PXE-EC5 error help

[SXRguyinMA]

One of our older office machines here at work (PIII 930MHz) has been acting strange this week. First it would freeze at the second boot screen. I touch of the reset button and it would work fine.

Today I booted it up, and at the second boot screen it said "Invalid UNDI ROM ID Structure" which from some Googling is a PXE_EC5 error, but I can't find what that is or how to fix it :?

It won't even boot now. It loads the first screen with the processor model, IDE primary and secondaries, etc, then won't go any farther. No error codes either :?

Anyone have any ideas?

[farlo]

Try to update the flash image, may have been corrupted.

all i could really find http://www.wband.com/tech/BootAgnt/Guide/btagnt8.htm

[SXRguyinMA]

that's the same thing I found, but what flash image is it talking about? the BIOS image? :?

[AmEv]

Yes, the BIOS may be corrupt.


Time to break out the floppies.


What model is the MoBo?

[SXRguyinMA]

ASUS CUV4X-C

I've got the latest BIOS and a flash utility downloaded, but now I can't get any of my other computers with a floppy drive to recognize the drive or disks :?

[AmEv]

Is floppy mode enabled in the other computers' bioses?

[SXRguyinMA]

it is, and both computers show the floppy controller and drive in Device Manager, but neither will access the disk. First it said something about the disk not having the correct address, now it says it's not formatted, so I try to format it and it says "Windows was unable to complete the format" :?

Damn it's been so long since I've used a floppy lol

[SXRguyinMA]

well it must have just been a bad disk. I grabbed another and it works fine. :facepalm:

:EDIT:

Or not :? I tried to create an MS-DOS startup disk, and it says "You do not have sufficient rights to perform this operation" :? WTF, I'm logged in as an administrator.

Now after that it's saying the disk isn't formatted, then it says the disk cannot be formatted. WTF?

Am I just missing something? :?

[SXRguyinMA]

ok, so I'm confused. I just went to the suspect computer, turned it on, then went into BIOS to make the floppy #1 priority, rebooted, and no errors! The computer booted into windows just fine! :?

Ah well. Maybe I'll just have them leave it on all the time until we can get a replacement setup for it

[AmEv]

Sounds good.

[OvRiDe]

that's the same thing I found, but what flash image is it talking about? the BIOS image? :?

It was referring to a network boot image. PXE is stands for Preboot Execution Environment. That's what you use to boot a machine off of the network. That machine must have been set to boot from the network option first, and its boot PROM is probably borked. Moving the network option in the boot order to the last should keep that from happening again.

[SXRguyinMA]

It was referring to a network boot image. PXE is stands for Preboot Execution Environment. That's what you use to boot a machine off of the network. That machine must have been set to boot from the network option first, and its boot PROM is probably borked. Moving the network option in the boot order to the last should keep that from happening again.

that's strange, it should have never been setup to boot from the network :?

I'll take a look and see though, thanks!

[OvRiDe]

Another reason it could have happened is if for some reason the hard drive was unbootable at the time, it would move on to the next boot device. The network option could have still been set to last, but if for some reason it couldn't boot from the HDD, then the CD, then the Floppy, it could have made it all the way to the network option which is why it could throw that error as well.

[SXRguyinMA]

makes sense. I disabled boot from LAN, and moved floppy to #1, CD to #2 and HDD to #3, seems to be ok so far. I may just get a newer rig anyways, and swap the HDDs contents and be safe

[AmEv]

Ten year old hardware.
Still faster than 30-year-old hardware, but nowhere near as durable.