BleepingComputer.com: No bootable devices?

I have a dell inspiron 8500, about a week ago, on start up, get black screen saying "No bootable devices -- strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility"

At first, I thought it was bad sectors on the HDD, so I replaced the hard drive.

Press F1 gives the same message, go through F2 it recognizes the correct HDD installed. BIOS is set for HDD, then CD.

I am able to do a F12 boot from startup... which means to me windows is on the hard drive, and the comp is recognizing the hard drive. What is going on with this laptop?

I am running windows XP SP3.

I have tried re-formatting the hard drive (a couple of times), I have tried re-installing the OS (a couple of times). Not sure where to go from here.

Any and all help appreciated.

Hi .

If your BIOS is set to boot from the hard drive, you may have failing CMOS battery.

What happens (in some instances) is that a failing battery causes the BIOS to default to attempting to do a network boot...rather than boot from the hard drive.

Could also be a file system or hard drive problem...I tend to take the easiest to deal with as my first option.

I would replace the CMOS battery...if that fails to resolve it, then I would run a diagnostic on the hard drive.

Since you have Dell Diagnostics, running that should really be your first move. Replacing the CMOS battery may not apply.

<<I have tried re-formatting the hard drive (a couple of times), I have tried re-installing the OS (a couple of times). Not sure where to go from here.>>

Exact wording of error messages on these attempts?

Louis

Quote

It gives the same error message. No bootable devices. And I replaced the hard drive.

I am trying to re-install XP as I am typing (from another computer), am hoping that maybe the SATA drivers didnt get loaded?! Will see what happens.

Funny but I received the same message this morning on a system I was planning to give away...at this point, I'm not sure what my problem is, I'll look into it later.

Louis

So... I re-installed the OS again, made sure the SATA drivers were loaded, and everything seemed to be going great.

Shut the computer down, started it back up again and.... NO BOOTABLE DEVICES.....

Have no idea where to go from here.

TTT... anyone have ideas?

Regular boot goes to black screen with "NO BOOTABLE DEVICES"

If I hit F12 and go through a one time boot, load/ boot from hard drive, XP Loads no problems... Cant figure this out.

Did you replace the CMOS battery? It's a $4 item, available just about anywhere selling photo/electronic batteries.

Did you try to run the Dell Diagnostics?

CMOS Battery Replacement - http://www.liverepair.com/encyclopedia/art...cmosreplace.asp

Louis

Im thinking its more of a BIOS issue, I dont think the mother board is communicating with the HDD

Just FYI for anyone experiencing this problem. This may not be the solution for everyone... but this is what I did.

I got on DELL's website, downloaded the updated BIOS for the laptop. Flashed the bios and reset the BIOS to default (Alt+F, Alt+E, Alt+ then rebooted.

I have shut down & restarted the computer several times, with no error message. Just thought I would share that it is now fixed and running smoothly.

Dont know what caused it, never know a virus to infect the BIOS?!

But consider this thread closed.

Feedback appreciated, happy computing .

Louis