weird laptop problems

[Pete M]

my dad's laptop (win 7) will occasionally give the following error screen upon starting.  if I yank the battery for a bit and replace it, the 'puter will boot like normal.  thoughts? 

 

 

[Ωhm]

Do a search for "insert boot disk". Lots of information. May help.

[kryptronic]

This is an error triggered by the BIOS on the motherboard.  It's complaining it can't find a drive to boot from.  Might be due to a loose connection at the hard drive connector.  Draining the system of all power and restarting works, so I'd assume it's not a connector issue and diagnose as a BIOS firmware issue.  If you suspect this is the casen upgrqde the BIOS firmware on the motherboard.  Also, upgrade that Win 7 to something recent at some point.

[Pete M]

that is my fear.  bios work terrifies me.    my brain has a hell of a time keeping track of changes or menus.  and last time I tried altering bios stuff, I... sorta screwed stuff up on my laptop.

[DirtyComanche]

Drive may be on its way out.  Would recommend backing up right meow.

[Dzimm]

Yeah back up the files now.  The drive going is the most likely cause.  In most cases I've seen this error, it was a bad drive.  I may still have a harddrive diagnostics program from my old job that you could run on it.  I'll check my computer tomorrow.

 

Second would be the bios being screwed up.  Go to the laptop manufacturers website and see if they have a bios you can download and install.  

 

Third thing is I would ask if some program or update recently downloaded right before this started.  

[Pete M]

I'm exhausted so work on it will wait til tomorrow, but I did just remember that it had been doing weird things when he put it to sleep the past couple months.  (like turning off instead of simply going to sleep).  far as I know, the only new program in the last few months was TurboTax.

[Dzimm]

My software version is too outdated to run properly anymore and since I no longer work there, I can't update it. 

 

What brand laptop is it? It may have a built in diagnostics tool.

[johnj92131]

Pete,

 

My thought:  Try replacing the battery on the mother board with a new one.  Easy and cheap.

[CheapXJ]

it's loading a PXE option rom and trying to boot from the network for some reason. likely scenario is hard drive acting up. depending on the drive it could be time to backup and replace, or if it's an older SSD it may just need a firmware update (crucial M4 SSDs are notorious for doing this, and a FW update actually fixes it!)

 

if you can extrapolate what hard drive is in it (may even be worth removing the cover and looking by eye) and it is an SSD, look for a firmware update and apply it if available.
 

also many laptops now have these small ribbon cables on the connector between the hard drive and the mainboard, these fail over time from chassis flex and heat cycling. (replacing the hard drive could still lead to this symptom returning in this case.)

 

Good luck!

[Pete M]

we're in a bit of a delay as my pop wants to wrap up the taxes before I start tinkering with it. 

 

It's an Acer Aspire v5 and shouldn't have an ssd. 

[Pete M]

and the winner is.... loose connection to the hard drive.    unless there was something else I accidentally did along the way.   

[Pete M]

but I also will be acquiring a new external hd to make a complete save of all his stuff.  not because I never back things up (I've got at least 4 copies of important things like family photos in 2 different houses) but because I just now learned that a 500g hd no longer cuts the mustard and 2 are near full.

[Pete M]

now on to why my elitebook won't recognize any other secondary harddrive...