[bearcat2014]

Hi there,

I'm Sarah. I'm new to the site. I have had a dell inspiron mini 1010 laptop since 2010. Recently, whenever I try to turn it on I get the following error message:

(some legal stuff)
For Realtek RTL8101E/8102E PCI-E Ethernet Controller v 1.10 (080722)
PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM
Operating System not found

(more legal stuff)

I saw that other people had similar problems, but they all seemed to have Mini 9. I have gotten this error message a couple of times before and the problem was always a hard drive failure. I went into the BIOS with someone from Dell Tech Support and we saw "fixed HDD: none", which I think means either the hard drive is dead or the computer no longer recognizes the hard drive.

I want to know whether I need to buy a new hard drive, motherboard or both. I would also need to know what kind I likely need to buy and how much it should cost on eBay or a similar site. Dell told me that the hard drive I need for my computer is a 160GB 5400 rpm. Is this correct?

I consider this more of a learning experience than an urgent computer need as there are other computers I can use.

Thanks!

[holmes4]

Hi, Sarah, welcome to the forum. The error messages you are seeing are from the BIOS not finding a bootable disk, so it tries to boot from Ethernet. The HDD: none is indeed the source of your problem. Whether that means that the hard disk is dead or something else is wrong is hard to determine.

You can replace the hard disk. You will need a 2.5" SATA drive, as is commonly sold for laptops. The capacity can be whatever you want - you can probably find bigger ones for sale now than what was common when your 1010 was built. You will probably be restricted to drives that are 9.5mm high, but this is pretty standard except for the largest drives. 5400RPM is pretty typical for these, but not a "required" spec. This Western Digital drive would work.

[bearcat2014]

Wow! Thanks Steve! I'll check that out. Have a nice day!