# Cannot disable PXE boot.



## angusfan911 (Feb 19, 2011)

Hey everyone,

I'm on an HP Pavilion dv6t-3000 and I'm trying to cut some time off my boot by disabling the PXE boot stage that my computer insists on trying at every boot.

Without an ethernet cable plugged in the PXE shows up, quickly fails to find attached media, and boots correctly. With the cable plugged in it tries for probably 5 minutes to register an IP address until presumably timing out and and booting correctly.

I've posted this here once before and it was unfruitful. I hope this time I can get it solved.

Some steps I've taken:


Updated my BIOS to the latest version.
Obviously I've changed by boot order. It is set to boot from my external HDD, then my internal HDD, CD/DVD, and finally a network.
I've tried to disable network booting. There is an option to do this is my BIOS but when I change it it does not persist between power cycles. (Though all other changes do.)
Through searching the internet for a solution I stumbled upon this page which references a menu that overrides the BIOS settings though I have yet to be able to access it.

My ethernet card is a Realtek PCIe.

Thanks for any information!


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## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

Your boot order would be better, and possibly result in a faster boot, by making the optical drive first, internal Hdd second and disabling boot from the external Hdd.


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## angusfan911 (Feb 19, 2011)

I am aware of that, but I have it set that way for a reason. I run Windows on my internal drive with the default MBR and Arch on my external with a GRUB2 MBR. I have it set that way so that it will boot from the external if I have it plugged in at boot time. The optical drive is last because I tend not to boot from CD's very often (unless I'm using a recovery disk or switching to a new distro) and if I do it's not in repeated cycles so I just do it manually.
I promise I am very proficient with computers.


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## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

Please try disabling the external drive, just amuse me, and see how it goes.


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## angusfan911 (Feb 19, 2011)

Ok, I moved the boot order as you instructed and the problem persists. There is no option to explicitly "disable" the external drive, but I moved it to the bottom of the boot order and it is disconnected.
Not to be rude but what made you think this would solve a PXE problem? Just to be clear I want to make it so that my computer doesn't try to boot from PXE before everything else. For some reason It disregards my bios settings.

Found this thread that describes the exact problem I am having. This picture shows what I am trying to prevent (I did not add the annotations in the picture.)


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## Tyree (May 10, 2009)

I do not consider your question rude in any way. I really didn't know if changing the boot order would work but it was certainly worth a try.
Your problem seems to be quite common in OEM PC's of varying brands and the only fix I can fined is to change the Boot order and/or set the Bios to Default.


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## angusfan911 (Feb 19, 2011)

Yeah I understand. I've been shifting my boot order tirelessly and I've even reset my BIOS to factory twice. Every text book solution fails. Frankly I never come to forums unless I've reached a point where I think there may not be a solution.

I've been researching tirelessly and the only thing I've come across that nears a solution is that while the boot agent is attempting to PXE boot pressing ESC will skip the process before it times out. It's not ideal but I suppose I can live with it as long as I'm stuck with this awful laptop.

I've been trying to break in to the coveted ctrl-s menu I find alluded to in the technical documents for the boot agent, but so far have been unsuccessful. This page has screen shots of a tab in the device manager boot options that allows you to turn on the setting that displays it, but alas that tab is absent on my machine. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that my card is Realtek and my chipset is Intel.

What I wouldn't do for a consistent machine...


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