardrive check

 

Sounds like somthing on the hard drive has gone bad.

Happens at school all the time, its an Intel thing, i think it tries to read the hard drive, but if it cant (i.e. the MBR is corrupted or somthing like that) then it will revert and try to connect to the network to boot.

Guys? : Try a chkdsk /mbr maybe? Sounds like that might be what is stopping it from booting up. Other than that it might be that the drive itself is going bad ...

 

chkdsk /mbr isn't a valid command, did you mean fdisk /mbr?

In that case I don't reccomend that as much as fixmbr for XP.

No idea what the 9x MBR command would do to XP.

 

I think Hilary's going to need some bottom-line guidance here, guys. I hope it won't be out of line for me to suggest that Adryn make the next-step suggestion for Hilary to try, based on the thoughts of the three of you.

And I've talked with Hilary before, and am sure that she has never used EITHER the recovery console or a chkdsk /r from the Run line. Some help might be in order.

 

Well, I don't think that chkdsk /r is a bad idea, and I don't think rebuilding the MBR is a bad idea (good call Goldy) either.

IMO, those are last ditch efforts in determing if its software...or hardware.

I think we will need to know first:

Hilary, do you have a Windows XP CD, or is this OEM?

 

I heartily agree with that. Wouldn't 9x FDISK trash the MBR?

I agree that's the way to go. Walking her through getting the Recovery Console going is probably in order.

Might I suggest another option if it appears to be a hardware issue? Have her download the Hitachi/IBM Drive Fitness Test, make a bootable floppy and run the diags. Might just help ID the problem.

 

Good call, a drive fitness program should tell us too

 

Progress Report

It's OEM. IBM swears up and down I don't need a CD because everything needed to reload and go is in a Special Secret Compartment on the disk. That disk; the one that's been misbehaving....

But there's good news: This morning Acronis imaged the drive without complaint. Dunno which of several steps did the job, but yesterday I ran chkdsk from the Tools menu of the disk Profile dialog (with both switches set), defragmented the disk, and killed everything Spybot and Ad-Aware found to complain about.

So maybe it's OK again.

Other info that may be useful:
* The system has never failed to boot properly when first powered up. It crashed the once, while I was out, and couldn't find its operating system directly afterwards and when put to sleep and waked up again. But a cold boot has always worked.
* After the problem appeared (January 31, I think), I started getting a message allegedly from Windows Update every time I log on, offering an update of IBM Security Software dated December 19, 2003. I tell it to remind me in 3 days, but the message is there next time the system starts. The message was there again this morning.
* Chkdsk either produces no report or hides the report; I was away from the system when it finished running - checking free space takes a loooong time - and the expected report was not onscreen when I returned. Where would the report go?

Many thanks for helping think this through!

 

This report would be kept under your Event Log.

Go to Control Panel, switch to classic view, and open up your Administrative tools.

Here you will find the Even Viewer.
Check Application and System.

It may have a source heading of winlogon.

 

Chkdsk report

That's where it was! Application, under winlogon. It reports
[font=&quot]Cleaning up minor inconsistencies on the drive.[/font]

[font=&quot]Cleaning up 27 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.[/font]

[font=&quot]Cleaning up 27 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.[/font]

[font=&quot]Cleaning up 27 unused security descriptors.
[/font]

[font=&quot]And 0 KB in bad sectors. And the bit at the end about "please wait while your computer restarts" explains why the report wasn't waiting for me....
[/font]

 

So far so good

Maybe it was just a fluke.