No boot device found? Laptop help please.

[Jonno2009]

Today my gf's Dell Inspiron 15R 5537 just crapped out without any sign whatsoever.

It froze and then restarted only to be told. ''No boot device found. press any key (where's the anykey? ) to reboot computer''

And there's NOTHING i can do, i can't even get to the BIOS or anywhere to try to maybe futz around. there is nothing to do except press any key to reboot only to have the same error message over and over again.

I assume it's the hard drive that's at fault here. And we even tried opening the laptop up and taking the drive out and replugging it back it and to no avail.

She's only had the laptop for 6 months! Yes we still have the 1 year warranty from Dell but i assume this process will be long and arduous. I guess i'm here looking for any advice from my fellow nerds out there.

Thanks for ANY input!

[Thomas Irwin]

I don't have a great deal of experience in this regard, and I'm not sure how well any of these work with the newer operating systems, but your best option outside of a repair shop may be to try a free system rescue disc:

http://lifehacker.com/5984707/five-b...m-rescue-discs

Sorry I can't be of much more help.

[Nick The Slick]

Originally Posted by Jonno2009

Today my gf's Dell Inspiron 15R 5537 just crapped out without any sign whatsoever.

It froze and then restarted only to be told. ''No boot device found. press any key (where's the anykey? ) to reboot computer''

And there's NOTHING i can do, i can't even get to the BIOS or anywhere to try to maybe futz around. there is nothing to do except press any key to reboot only to have the same error message over and over again.

I assume it's the hard drive that's at fault here. And we even tried opening the laptop up and taking the drive out and replugging it back it and to no avail.

She's only had the laptop for 6 months! Yes we still have the 1 year warranty from Dell but i assume this process will be long and arduous. I guess i'm here looking for any advice from my fellow nerds out there.

Thanks for ANY input!

EDIT: You should still be able to boot into the BIOS as well, even if the drive is completely dead. Are you sure you are pressing the right key at the right time? With Dell I believe it's the 'F2' key, press it repeatedly as soon as you hit the power button. It can be easy to miss the window on some units. If you can get into the BIOS and it is Windows 8, check for a boot menu, and look for an option that might say something like "boot mode" or "UEFI mode" or "Legacy mode". If you can find this option and Legacy mode is enabled/selected, change this to UEFI mode. I don't know about Dell's, but Acer laptops will not boot with a factory Windows 8 install if it is not in UEFI mode, it will give you a boot device not found error.


It's very possible the unit just can't find the boot files or they are corrupt. If it's Windows 8 (or even 7) you can check if there's still files on the drive if you have access to a Windows recovery disc. Just boot to it, and for Windows 8 select Troubleshoot -> Advanced Options -> Command Prompt. From there start typing in common drive letters. C: being the most obvious as this is usually the boot drive, but when booting from a disc the drive letters can sometimes be different and the Windows partition could become D: or something else. If you can access the different drives, type "dir" to see what folders/files it contains. If you can see a Windows and Users folder, this is likely the Windows partition and there's good news. If you can see the files, there's a couple things you can try. The first is, while still in the command prompt and accessing the Windows partition, type these commands:
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /rebuildbcd

The last command may take a minute to run, and if successful it should find your Windows folders and ask you to add it to the boot list. If it does and this succeeds, try booting Windows, it should boot.

(Windows 8 Only) If it doesn't, you can try this, but I'm not sure it will work either. Boot back to the repair disc, then go to Troubleshoot -> Refresh Your PC (Windows 8 Only). Select it and follow the menus. You will know if it works or not.

If none of the above works (i.e. you can't even find the drive with Windows on it) then the drive is most likely dead and your best option is warranty repair. Your next best option is to replace the drive yourself, which will cost you anywhere from ~$50 to $100+ depending on how much storage you want and how fast you want it to be (I.e 5400 rpm vs 7200), plus the time to restore it (which can be anywhere from 20min to 2+ hours with some brands stock restore discs/flash drive. not sure how well Dell does.) I would personally risk the Warranty repairs. HDD replacements at the repair facility I work at are very routine things and rarely take more than 3-5 days (including shipping both ways). Rarely being that we find other things have caused the HDD failure (I.e. drop, liquid, or surge damage).

