Laptop wouldn't boot or show drive.. Bought new HDD and..

Syribo

Syribo

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 9, 2008
Messages
1,515
..still not working!

I'm trying to see if I can fix a laptop from my friend. It's an HP Pavillion with Vista on it. The problem was that it wouldn't booth up and would just show:
No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key

I tried the Diagnostic Tests from the BIOS startup menu. The memory tested okay, and the other test was okay, but the hard drive test wouldn't start or show anything. It also didn't show the HDD in the BIOS or boot menu. So I bought a new HDD to replace it, it's definitely compatible with the computer. I put it in and it is showing up in the boot menu..

But it's still saying the same "No bootable device.." etc thing. I have my Vista CD-ROM in the CD Drive, and I can hear it whir and doing something, but it won't load the setup. I changed the CD Drive to what it should boot from.. and still nothing :( I'm going to try an Ubuntu or Linux Live download on my flash drive to see if it works.. Do you know of anything else it could be? I was so sure it was the hard drive, especially after it didn't show it before, and now it comes up in the BIOS! And it also scans the hard drive in the diagnostic test and shows everything is fine.

I also reset the BIOS back to default when it wouldn't work. I'm about to go to the doctor, so I won't be able to reply for a bit.. but I will try anything you tell me to as soon as I get home, and answer any other questions!
 
So the laptop isn't loading from any CD or DVD?
 
I haven't tried another CD yet, only because I can't find my XP one.. and I didn't burn the Linux disc yet. However, I tried to make a Live Ubuntu booter on my flash drive, I connected it, set it to boot from it and got:
Remove disks or other media
Press any key to restart

There is nothing else in it. And now I'm getting the "No bootable devices --" message again.
 
Try a different CD when you can.

If all else fails, fair to say that laptop is defective.
 
I tried a few more times.. still no dice :( I couldn't remember if I was definitely setting up the CD and flash drive right. I tried it twice, once with the .iso on the CD and flash drive, and once with the iso extracted on them (And the flash drive setup to boot from... I think I remembered how to do that right!)

Still get nothing but the same message "No bootable devices" :( This makes me sad. The hard drive was definitely dead, since it's showing the new one now and scanned it perfectly... so this is so frustrating to figure out!

I found out that they had gotten a little water on it.. Now they tell me! I'm guessing that was the problem, and perhaps shorted something out :( I wish there was something else I could do.. but I'm out of ideas.
 
You are dealing with two separate issues. The first was a bad hard drive. You fixed that and verified it.

The second is booting from an OS disk. I suspect you may be doing the .iso thing wrong. Get a program like CDburnerXP, Nero, or whatever you have, but make sure it has the option to 'burn an .ISO to disk'. You shouldn't copy the contents of an .ISO to a disk, or put the .ISO file on the disk via data copying or anything. I would also get that Linux distro, and use it instead. Your OS .ISOs and disks may not be bootable. To test, put your OS disk in your PC and try to boot from it.
 
Standpoint said:
You are dealing with two separate issues. The first was a bad hard drive. You fixed that and verified it.

The second is booting from an OS disk. I suspect you may be doing the .iso thing wrong. Get a program like CDburnerXP, Nero, or whatever you have, but make sure it has the option to 'burn an .ISO to disk'. You shouldn't copy the contents of an .ISO to a disk, or put the .ISO file on the disk via data copying or anything. I would also get that Linux distro, and use it instead. Your OS .ISOs and disks may not be bootable. To test, put your OS disk in your PC and try to boot from it.
Click to expand...

Ahh, thanks for the info.. and thanks for putting up with my horrible knowledge of trying to make boot up disks, because I still never understood it perfectly to this day!

I put my Vista CD into my own PC (Both of them) and they both read from it.

I figured I was creating a boot disk wrong... I'll try it that way instead, I can't believe I didn't! I really really hope this laptop is salvageable :(
 
Okay so I burned the .ISO to a CD, the proper way, and I put it into the laptop... and it's working! Ubuntu is succesfully open on it right now.

So this means that this laptop is not reading my Vista Setup CD for some reason.... now.... how do I get Vista back on here? I guess I need to have a Vista .ISO and then burn it too? It's too big to fit on a CD, right? I have blank DVDs, it should fit on one of them? I'm just not sure how to obtain a legal ISO of Vista.

Ahh, actually... I just realized I DO have a Vista .ISO on my computer from when I fixed a different laptop a few months ago. Burning it to DVD right now.. hoping this will work! I have my fingers crossed ;) But I'm pretty optimistic given that Ubuntu worked!

Thanks for pointing out that I was doing the .ISO burning thing wrong ;) I would still be stuck where I was!
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top