D150 No Bootable Device

I am working on a D150-1165 that is getting the following error:

"
For Atheros PCIE Ethernet Controller...

Check cable connection..!
PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel PXE ROM.
No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key
"
First of all, this message is only displayed on an external monitor (VGA). If I do not plug in the monitor, the screen flashes from black to white to blue to red to black/white to....

I have tried the following:
1.) I flashed the BIOS to the most recent version 1.11.
2.) Reset the BIOS to default and verified that the HDD is noticed
3.) Attempted to set the computer to the factory setting using alt+ F10 ...also tried right alt/Gr + F10
4.) Reseated memory

I was initially thinking it was the HDD, however why would the computer only display text on an external monitor and not on the attached LCD? Has anyone else had this issue? Could it be the onboard video?

Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance!!

 

Disable booting from LAN.
Enter the bios, go to the main tab, and set Network Boot to disabled.

DutchDK

 

Thanks for the response DutchDK! I attempted that before to no avail. Since I posted, I was told by the owner that she had brought her laptop to someone to "wipe it out and start from scratch". I have no way of talking to the person that formatted/"restored" it, so I don't know exactly what he did. I'm thinking I may have the owner purchase the bootable eRestore USB option and attempt to image the machine. Do you think this will work, or do you think the HDD is gone? The HDD is recognized by BIOS, so I'm assuming that is not the issue. What do you think?
Thanks in advance,
Jay

 

Sounds like you have more than one problem to me. I don't see anyway that the screen problem could be anything other than hardware or BIOS since the computer is not even booting up. Have you checked the cable to the built-in LCD? Are you able to get into the BIOS setup screen with the external monitor or the built-in LCD? For the booting problem try booting from an external source to a live CD/DVD or Live USB like Linux Mint it runs fine on my D150-1920 but the wifi may not work (which is an easy fix when installed) but it will tell you if the computer is working.

 

There have been posts on the forums previously about the built-in LCD not functioning 100% until windows itself has booted. Whether it's a BIOS issue or something else I can't remember, but it has come up before, and those users either gave up on the problem or the problem fixed itself. Those same users also reported that external LCD's will show the entire boot process when the built in won't. You could try pumping the F2 button as soon as you turn the netbook on, sooner or later it will enter the BIOS settings. From her you might have some luck with the Fn + F5? combo to switch the monitor output mode of the AAO, thus bringing the AAO LCD back online. No guarantees tho.

I've put it down to the LCD not warming up fast enough to keep up with the boot process of the computer. I have seen this in desktops with cheap LCD screens, the screen simply takes too long to warm up, it's only a few seconds but the POST process of the computer doesn't really take all that long.

Sometimes my D250 will turn it's screen on straight away, sometimes it won't.

As for the no bootable device issue, if the hard drive has previously been wiped, as in zero'd, or even just formatted or had it's partitions deleted, the computer isn't going to boot from it. You'll probably want to test this, the easiest way is to start an XP install from an external USB CD / DVD drive, just let it go all the way through 'till the second or third reboot. If there's no good boot sector on the drive or no good MBR, it should continue to fail to boot from the HDD. Linux could also be used, but if your customer / friend / whoever doesn't want linux, you probably won't be forcing it upon them. If you want to give the appropriate reovery media a chance, then by all means go for it. It'll save you time by not having to diagnose problems any further.

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll try the bootable USB tonight and leave a followup message with my results.
Jay

 

For testing purposes, I installed Ubuntu on the netbook. It works just fine, so there are no issues with the hard drive. I still get the flashing screen however; if I pivot the LCD screen around a bit, it will display properly. I'm assuming the LCD is on the outs or there is something in the wiring, or both.

 

regarding moving the screen around to get it to show up, my D250 recently suffered from this as well. I stripped down the cable a fair bit and found that there was a loose earth connection. The factory simply bound the wires together and slapped some conductive tape around it. I went one step further and soldered the wire together which partially fixed the problem, the rest is in the cable. So I twisted the cable around about 2 revolutions to put some tension on it and plugged it back in. It's been good ever since. But I don't doubt that I will need to buy a new cable sooner or later, the thing is though, they're worth about $50 on eBay. That's too much for me to pay for a cable.