OCuk purchased laptop has a boot problem after travelling (and three years service without fault)

[LordFeste]

in 2013 I got a

OcUK Gamer W350STQ 15.6" LED Full HD Intel Haswell Processor, 1600MHz DDR3, SSD + HDD, NVIDIA GTX 765M 2GB GDDR5 Graphics Card - Windows Laptop - Cosmic Grey (https://www.overclockers.co.uk/ocuk...mhz-ddr3-ssd-hdd-nvidia-gtx-76-lt-019-oe.html)

It's been a great laptop. Played games like Minecraft, Seven Days to Die, CivIV, Dwarf Fortress without too much trouble.

Also used for recording music on the move, which worked fine.

But I'm struggling to find a fix for the current problem. On boot it was

"realtek pcie GBE family controller series pxe-e61: media test failure, check cable"

or

"reboot and select proper Boot Device or insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key".

The SSD is a samsung 840

So far I have tried:

• I re-seated the SSD which was a little out of place.
• setting bios to default
• Changing boot order in bios
• Switching round the SSD to the HDD compartment in the laptop (it has a space for a HDD which I didn't use)
• Turning off LAN booting in the BIOS
• Plugging the SSD in to a working PC and running Samsung Magician (SSD reports all OK)
• It was backed up recently, and I've backed it up again, so wasn't worried about losing files.

The BIOS recognises the SSD is there and connected.


I don't see the point in going through a re-installation of Windows, though if anyone can suggest that would help please let me know.

I can only think that it was damaged somehow in the car? It was in a big case, and survived the outward journey just fine. It was working the morning it was packed in to the car... just not when it was unpacked later that day.

Any help or suggestions gratefully received. Thanks.

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

When you plugged it in to a working PC did you see the data?
Might be worth booting from a Windows USB to get into the repair options, startup repair is always a quick thing to run.

Linux live pen and check if the drive shows data when connected to the laptop might also be another thing to try.

 

[LordFeste]

Thanks Emlyn. Also thanks to awesome OCuk support who got back to me elsewhere.

I'll give the repair option a shot.

Yes, I am able to read the drive on a different computer, copied important files from it already, so a reinstall, if necessary, can be done with nothing lost other than a bit of time.