"boot from PxE" message now appears when I start up my laptop

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x509

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I have a 500 GB Samsung 850 EVO installed in my Lenovo T560 laptop. I bought this laptop in April, 2016 and upgraded it right away with the SSD. No problems until now. The laptop receives normal use "part-time," when I am traveling for my consulting job, roughly 1 week a month, plus some use at home. There are about 250 GB of files on the SSD, including Windows (with cache and hibernation files), data, photos,etc.

I sometimes use the laptop at home. Yesterday for the first time I got this "boot from PxE" message instead of a normal boot-up sequence into Win 10. I have never seen this message before but I know it means that no drive was detected. I power cycled twice and then the machine booted up normally. Same thing happened again today. Once the machine boots up, no apparent issues.

So I'm wondering: Is the SSD about to fail? Or is it the laptop? Any way I can test out the possibilities, software or otherwise?

There is a bit of urgency here, because I'm leaving on a business trip in mid-June, two weeks away. Samsung has a three year warranty on the drive, but I doubt I could do an exchange in time for my trip. Do I just go out and buy another SSD? (I'm self-employed, so I don't have a helpful IT department to take care of this issue.)

Thanks,

x509
 
I'd go into my BIOS and set default values. Then I would go through and set the boot order, disable PXE boot and set/disable any other settings you prefer. You can also download Samsung's drive fitness software (Samsung Magician, I believe) to test out the drive, though i'm not familiar with how great that software is. Last, you could also re-seat the hard drive or connections.

*EDIT - also, do a backup of your files just in case.
 
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Thanks. It's kind of late now, but I will defintely do all this tomorrow. I already do daily backup of this laptop, plus I use GoodSync to sync files and folders between this laptop and my desktop. Belts and suspenders. ;)
 
The last time that happened to me on a ThinkPad, eventually got a 2100. Replaced SSD, that wasn't it; turned out to be systemboard, this was back in March.
 
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You need to change the boot order in bios. Should be USB drive boot, HDD boot, then network boot. Right now it's trying to do network boot first.
 
x509, I do have T450s and two SSDs installed: Samsung 850PRO 512GB in 2,5" bay and Trascend 256GB in M.2 port. My whole system and software installation partitions are on Samsung so I always boot OK. However, from boot to boot, my Transcdent dissappears. I suspect the port on those thinkpads is either not perfeclty assembled and M.2 SSDs lose connectivity from time to time or I have installed it improperly. I just do not have time to take care of it, especially as I do not have any improtant data on that Trasncdent.

Seems you have the same problem, but as this is your boot drive and you have no other boot devices, you end up on last default boot option which is PXE LAN boot.
If I were you, I would try to reinstall your SSD.

This is of course not aguarateed to work 100%. It might be that both yours and mine SSD is malfuncioning at the controller level effectively rendering SSD not usable from time to time.
 
qhash said:
x509, I do have T450s and two SSDs installed: Samsung 850PRO 512GB in 2,5" bay and Trascend 256GB in M.2 port. My whole system and software installation partitions are on Samsung so I always boot OK. However, from boot to boot, my Transcdent dissappears. I suspect the port on those thinkpads is either not perfeclty assembled and M.2 SSDs lose connectivity from time to time or I have installed it improperly. I just do not have time to take care of it, especially as I do not have any improtant data on that Trasncdent.

Seems you have the same problem, but as this is your boot drive and you have no other boot devices, you end up on last default boot option which is PXE LAN boot.
If I were you, I would try to reinstall your SSD.

This is of course not aguarateed to work 100%. It might be that both yours and mine SSD is malfuncioning at the controller level effectively rendering SSD not usable from time to time.
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qhash,

For my T560, the BIOS boot options include NMVe, but I can't find an M.2 port on the motherboard of the T560. I even went through the maintenance manual, which I think is intended for techs, and there was no mention of an M.2 port there. I just reviewed the user manual, and it doesn't mention an M.2 slot or M.2 SSD in section on replacing devices. Am I completely missing something? :confused: :banghead:

upload_2018-6-2_12-58-22.png
 
I am not completely sure, and I could be wrong but I believe a number of variants of the T560 had an m.2 slot for the WWAN card which were NOT NVME compliant. I believe only the S versions had the NVME m.2 slot.
 
x509, I might have misread your post. Thought you actually do know that you have M.2 drive. As you replaced your drive by yourself and this was not an M.2 unit, I can tell that describing my situation might not be so much of a help to you. You should still check SSD placement, BIOS upgrade possibility (because as you said its not M.2 drive, situation can be more general and not drive related), SSD itself by doing some extensive write/erase tests, however. If that situation will persist, I would send both SSD and then notebook to RMA. As other have said, backup your data first.
 
qhash said:
x509, I might have misread your post. Thought you actually do know that you have M.2 drive. As you replaced your drive by yourself and this was not an M.2 unit, I can tell that describing my situation might not be so much of a help to you. You should still check SSD placement, BIOS upgrade possibility (because as you said its not M.2 drive, situation can be more general and not drive related), SSD itself by doing some extensive write/erase tests, however. If that situation will persist, I would send both SSD and then notebook to RMA. As other have said, backup your data first.
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qhash,

I am not having any issues with my laptop that woudl require an RMA. Besides, the warranty has already expired. I always buy low-end, low cost configurations from Lenovo. Then at much lower cost than from Lenovo, I add the RAM I want and add in an SSD. No issues around any of that.

All I wanted to do with my prior post was ask if somehow I didn't see an M.2 socket in my laptop's motherboard. That's all.

x509
 
As long as you have good / current backups, I'd err on the side of caution and try a drive swap. Maybe swap the original HD back in and see if the symptom remains (you did keep the original drive right?).

At this point, there's no way of knowing if it's the drive or the system until the symptoms become more pronounced.
 
It has been one month now since I posted the original message about the "boot from PxE" message. It has not appeared since the initial appearances. I was out of town for a week, and using the laptop extensively. No issues then and non since I returned home two weeks ago.

x509
 
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