[Jutty]

Best option is the warranty way,,good luck

[chip75]

If you can get into BIOS make sure that the HDD is in the start-up order. Older PCs usually go from Floppy Drive to CD-ROM to HDD, yours should go from CD-ROM to HDD (some will have USB as an option too if you don't have a CD drive). It might be worth creating a Zorin OS DVD to have an operating system to check what's going on with the HDD. Don't install it just run it from the CD/DVD. You can probably run a scan to check the drive for errors and see if it's knackered.

I'd go through warranty after that, you may as well use it!

[Jonno2009]

Originally Posted by Nick The Slick

EDIT: You should still be able to boot into the BIOS as well, even if the drive is completely dead. Are you sure you are pressing the right key at the right time? With Dell I believe it's the 'F2' key, press it repeatedly as soon as you hit the power button. It can be easy to miss the window on some units. If you can get into the BIOS and it is Windows 8, check for a boot menu, and look for an option that might say something like "boot mode" or "UEFI mode" or "Legacy mode". If you can find this option and Legacy mode is enabled/selected, change this to UEFI mode. I don't know about Dell's, but Acer laptops will not boot with a factory Windows 8 install if it is not in UEFI mode, it will give you a boot device not found error.


It's very possible the unit just can't find the boot files or they are corrupt. If it's Windows 8 (or even 7) you can check if there's still files on the drive if you have access to a Windows recovery disc. Just boot to it, and for Windows 8 select Troubleshoot -> Advanced Options -> Command Prompt. From there start typing in common drive letters. C: being the most obvious as this is usually the boot drive, but when booting from a disc the drive letters can sometimes be different and the Windows partition could become D: or something else. If you can access the different drives, type "dir" to see what folders/files it contains. If you can see a Windows and Users folder, this is likely the Windows partition and there's good news. If you can see the files, there's a couple things you can try. The first is, while still in the command prompt and accessing the Windows partition, type these commands:
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /rebuildbcd

The last command may take a minute to run, and if successful it should find your Windows folders and ask you to add it to the boot list. If it does and this succeeds, try booting Windows, it should boot.

(Windows 8 Only) If it doesn't, you can try this, but I'm not sure it will work either. Boot back to the repair disc, then go to Troubleshoot -> Refresh Your PC (Windows 8 Only). Select it and follow the menus. You will know if it works or not.

If none of the above works (i.e. you can't even find the drive with Windows on it) then the drive is most likely dead and your best option is warranty repair. Your next best option is to replace the drive yourself, which will cost you anywhere from ~$50 to $100+ depending on how much storage you want and how fast you want it to be (I.e 5400 rpm vs 7200), plus the time to restore it (which can be anywhere from 20min to 2+ hours with some brands stock restore discs/flash drive. not sure how well Dell does.) I would personally risk the Warranty repairs. HDD replacements at the repair facility I work at are very routine things and rarely take more than 3-5 days (including shipping both ways). Rarely being that we find other things have caused the HDD failure (I.e. drop, liquid, or surge damage).

Thanks for all the info buddy! And yes i finally got into the BIOS pressing F2 ( i swear i tried it before...) and it IS in UEFI mode. and on the main page of the BIOS where it states the system time and system date and all that the line that says :

FIXED HDD ---- [NOT DETECTED]

I'm pretty sure that's the main reason. i guess the HDD is fried?

and in the BOOT section of the BIOS here's what's listed :

UEFI BOOT (when i press enter on this it lists UEFI onboard LAN ipv4 and ipv6)



Secure boot : enabled
load legacy option rom : disabled
secure boot mode : standard
Add boot mode

And some blacked out option that i can't go on which are

restore factory defaults
delete all security boots keys
delete a boot option
view boot options properties

And i can't find anywhere where to see the boot order if there is one anyways. There's no place that lists the boot orders...


Tonight after dinner I'll go to a pharmacy and buy some burning CDs and I'll try burning the windows recovery disc (burn on my win7 pc will work on her win8 lappy?) and i also downloaded a .iso of the Trinity Rescue Kit that i got from the link of the first guy who replied to my post. so I'll burn that also.

