Acer aspire 5742z boot up problems

Hi

I have an acer aspire 5742z laptop. I have had it about 2 years and dont have a boot up cd. It comes up with
Media test failure, check cable
Exiting broadcom pxe rom
No bootable device insert boot disk and press any key to continue

Can anyone help with this and how do i keep any stuff which was saved on my hard drive

Thanks

Chris

 

If you have access to usb sata hard drive enclosure it would be as simple as removing your hard drive placing it in the usb enclosure and accessing your files from another Windows or Linux computer. That is if your hard drive isn't physically damaged of course.

Another alternative would be to create a Linux livecd/usb and boot and run that to access data on the laptop drive before doing anything drastic like reformatting. Once you get your data safely removed and your laptop still has a hidden working recovery partition you can try recovering the OS from that.

phil

EDIT: at boot up press Alt and F10 key to access erecovery. If and when you recover create recovery/install discs.