Cannot get past boot device selection screen.

[blablue123]

Hello.

I have a serious problem. Whenever I turn on my laptop (Lenovo T430), it just gives me an error message:

PXE-E61 Media Test Failure, Check Cable" Error Message

and goes to boot device select screen. No matter what I select on there, there's no way past that screen, it always goes back to it. I cannot boot from a Windows DVD or USB. If I select to boot from DVD drive, it sounds like the disc is being read for like a second but then as I said before - goes back to boot device select screen.

I tried changing the boot order in BIOS, tried reseating the hard drive. All that did was get rid of that PXE error, but I'm still stuck on the boot device selection part.

Here's a photo of the screen

Before the problem started I did a clean install of Windows 7 (downgrade from Windows 10 on a new partition). Everything was working fine, I installed a few applications, started downloading updates AND used MiniTool Partition Wizard to merge the old Windows 10 partition with the one I use to store my files. I did not touch the one with Windows 7.

I would really appreciate some help..

 

[RolandJS]

Are you able to post a disk management picture of your hard-drive with the fields expanded? I'm not sure what was done.

 

[YaMoonSun]

Did you setup windows 7 with gpt or mbr? I bet that having gpt/mbr at the same time is conflicting. Do you have a second machine that you can use to setup a bootable usb installer?

 

[johnhoh]

have you seen this?

PXE-E61 Media Test Failure Error

You might also reset your cmos

 

[lvlpost]

Well, it seems like that is the problem. I unplugged the HDD and it got past the HP splash screen. Now I have a "No bootable device detected" error, but that's to be expected. I think my own eccentricities got me into this mess. I think the format of my harddrive got changed to something else. Any Ideas?