PXE-E61: Media Test Failure

[oreganojoe]

Hello comrades,

My computer has been rendered unbootable; I'm not sure of the cause. The low down:

Specs:
Lenovo ideapad U410
i5, 6GB RAM, 750 GB HDD, 32 GB SSD
Ubuntu 13.10

Backstory:
==Disk layout for reference==
/dev/sda -- SSD
-/dev/sda1: /boot
-/dev/sda2: /
...
/dev/sdc -- Flash drive
I was using gparted to create a bootable USB for installing Ubuntu on a separate machine. I meant to set the boot flag on /dev/sdc, but accidentally instead set the boot flag on /dev/sda2. I immediately unset the boot flag to /dev/sda2 and continued on with my USB business.

Upon rebooting my machine it failed to boot into Linux; here's the error screen I get:
-------------------------------
Intel UNDI. PXE-2.1 (build xxx)
Copyright blah blah blah

This product is covered by <a bunch of patent numbers>

Realtek PCIe FE Family Controller Series v1.26 (08/16/11)
PCE-E61: Media test failure, check cable

PCE-M0F: Exiting PXE ROM
------------------------------
The above screen displays for one or two seconds and then, most of the time, it goes to a boot menu where my bootable flash drive, the SSD, the mechanical, and network boot are listed. Occasionally it won't show the boot menu and instead it will just hang at a black screen.

What I've tried:
-Ensured booting from the network is at the bottom of the boot list.
-Reseating the SSD and the mechanical HDD.
-Booting from a bootable flash drive. Does the same thing; other computers are able to boot to the flash drive and the flash drive is recognized in the boot menu.
-Resetting BIOS to default settings.
-Playing around with boot order, AHCI/RAID/Compatible BIOS options, UEFI boot enabled/disabled, Intel Virtualization enabled/disabled, USB legacy enabled/disabled.


Does anyone have any insight into what might be the cause/solution? I'm pretty confused by the fact that it won't even boot from USB. Thanks for any help!

-OreganoJoe

 

[oreganojoe]

Update: After trying several different flash drives I was able to get it to boot from a live Ubuntu flash drive. Initially I was trying to use flash drives which I created manually by formatting them to FAT32 and then extracting the Ubuntu ISO image using 'dd if=ubuntu.iso of=/dev/sdc1'. These flash drives worked for on my desktop computer but did not work on my laptop.

Eventually I tried using the Ubuntu-included Startup Disk Helper utility to create a bootable flash drive which did work on my laptop. It seems the laptop is more discerning in terms of what it'll boot from. Once I had booted into Ubuntu live I set the boot flag on /dev/sda1 and the laptop's function was restored.

-OreganoJoe