No Boot Device Available

Hi all.

Recently my Dell Inspiron desktop with Windows 7 upgrade has begun giving me a "no boot device available...press enter to retry" message upon booting.

At first it seemed that it only occurred during system resume, and I had a message from Windows Resume Loader, but now it happens after I shut the system down.

The only resolution has been to power up and power down manually using the power button until it finally boots. I'm stumped and hoping I don't need to replace the hard drive. Could this be a malware issue or is my assumption correct re: the hard drive?

 

just to be in the safe side i would do a full backup
if it is indeed a hard disk problem and fails completly.
rhis message is from bios thus i do not think it is a malware issue .

 

I backed up everything as soon as the first message appeared.

 

Run the manufacturer's hard drive diagnostic. Probably Seagate on a Dell. You can right-click the C: drive in Computer and select Properties and then the Hardware tab to see the brand name. Then go to the HD manufacturer's website and get the diagnostic tool. Run the short test and it should tell you if it sees an immediate problem.

It does sound to me like the HD is going. When you see the "No boot device error" if you go into BIOS without restarting check to see if the HD is recognized. If it doesn't show then it is the HD. I just had this type of error where my HD cable was bad if the diagnostic checks out try swapping the cable to see if you still get the error.

 

Turns out to be a Western Digital HD, Sach. I used the Data Lifeguard Test for the 64 bit system, the smart status was good. Then I ran the Extended Test, and that was good too. Then...it died.

I read somewhere along the line that there have been complex driver problems with that model HD, could that even possibly be the case?

I'm going to try to boot again today. Any tips on which cable to look for before I crack it open? Or will it be obvious...?

Thanks so much!

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Greetings, sevenismagic.

There will only be two cables attached to the HD: data and power. Re-seat both cables - with the data cable, re-seat on both ends. If you happen to have a replacement cable, you can try replacing the cable.

If this is a SATA drive and if you have multiple SATA ports on your motherboard, you might try switching to another port for troubleshooting. The same applies for the power cable - most PSUs have redundant outputs.

 

Here's what I saw:

a) Flat cable going from HD to motherboard
b)Connector with 8 wires coming out (orange, black, red, black, yellow - each x2) 4 of those went to the Connector (SATA) plugged into the HD and the other 4 went to a connector (SATA) that wasn't plugged into anything

I assume the non-connected piece is for another HD...or SATA device...?

Here's what I did:

I reseated the flat blue cable on both ends (HD and motherboard)
I reseated the SATA cable on the end of the HD - - the other end goes into a metal box. I would have to disassemble the entire case to access it - I will assume the power supply is in there.

There is a spot next to the blue cable on the motherboard with a flat orange cable coming from the CDRom - should I unseat that one and plug the HD (blue flat) one in to see if it works...?
Without first having reseated the power supply...would trying that be in vain..? What would I be troubleshooting for...? To see if that particular port on the motherboard is no good?

This is fun - hope it all makes sense.

Thanks!
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Having a hard time figuring out your connection scheme. All of my SATA drives have the following connections - the smaller (blue) cable attaches to the motherboard, and the larger (multiple wires) cable to the power supply:
.

 

That's it in the thumbnail. The only difference is that serial ATA power connector has two plugs (one not plugged into anything). I guess it's for another HD.

 

I'm back on this issue. My laptop has pooped out now, so I have to fix one or the other.

I went and bought a new HD, and installed it on this machine (Dell Inspiron 537). I got the exact same message as soon as I turned it on.

No Boot Device Available.

I made sure to set the bios to boot from cd-rom drive before I changed them.

I don't know what to do now.

The only way it will boot is if I manually (push the button) restart it about 5 or 6 times...it eventually says, "Resuming Windows" or "Starting Windows" and everything is golden.

Later when I shut it down or restart is when the message comes up.

Maybe I didn't install the new HD right? There were two cables - it was fairly easy. Maybe it should have been hard...heh.

Thanks!

 

When you got the new HD did you do a fresh install of Windows or did you clone the old installation to the new drive?

 

It wouldn't boot to the disc (as before). It came with the Windows 7 upgrade disc that I used to successfully re-install. I made certain the bios was set to boot from CD, but the same old message appeared.

 

Hi,

I'm confused about what you have done.

You bought a new HD which was empty? You took out the old one and put the new one in the machine. Now, what did you do to get an OS on the new HD?

