Notebooks & Netbooks

[carrola1]

I purchased an ACER Aspire 3820T Series from a friend, about 6 months ago.

A couple of days ago I started it up, only to find the following, displayed at the boot-tup menu...

"Check cable connection!

PXE-MOF: Exiting Intel PXE ROM

Operating System not found"

Can I still somehow find/salvage the OS?

Or do I need to reinstall Windows 7?

Would ACER send me another Windows 7? 

I contacted my friend, he doesn't recall ever backing up the OS?

Or having a spare copy of Windows 7 (the product key # is on back of laptop).

Since it has no CD/DVD drive, I imagine it has to be installed through USB.?

Any suggestions?

[Vince53]

Carrola, you PROBABLY have a hard drive problem. This message usually occurs after installing a new hard drive.

Try rebooting and getting into Safe Mode by repeatedly pressing F2. Sometimes you have to experiment to find the right F key. Once you get into Safe mode, make sure that your hard drive is the first choice for starting up. (No joke, if you have a CD or DVD in your optical drive, remove it. SOMETIMES that causes the problem).

If it still doesn't work, go into Safe Mode again and work your way to the Diagnostic program.

If you can start in Safe Mode, run a deep scan with all your antimalware programs. However, if it is a hard drive problem, you will need to take it to a reputable computer shop.

[miguel69]

F2 is to get to the BIOS configuration page, here you can set the order of the devices where it should look for the OS, usually set as cd/dvd first then hdd0 (this lets you put in a disk and re-boot to start a recovery program, a liveCD or other disk programs). F8 is to get to windows 'safe mode' or other boot options. for both of these options press the key immediately after the BEEP during the acer splash screen before windows starts.