what does no bootable device mean?

Answer 1

It means you got no devices on your computer that allows it to boot up, or start up, normally.

This is usually a symptom of an harddrive failure, or

check to see if there's floppy disc in the floppy drive during boot up time, if there is, pop it out before your computer completely boots up.

Answer 2

First off if it were a floppy in the drive her error would be "Non system disk or disk error". The problem you have could also be caused by some viruses.

The first thing you should do is go into your BIOS by pressing the DEL key repeatedly when you turn the computer on. Some Gateways use the F1 key for this and some Compaqs use the F9 key. BIOS differ from one computer to the next but you should check for an option that mentions hardware devices.

Look to see if it lists a hard drive there. If not, then you either have a dead hard drive or a bad IDE cable connected to your hard drive. IDE cables cost only a few bucks so you should try replacing that before buying a new hard drive.

If your hard drive does show up then you likely have another problem. While still in your BIOS you should look for Boot options, or bootable devices. Make sure your Hard drive is on that list. Typically the floppy is listed first but you can move your hard drive into the number one spot to be sure it isn't your floppy drive causing the problems.

If your hard drive shows up in the BIOS, and it is listed properly as a boot devce, and you still have the problem, you should try reformatting your hard drive and reinstalling Windows. This may be a good time to use System Restore disks if any came with your computer.

Don't listen to the people just assuming you have a dead hard drive. I've ressurected many supposedly dead computers with nothing more than a $2 IDE cable. Someone claiming to have 3 years of tech experience and an A+ certification should troubleshoot a little more before giving up.

Answer 3

It means that your hard drive is not accessable.. it crashed... you have lost everything on it, if you don't have a back up... or you have a non bootable disk in the A: drive..

The system has attempted to find a drive to boot the operating system, but has failed (the error message itself may not always be very clear that this is what has happened, especially the infamous "NO ROM BASIC - SYSTEM HALTED"; see here for more on that error.) The system cannot start up because there is no operating system for it to load. The boot process will halt here. Some systems may give you the option to retry the boot or to enter setup at this point, as a convenience. Otherwise, you must reboot the PC.

Diagnosis: All of the bootable drives in the system are not functioning. Normally this means that the floppy disk drive is either absent or not functioning, or has no disk in it, and the hard disk is either not connected or has no bootable active partition on it.

Recommendation:

If this is a new system with a hard disk that has never been formatted before, you need to boot from a floppy first, and partition and format the hard disk. Try that.
If you were trying to boot from the floppy disk drive, troubleshoot the floppy disk drive.
If you were trying to boot from the hard drive, troubleshoot the hard disk drive.

Answer 4

With an HP computer, it will often check for a USB device and fail to start if there is a USB drive plugged in. If you have a USB external drive or thumb drive plugged in, take it out before booting. You should be able to change this behavior in setup by disabling the Boot From Other option. If you don't have any USB drives plugged in, then your hard disk may have failed. If this is so, you may stilll be able to recover your data by putting your broken drive into an external enclosure. It may only be limited damage that only prevents the OS from loading. Recovering your system will require getting a restore disc, however, if you have not already made some.

Answer 5

Don't panic!

It just means that you had not chosen a boot device in your "Boot Preferences".

It ain't no biggie.

Now, here's what you do.

Reboot your comp. While it's coming up, keep hitting "Delete". This'll bring up the Set Up.

Now, remember that you can't use your mouse here, so use the navigation keys of your keyboard.

Navigate to the tab that says "Boot Preferences" and hit enter. In the page that opens, choose your CD or DVD drive and hit enter. It'll now select that as your Preferred Boot Device.

When you need to load any Program now, you can do so by putting the Installation CD/DVD in this drive and rebooting. When it's booted, you'll get a black screen with the line reading "Press any key to boot from CD..." with a blinking cursor. Hit any key and it'll boot from the CD. Then you install what you want and follow the installation wizards prompts till finish. It's as easy as that!

This probably happened because your computer vendor loaded the OS [Operating System] from another comp and the boot preference there would read the external device which is no longer plugged into your system.

Like I said before, it ain't no biggie.

All the best.

Cheers

PS,

While I don't mean to question the knowledge of expertize of all those people before me, I truely wonder if they ever stopped to think of the obvious before going Nostradamus? Jeeeez,this is such a common error, that it's laughable! I've seen dozens of these happen and people panicing because they thought of everything else but the fact that most guys install an OS from their own or another comp because they get the advantage of loading Windows onto 2 systems at once. So, almost every second guy has this!

Answer 6

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
what does no bootable device mean?

Answer 7

In short, it means that there are no storage devices in the computer that have a correct master boot record. If the hard drive is installed correctly, it could be the drive is dead.

Answer 8

It means the BIOS can't find a device from which to start up the computer from.

Answer 9

Your computer can not boot (start) from hard drive or cd-rom or floppy. If your computer is not booting into windows and there is no floppy disk inside the floppy drive, then usually is means that your windows is screwed (system files corrupted) or there is a problem with your hard drive.

Answer 10

bootable device