mikew8760

Distinguished
Dec 29, 2011
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Hi,
Some time ago I replaced the motherboard on my daughter's HP Pavilion DV9000 laptop. (The GPU had fried because the radiator was bunged up with fluff!) The repair was a success - it works fine, apart from one little niggle. At boot up an error message appears to the effect that the Boot Agent has failed and cannot continue. Waiting a few seconds and the message disappears and Windows XP loads and everything is then normal.
I assume that this is because some aspect of the new m/board (Flash BIOS?), requires some programming. At the time I searched the internet for a solution, but, to be honest, the cure seemed worse than the problem. I was not at all confident that the suggested courses of action would not result in losing all the data on the HDD.
Perhaps someone here can offer a clear explanation of a) the source of the message and, b) a solution.
It annoys me more than my daughter as I feel that I have not finished the job properly.....

Regards,
Mike W
 
It sounds like the BIOS setting is to boot from one or more devices or a network before it tries to boot from the laptop's HDD. You could enter the BIOS, tab through the screens for the "boot agent" options and disable them. Save and exit the BIOS. If XP does not boot with those settings, enter the BIOS and re-set them.