Hi, I was wondering id anyone could help, I recently purchased a PC base unit from someone and was told that it was all working fine apart from the fact that it had no operating system on it. And that I would have to get an operating system on it before it would work. I managed to get Windows XP for the system and went to install it but every time I turn the PC on I get the following message. INTEL ROOT AGENT VERSION 4.0 PXE-E61: MEDIA TEST FAILURE, CHECK CABLE PXE-MOF: EXITING INTEL PXE ROM NTLDR IS MISSING PRESS CTRL+ALT+DEL TO RESTART I have no idea what is wrong or how to sort this as I am not computer literate, I was wondering if anyone has any idea what is wrong? And how I would go about fixing it? Any help would be much appreciated. thanks Tom

You may not have an installed harddrive. Watch the screens at startup and post the messages here. If things go too fast you can tap the scroll lock key to freeze the screen and then spacebar to continue.

What I suspect is happening here is the computer was originally on a Network and was set to boot from network ROM. Hence the Intel PXE ROM part of the message. As there is no network present it is trying to boot from a hard disk. It is finding the Windows Boot loader in the MBR but cannot find Windows hence NTLDR missing. There has to be a working hard disk in order to get that message. The first thing to do is to go into the BIOS setup. Make the CD the first boot device, followed by the first hard disk and delete any reference to Network Boot. Once you have done that, boot with your Windows XP CD. Delete any existing portions and start again with a brand new partition for Windows. To get into the BIOS setup look at the first screen when the computer starts. There should be something along the lines of Press Del to Enter setup. Depending on the make of the computer this could be F1 or F2 or some other combination of keys but Del is the most common. Stuart

http://www.hps.com/~tpg/win/install... Instructions for a fresh install Some HELP in posting on Cnet plus free progs and instructions Glad to Help!

Hi, Thanks to all who have replied. I switched the computer on and pressed / tapped the delete key in order to get into the BIOS Setup to alter the settings as suggested. Although this didn't work as everytime I tapped pressed the key I kept getting a 58-301 Keyboard error, which I think was happening because I was tapping the key. Anyway I tried a different keyboard to make sure there was not a problem with keyboard but still no luck - I tried tapping the escape key along with all the F keys to see if I could get into BIOS setup but couldn't. I get a message at bottom of right hand screen that read <F10>= SETUP <F12>=NETWORK SERVICE BOOT I tried pressing F10 to get into the setup but it just seem to go round in a loop giving me the original PXE error messages I gat at the start. I then tried pressing the F12 key for the network service boot, but when I did that done exactly the same and seemed to go into a loop bringing back the PXE error messages. So I have no idea what is up or how to fix it. If anybody has any ideas on whats going on and how I can fix it it would be much appreciated. thanks T

F10 is the key you need. You need to tap it as soon as it appears on the screen. There only a very short windows while the keyboard is active before the BIOS carries on with the rest of the boot. Stuart

Could be the USB Keyboard isn't working due to a BIOS setting. If no luck, try a PS/2 KBoard.