 

I installed the brand new HD I got out of the box. I told the bios to boot from CD before I removed the old hard drive.

Then I put the Windows 7 CD in the CD-Rom drive and turned the computer on.

It said, "No boot device available." The same exact message as before. I thought it would just boot from the Windows 7 CD. It did not.

It's like nothing is telling the pc to look at the disc first. It has to boot from the CD since the HD is blank, no?

 

So the HD is still blank?

With the CD in the tray hit F12 during the Dell splash screen and see if you get a choice of boot device from which you can select CD/DVD.

 

Let me try that and get right back to you.:major

 

OK.

I got into the Windows set up. Now there's another issue while we're here. It's showing me on the "Where do you want to install windows?" screen that

Disc: 0 Unallocated Space 931.5 GB

Should I create a new partition for the OS? It seems like Windows might do that on its own during installation...?

Thank you so much! If this works, it will fix a great machine that has been sitting for way too long!

 

That is a large HD so it will take over all the space. It is up to you if you want to create a smaller partition. I haven't done a Win7 install for a while so I am unsure how it does things.

I believe the easiest way would be to just let it use the unallocated space. It will create a small 100mb partition for System Reserved files and then create a large partition out of the other 900+GB. You can always shrink the 900gb partition later (Win7 has a built in utility). I am unsure how to make sure it creates the System Reserved partition manually, and think it is a good feature. So I would just let it do everything automatically.

Give it a try. One thought is if it is a Win7 upgrade disc it may ask to see a previous installation of XP that will have to be addressed if it comes up.

 

It was an upgrade from Vista. I never had Vista...I just purchased the machine right when 7 hit.

It is quite large...heh. It was two dollars more than 500gb, so I said what they hay. Knowing what I know now...without having a 1TB back up - I would never fill it with anything other than programs. I guess if I were a genius...eh.

Thank you so much!
:major

 

I hope the install went well.

I had a rain which always knocks my internet out.

It might be wise to consider shrinking down the large partition to say 250gb which will give you plenty of room for programs and most data. Then you could create one or more large partitions for video, music, pictures etc. If you learn to store your important pictures and a copy of documents on a separate partition it keeps them separate from the OS and they are more likely to survive a problem that requires reformatting your OS partition. Just a thought.

 

The install was smooth like butter. I'm on the machine right now. I'm thinking it's just a wait and see thing to be certain this was the magic bullet and actually fixed everything.

Thanks Sach!

I had to replace HDs on both my desktop and notebook. The things common to both machines:

Both Dell
Both with Windows 7
Both 64-bit
Both had "MagicJack" on them for about 5 months until the HDs were toast.

Although I'm not savvy enough to say for sure that the MagicJack device was the culpret - it seems to be a glaring coincidence. I wish there had been more technical documentation as I researched the hell out of it before I plugged it in to a second machine. There were only disgruntled customers that didn't know why or could't say FOR SURE it was the device (like myself).

 

I'm glad you are up and running.

One thought is that since your old HD passed both the long and short WD tests it may still be a viable HD. Your problem could have been corruption of the OS rather than HD failure. You could add the old HD to your desktop PC as a secondary drive, reformat it and use it for extra storage or to hold a backup of your current OS. My guess is that it may be immediately recognizable by the system and you could salvage any files you want from it in any case.

 

My first solution was to re-install the OS. That worked for about a day (on both machines) before the same crashes started again. The installs were clean (deleted all partitions first).

Now that you mention partitioning for better performance of other programs, I am interested in how that works. I got excited to continue working on the site I was/am building, so I installed my Adobe software right away. I'm going to do a WAMP install, so it seems like partitioning will help with that? I'm confused as to how, but if it's a best practice thing to do - I will.

How should I go about it?

 

So I have researched on my own how to partition Windows 7 drives.

The tutorial I looked at: The geek had three partitions:
C: Windows 7
D: Vista
E: Windows XP

It seems that if I try to do it now the partition will include the programs I have already downloaded and installed...?

1) Should I reinstall Windows 7 with it's own partition?
2) Should I create a partition for each of my GIANT programs (Adobe Suite)
2.5) Is there a way to do it where an new install of all programs isn't necessary?
3) Do I need to do this at all?
4) Why am I doing this? The tutorials/documentation tell me how to do it, but not why I would want to.
If there's a good reason - I will take the time to reinstall everything (if that's what is required).

Thanks!!!!
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