My daughter called me today with an issue with her Toshiba laptop.
When she powers it on it starts the Toshiba boot screen gets to about 75% and then goes to a black screen and is presented with the following
First it says:
media test failure check cable
then that disappears and this appears:
exiting PXE ROM
then that disappears and then this appears
operating system not found
_ (<--- that is a flashing cursor)
She can F2 and get into BIOS
She cannot get the machine to F8 to choose safe-mode or last know working state or dos prompt etc, the machine just continues into "normal" booting, but fails as described above.
Machine is running W7 ultimate 32 bit.



I presume that that HDD is likely bad. She will be home next week for a visit and will bring the machine with her.
Just curious if there is anything else i can help her check

It sounds like a faulty HDD, but could be a corrupted OS. If you can hook the drive up to your computer or connect via a drive hub to pull/save her critical data, I'd do that first off.

Very unlikley but possible the HDD is loose from it's connection. Most notebooks don't have much room for that to be possible, just a thought.

As it happens the 128GB Samsung 830 SSDs are going on sale for $90 at 3am (See other thread), what better way to show you care? And if you have a large enough USB drive you could get her the Windows 8 preview all ready to go for it too!

Just in case though have her bring along her Vista/OS disc and drivers CDs for the notebook.

128 GB is a bit small for her needs, new egg has a 500GB hybrid for 89.00

SSD speed isnt a huge need but a hybrid might be a better option considering the size difference.

How does a hybrid work?

I had this same exact error occur on an older Toshiba laptop. The hard drive died. I booted with several live CDs and it wouldn't even recognize it.