No boot device found? Laptop help please.

[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!