But yeah if none of this works i guess i'll just send it to Dell.

Thanks for all the help guys!

[Nick The Slick]

Originally Posted by Jonno2009

[Show spoiler]Thanks for all the info buddy! And yes i finally got into the BIOS pressing F2 ( i swear i tried it before...) and it IS in UEFI mode. and on the main page of the BIOS where it states the system time and system date and all that the line that says :

FIXED HDD ---- [NOT DETECTED] - This leads me to believe the HDD is definitely dead. If the boot files are just missing/corrupt, it should still detect the HDD.

[Show spoiler]I'm pretty sure that's the main reason. i guess the HDD is fried?

and in the BOOT section of the BIOS here's what's listed :

UEFI BOOT (when i press enter on this it lists UEFI onboard LAN ipv4 and ipv6)



Secure boot : enabled
load legacy option rom : disabled
secure boot mode : standard
Add boot mode

And some blacked out option that i can't go on which are

restore factory defaults
delete all security boots keys
delete a boot option
view boot options properties

And i can't find anywhere where to see the boot order if there is one anyways. There's no place that lists the boot orders...

Tonight after dinner I'll go to a pharmacy and buy some burning CDs and I'll try burning the windows recovery disc (burn on my win7 pc will work on her win8 lappy?) Sorry, no. =( To create a Windows 8 repair disc you need to create it in Windows 8. However you can still achieve the same command prompt results by creating a Windows 7 Repair disc and using the command prompt in it. Don't know about the Trinity Rescue Kit but if it has a command prompt available you can use that instead to run the commands I suggested. and i also downloaded a .iso of the Trinity Rescue Kit that i got from the link of the first guy who replied to my post. so I'll burn that also.

[Show spoiler]But yeah if none of this works i guess i'll just send it to Dell.

Thanks for all the help guys!

Hope this helps. From the looks of it though, it's going to need a new drive.

[Jonno2009]

A little update!

Finally brought the laptop to Bestbuy last night since when i called Dell apparently they have a deal with bestbuy and that they can fix the laptop on Dell's warranty dime. So that's good! except the guy told me it could take 3-4 weeks! LOL

I guess that's what i get for using the 'free' route.

On a side note yet totally related. The reason the Dell laptop broke is what triggered a lightbulb in my head as to why my girlfriends other laptop (an ASUS) died last march (which in turn made her buy the new Dell one)

And it was the same thing. a fried hard drive. and since that ASUS's warranty was long gone i decided to fix it myself and i was able to! YAY

I purchased a new Hard drive and installed it myself and then since her Windows 7 died with that old drive i downloaded a new .iso of Win7 and burned it onto a DVD and i used the product key that was on a sticker underneath the laptop to activate it.

So pretty sweet that at least she has her old lappy while waiting for her newer one. :P

So case closed i suppose!

Thanks for all the help guys!

[Nick The Slick]

Originally Posted by Jonno2009

A little update!

Finally brought the laptop to Bestbuy last night since when i called Dell apparently they have a deal with bestbuy and that they can fix the laptop on Dell's warranty dime. So that's good! except the guy told me it could take 3-4 weeks! LOL

I guess that's what i get for using the 'free' route.

On a side note yet totally related. The reason the Dell laptop broke is what triggered a lightbulb in my head as to why my girlfriends other laptop (an ASUS) died last march (which in turn made her buy the new Dell one)

And it was the same thing. a fried hard drive. and since that ASUS's warranty was long gone i decided to fix it myself and i was able to! YAY

I purchased a new Hard drive and installed it myself and then since her Windows 7 died with that old drive i downloaded a new .iso of Win7 and burned it onto a DVD and i used the product key that was on a sticker underneath the laptop to activate it.

So pretty sweet that at least she has her old lappy while waiting for her newer one. :P

So case closed i suppose!

Thanks for all the help guys!

They quote everyone this to be on the safe side (I.e. cover their ass in case something goes terribly wrong and it takes longer). Like I said, HDD replacements rarely take more than 3-5 days including shipping.