No boot device problem

A friend called me last night saying water was spilled on his laptop (running Windows 10) and that it would not turn (on). He brought it over and it would not power up. I said I would look at it and he left. I then lifted the lid and saw that the machine did, in fact, have power. I saw the following on the screen:

Intel UNDI, PXE-2.1 (building 083)
Copyright (C) 1997-2000 Intel Corporation

This product is covered by one or more of the following patents:
US6,570,884, US6,115,776 and US6,327,625

Realtek PCIe FE Family Controller Series v1.38 (06/16/15)
PXE-E61: Media teat failure, check cable

PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM.
No Boot Device Found. Press any key to reboot the machine

===================================================================================

I took the hard drive out of the machine and connected it to a laptop of mine (running Windows 7) using a USB adapter. The HDD will power up and my computer can see it. However, the drive has Bitlocker encryption and I cannot read anything on it.

I did see some water in the computer upon taking it apart and left it overnight to dry. I put most of it back together today, turned it on, and got the same message I posted above. I looked up the PXE-E61 message online. Pursuant to that, I went into the BIOS. The computer can see the hard drive. It accurately has its size showing as 1TB. I then enabled the onboard NIC so that PXE boot was disabled. The machine rebooted and this time it simply says no boot device found. I went back into BIOS and re-enabled PXE boot so now I am back to the original message.

I would GREATLY appreciate any help, suggestions, and or advice that people can offer. Thank you.

Plankton,

Thanks for the reply. Frankly, I hadn't thought of that. I didn't see a lot of moisture when I removed the keyboard and the plastic base, but there were some drops of water. It's strange the computer sees the hard drive in BIOS, but doesn't recognize it during a normal boot/start up. I'm ultimately trying to avoid going through parts that aren't the problem (e.g. have him purchase a new mobo only to realize it's something else).

I would but a spare hard drive in it and see if you can install Windows 10 to a fresh hard drive (or SSD). A lot cheaper than starting with a motherboard. If the BIOS is seeing the hard drive correctly in BIOS, it is not likely to be a bad motherboard.

Hi folks
Computers are a lot more robust than people think -- a bit (small) bit of water is probably unlikely to damage the Mobo -- the simplest way would be to download a Linux Live distro to a USB drive and then see if it boots.

The original HDD though is another matter - that could easily become defective even if a tiny drop of water gets into it -- laptop HDD's have tiny amounts of space between arm and the "platters" so the whole read / write access mechanism could easily get hosed up. An SSD probably would be OK.

(Ensure computer is perfectly dry before starting tests).

Even if you don't know Linux at all just see if the USB boots.

(You could also try a bootable version of Macrium reflect if you don't want to use a Linux live distro).

If either of these boots try connecting another HDD and boot again -- see if the BIOS / or the programs recognize the HDD.

If neither boot then probably the MOBO will be defective -- that's why I would try the USB stick before fiddling around with HDD's,

Cheers
jimbo

Navy and Jimbo,

Thank you for your responses. I want to make sure I am getting this right: if I can boot from a USB stick would that indicate the mobo is good?

I mentioned before that the HDD is recognized in BIOS, but, for some reason, the computer give a "no boot device found" error message when trying to boot into "normal" mode. I have taken the HDD out, connected it to another machine via USB, and it sees the drive, but I cannot read any files on it due to Bitlocker. Again, all help is appreciated. Thank you.

If you can boot from a USB flash drive and everything works, then 99% chance the computer is fine.

Navy,

Thanks again. There is one thing I don't understand: why does the computer see the HDD in BIOS, but, yet, when booting says there is no boot device?

Thanks.

sinjin said:

Navy,

Thanks again. There is one thing I don't understand: why does the computer see the HDD in BIOS, but, yet, when booting says there is no boot device?

Thanks.

Could be a number of things. The UEFI/BIOS settings may have reset themselves due to a momentary short caused by the water and the computer was set to boot in CSM mode and now it is trying to boot in UEFI mode (or the other way around). The boot mode set in UEFI has to match the way the hard drive is set up and a mismatch there will cause a "no boot device" error.

It could be the partition containing the boot files got corrupted on the hard drive.

Without being able to access to the hard drive, it's hard to tell.

With the old hard drive installed in the original computer, you might be able to call up the UEFI/BIOS boot override screen and see if it lists the hard drive as a possible boot device.