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Does a firewall stop a PXE ROM from doing harm?

I don't know much about home networking so I ask you. What is the Intel PXE ROM and does my Linksys NAT stop it from doing harm?

I have Windows XP SP2 on a home Thinkpad and recently every once in a while I get a PXE ROM boot error which is suspicious in that I didn't ask for any so-called Intel PXE ROM to do anything.

When I google what a PXE ROM Specification, I find this detailed which is mostly gibberish to me. Can you simplify for a mother what this is?

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Even the Wikipedia explanation is beyond me.
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Basically I'm asking if I can get rid of this thing and how I would do that or does it do something I asked it to do that is important?

Please help! Ilena

Reply to
Ilena Rose
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It's a bootloader for booting over a network, stored on a ROM on your network card (whose vendor is Intel).

No, as there is no harm.

Oh, well, so it's just a lousy error message. Mind you, PXE booting involves DHCP. Certainly you've got a DHCP problem and someone's just twisting names.

Reply to
Sebastian Gottschalk

It is not a security risk in your case while being connected to your network. PXE allows your computer to boot from the network adapter which is used in some situations such as automated installs of the operating system from a properly configured Windows server. There should be a way to disable it from trying to boot from the network in either you computer cmos settings or network adapter configuration utility. If you don't want to attempt that just ignore it if everything else works fine. I am glad to hear you are using a Linksys NAT router as that protects your computer from any traffic from the internet that is not in response to traffic initiated from your computer known or not known to you. See the link below from Microsoft for other steps you need to protect your computer/network.--- Steve

Reply to
Steven L Umbach

Doing more research it seems this error is directly out of the Altiris program (whatever that is) since the error message is found here

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It seems Altiris is some kind of search program but I'm not sure what kind of search program it is based on these descriptions of PXE and Altiris
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While all this may be easy for you, it sure is a bit complicated for me to understand.

Ilena

Reply to
Ilena Rose

When this error occurs, does your laptop boot into Windows, or do you hav to restart it to get it to boot? Depending on your BIOS configuration, your machine should never reach PXE boot, as it should boot from the Hard Drive first of all. If you don't get into Windows without a restart, it could indicate a hardware issue - most likely a hard drive problem. Though obviously, if you boot fine regardless, you can safely ignore everything I say...

DSt.na

Reply to
dsteel0

Altitis is some sort of system that very large corporations use to keep track of their equipment. It might be pre-installed by HP.

Where did this computer come from ? It sounds like a "business grade" system. That's a good thing and if you can deal with the odd error messages it's probably a great machine.

Reply to
Al Dykes

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