Operating system not found after enabling verifier.exe

[vinhuman]

My acer laptop has been having quite a bit of trouble recently. It has been BSOD'ing after log-in, usually with a IRQL Not Less or Equal Stop 0x0000000A error. It usually gets the blue screen in a matter of seconds following log-in, although occasionally it takes up to 5-10 minutes. It does not blue screen in safe mode. After a bit of experimenting/scanning/cleaning I decided to turn to the driver verifier (oops).

Anyways, I enabled the driver verifier (verifier.exe) custom -> checked all the drivers outside of the Microsoft ones and then rebooted. The next BSOD did show a driver name but unfortunately I did not turn off the auto reboot upon BSOD (I thought I had) and it rebooted before I got the name of the driver down. I think I'd recognize it if I saw it again, but cannot post it here for further help.

Here's where it got worse. Now when I restart my laptop it just keeps displaying something very similar to this (I am away at school and it is kind of difficult to get the exact text but I will certainly try to add it to the thread later).

Broadcom -- some other info describing version # etc.
PXE-E61: Media Test failure, check cable
PXE-MOF: Exiting Broadcom PXE ROM.
Operating System not found.

I checked the BIOS boot order to no avail. I can't press f8 and get to safe mode, the operating system not found message is shown upon trying. Also, alt + f10 just results in the same message so I cannot try to find some sort of OS partition on my HDD. I'm about to go back to my laptop and just fiddle with the boot order a bit more, I'll report back and let you know if this has any effect.

In the mean time, any advice on what to do would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[jason2074]

PXE-MOF: Exiting Broadcom PXE ROM.

This refers to your Network card so if you have a BIOS option LAN or Network, disable this feature. Reseat the hard drive and all cables in your laptop. You could safely work with the bluescreen in safemode.

[vinhuman]

I tried disabling the Network option. Everything works exactly the same except now the message skips the Broadcom version/check cable/ exiting message and just says "Operating system not found."

Although I have had to deal with hardware before (I assembled my desktop) laptops are a whole new monster for me. I tried taking the case off with little success, so instead I just took off the hard drive/memory cover. I reseated the hard drive but this changed nothing. I did the same for the memory. I don't know a whole lot about laptops and I'm confused on how to reconnect all the cables or even get to them, so I have not done that yet.

You said I could safely work with the blue screen in safe mode... I don't get a blue screen anymore, as I cannot even reach the f8 start up menu to try safe mode. Immediately after the first screen my laptop displays "Operating system not found," unless of course I go into BIOS. Thanks for the reply.

[jason2074]

Reinsert or replace also the CMOS battery. Do you see the hard drive recognized on your BIOS setup?

[vinhuman]

The hard drive is recognized. I'm not entirely sure how to go about replacing the CMOS battery. Then again, I did find a pretty comprehensive guide to taking apart my exact laptop model here -> http://www.insidemylaptop.com/disassemble-acer-aspire-7551g-laptop/.

Maybe there was originally a hardware issue causing the BSODs, but I'm frustrated in trying to understand why activating the verifier would completely stop me from booting even in safe mode.

I read somewhere you can edit the registry offline to disable the driver verifier, do you know anything about this?

[jason2074]

Try booting with your original windows disk to use start up repair or make a system restore to an earlier point. http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/What-are-the-system-recovery-options-in-Windows-7

[alecsillidan]

try booting from cd and use bootsect /nt60 from command prompt utility