several issues please help

ill start by posting what i have in other forums that have not worked out so well..
i think my msi 163a laptop will not recognize the hard drive...when i try to boot it says this

PXE e61 media test failure, check cable
boot failure
press any key to continue

if i boot from my vista disc to repair. it cannot find an operating system but it gives me the option to load drivers, which doesnt help because i dont know which drivers to load,

tried changing boot order around to enable just hard drive, but then i get bootmgr is missing

also when i turn on my computer it sits on the screen that says intel, press del key to run setup. press f11 tp run boot meny, press tab jey to show post sreen

i tried all of those and the only one that works is the last one...if i keep pressing delete it will bring up the bios

so this is where im stuck...any help would be great..also i tried reinstalling vista all together and it works up until i get an error during "installing updates"..the error says it cannot update the registry..or something similar to that...please help!

Hi surfshack66,

Welcome to Vista Forums.

When it is asking you to load drivers, it is asking for the SATA hard drive drivers. You can get them at this link below. It's the 6th one down.

MSI -- MICRO-STAR INT'L CO., LTD.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

surfshack66,

That PXE line is telling you that PXE boot can't work because the network interface is not connected to valid network. PXE is usually used these days to install operating systems on new systems that are remote from the person doing the install or because they have no CD or DVD drives to install the OS from. I would turn that feature off unless you plan on using it. It slows down the boot process if the network interface(s) are in the boot order.

I looked at the drivers packages Brink provided a link for and I am not sure why they are listed for Vista. Based on the OEM file, the drivers present are for Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows 2003. So loading those are not going to help.

In any case, I would be completely surprised to find any motherboard released in the last 2 years for which Vista did not support SATA out of the box.

It appears you bigger problems than driver issues. I would go into BIOS and reset it to default settings. If that doesn't work, you may very well have a hardware problem. Does the drive show up in the BIOS POST?

S-

Yep, that is what you should do, i will only add that if it doesn't work, try to disable network services in Bios.
If still doesn't work, maybe the problem comes from the internal cable or the HDD itself, try it in another computer using an usb adapter for example.

thank you for the responses...as for the drivers i have tried those from the cd that came with the barebone, not knowing those would be the right ones...and it didnt work unfortunately...also i have tried resetting the bios to default..even removed the cmos battery several times...and didnt work

as for changing the settings to disable network services in bios, i dont see an option anywhere to do that...however, in the IDE information it does say hitachi ... which is my hard drive..does this mean its still good?

surfshack66,

Don't worry about disabling the network interfaces. The PXE boot issue just slows down the boot process. But, you can stop that by removing the network interfaces from the boot order in BIOS.

I still think it is a hardware issue or an installation that is so screwed up the Vista disc can't fix it. If you have nothing of real value on the drive, I would try to reinstall formatting the drive in the process.

S-

To verify, as told before, can you plug it via an USB adapter to another computer.
Another thing to do, as if i understand you cannot "repare" from the DVD, would be to use a CD/USB drive bootable which includes repair and diagnostic tools.

In fact, repairing the boot system would be the next step if HDD is fine.
If bootmgr appears to be missing or corrupted, it is normal that the bios tries to start from another device.

the only options i see in my boot order are cdrw the hard drive and realtek boot something...i tried also to reinstall but an error says it cannot update registry and it cancells the whole install..ill try downloading a bootable disc that has repair and diagnostic tools, and unforuntately i dont have a USB adapter so that option is ruled out

i was able to format my hard drive with the vista disc...so i guess that means my hard drive is fine....but i was lucky i was able to even get to that point because it takes forever to load the disc...im tring to reinstall now...i get to the point where it says press any key to boot from disc, then i see the bar that says loading windows files on the bottom of the screen, then it i see a black screen with a cursor in the middle, and thats where it stops...it just stays on that screen, if im lucky it will continue but i have to keep rebooting and trying again, whats the issue here?

As i told you before, the issue would have been to check the disk with appropriate tools using either a bootable CD or USB flash drive.
The other option being to plug the disk in another computer via USB foe example.