"No bootable device - insert boot disk and press any key"

[imagine]

Off and on problem. Occurs every time I try to install any new HDD.

Right now, no matter what configuration I use, it will not boot.

Right now I am down to a Raptor (boot drive), an unformatted Hitachi drive, and an optical drive running as a master on my primary IDE channel.

Both HDD's are SATA. No RAID setup.

The BIOS will load and detect all of the drives.

If I attempt to install a controller card to utilize a secondary IDE channel. Nothing will work. A few minutes ago I tried to have another HDD running off the primary IDE channel as a slave to the optical drive. Nothing displayed on my Dell monitor, but I went and turned on my TV and there I saw DOS.

I've called Intel a few times. They have been remarkably useless. They suggested I flash my BIOS the last time I talked to them, and other than that I am screwed.

I have flashed my BIOS to no avail. When I am in the BIOS, as well, I cannot change the boot order. I can go into the menu and hit 'enter' on what I want to change, but it doesn't actually change anything. It just stays the same.

The Indian guy I talked to on the phone was confused by this and thought that I didn't know what I was doing.

Sigh.

Any help is HIGHLY appreciated. I basically can't use my desktop right now. There are no words to describe how frustrating it is, especially when I'm pretty fucking knowledgeable with PC's and things like this should NEVER happen to me.

I think the Intel board itself is bad somehow.

 

[killa62]

if you can somehow boot to windows, right click my computer click manage
go to disk management and right click the disc you want to make bootable and click mark partition as bootable.
that should fix it

 

[imagine]

if you can somehow boot to windows, right click my computer click manage
go to disk management and right click the disc you want to make bootable and click mark partition as bootable.
that should fix it

I can't boot to Windows ... if I could, then my problem would be fixed.

 

[GeForceX]

You never installed the RAID driver? SATA HDD's cannot work without RAID. I really think you don't know what you're doing.

-J.

 

[imagine]

You never installed the RAID driver? SATA HDD's cannot work without RAID. I really think you don't know what you're doing.

-J.

I hope that winking smiley means that you're joking.

Anyhow, I somewhat fixed the problem. The Raptor (my primary boot drive) needs to be formatted, I believe. What I left out is that I had previously been dual-booting with my previous HDD with Windows MCE setup. Apparently the bootloader, or something, is defective with how the Raptor is setup right now and there REALLY WASN'T a bootable drive. However with the other HDD on there that is bootable, it allowed me to select which one to boot.

 

[GeForceX]

Yes, the MFT can be "damaged" so you're left with a non-bootable drive even though all the data still exists there. The only way is to have it as a slave drive, save the files and format it or repair the MFT within recovery console.

-J.

 

[imagine]

Yes, the MFT can be "damaged" so you're left with a non-bootable drive even though all the data still exists there. The only way is to have it as a slave drive, save the files and format it or repair the MFT within recovery console.

-J.

Sigh. I know, so much work. Screw it! I'm just going to leave the other drive in there on the primary IDE channel, even though I have no use for it other than for this purpose. What I'm going to do is delete most of the files except for the vital Windows boot files, partition the drive, and use most of the space for storing something. I guess.

One of these days I'll actually fix it.