Can anyone help?

[Hopeless]

Firstly, I know nothing about computers or netbooks, so if you have any advice, please make it as numpty friendly as possible. Thanks.

My son has an advent 4213. Unbeknown to me he has at some point decided he wanted Windows 7 and promptly downloaded it from who-knows-where! Apparently it then told him there was some problem with Realtek so he proceeded to download something else from who-knows-where. This was over a week ago, he has kept his netbook hidden as he was afraid he'd broken it (we appear to share the same view), so the details are sketchy, I'm sorry.

When we switch it on it goes to a black screen with American Megatrends on it. It says Primary Master Drive - ATAPI Incompatible press f1 to resume.

If I do that it asks for his password, put that in and it seems to spend ages trying to load before giving me a rather long message about some realtek stuff. Then at the bottom it says -

No DHCP or proxyDHCP offers were received.

PXE-MOF: Exiting PXE ROM.

Reboot and select proper boot device or Insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key.

Please does anyone have any idea on where I begin with this or is it FUBAR?

Thanks in advance.

[The Mailman]

The comments about the PXE and DHCP would indicate that the system cannot find an opertaing system to load and it is trying to find a network install. PXE is used in a business environment to perfrom an automatic OS install.

It would seem to indicate that the Win7 install failed to detect the hard drive correctly and may need specific drivers for the storage. I would check the Notebook manufacturer for any FAQs on installing Win7 or reinstall the original OS.

I would doubt the device is broken - its just a failed OS install.

[Hopeless]

Thanks for that but how do I re-install the OS? I don't have a disc. I've googled and it's all gobbledegook to me. The only thing I do have is the licence code on the bottom of the netbook, but as I can't get any further than the black screen, it seems I'm stuck.

[neilm]

During the initial setup process when the 4213 was new, you should have been asked/prompted to create an emergency copy of the installation disc on a memory card.

Unless you did that, you can't revert to the original OS, unless you also have a legitimate disk copy of Windows XP, and a bootable CD drive.

You need to ask your son how he obtained and installed the Windows 7 operating system. Hopefully he downloaded it and ran it from a USB memory stick. If so, you may be able to go back and install it again, but use the boot tools to create a fresh installation by reformatting the hard drive. It may even be possible to do a 'repair' byt using this method.

If he used a file on the hard drive to update to Windows 7, I suspect you are scuppered, and will need to obtain a legitimate OS on a USB drive, or use a botable CD Drive to reinstall.

We have got a sister site dedicated to Netbook stuff (we originally handled all Netbook queries here but got a bit overwhelmed! It may be worth posting this on 4NetBook