Windows 7 Help! How to fix - No bootable device error!

[RaenCamp]

I have an HP g60 windows 7 Home Premium its almost 3 years old. I started a program (Adobe Flash CS5 portable, I believe) and then I hibernated the laptop. It was taking a longer time than usual to do this so I did a force shutdown by pressing the power button. After an hour I decided to turn the laptop back on only to find a black screen saying "no bootable device - insert disc". I went online and did a search and I found some solutions which I tried, such as pressing the f8 key on start up to go into recovery options, booting from a system repair disk, booting from a windows install disk, system repair, system restore, command prompt using the bootrec/fixMbr - after doing a test and finding out that the Mbr was corrupt, but none of these fixed the problem. I tried doing the Last Known Configuration method but I'm not sure if I am doing it right, the laptop just restarted itself with no change. I even took out the hard drive and placed it back in thinking it was a hardware problem, but that didn't work. I don't know what else to try and I really don't want to reinstall windows and wipe my hard drive. I was hoping someone could help me identify the problem or give a solution because I really need to fix my computer. Thanks in advance.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

If you can't find anyway to get it to boot into Windows then what I would do, (because I have had to do this recently and it save my ***) is get a USB converter and plug the drive into another computer.

If it reads it great, copy everything that's important to the other computer, if it doesn't then the drive may be dying.

Another option, I've done this recently too is, create a Ubuntu disk on another computer, boot to that, and copy everything important to DVDs or an external hard drive.
I've seen computers that wouldn't read the hard drive but would still show up when booted into Ubuntu.

Once your data is safe try and do a full reinstall of Windows on the existing hard drive, if it won't then it's time to replace it, either way you will have all your data in a safe place.

It's better than having something go bad during the install and losing everything.

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Meet Ubuntu | Ubuntu

Hopefully someone else here will have some ideas on how to get it to boot, but I don't know what you can do that you haven't done already.

Mike

Ps. if the computer has a restore partition you can restore to that but you will want to get your data safe first.
It will put it back to the day you got it.

 

[Saltgrass]

The message, as you can imagine, means the system is not looking at a bootable device. Whether this is because something as simple as the bios is set to look elsewhere or the something more complicated such as corruption on the drive or even drive failure.

I am not familiar with CS5 Mobile, but if it has anything to do with booting, maybe it reset you system to look for another device to boot. Have you rechecked the bios to make sure the Windows 7 System partition is being booted to. I will assume this is a MBR install, but if it isn't, it would be a Windows Boot Manager for a UEFI install.

Normally when a system will not boot, you boot to a recovery CD or the Windows 7 Install DVD and go to the Startup Repair option. It may take 3 of these runs for it to do its job.

But as Mike mentions, third party utilities can be useful. Ubuntu has a Disk Management utility called GParted or the GParted live version to look at your drive. You might take a picture of the partition configuration with a camera and post using the paperclip on the advanced replies. Some problems, such as the system partition not being active for some reason, can be hard to repair in Windows.

 

[RaenCamp]

Thanks for the info and advice I will try them and see what happens.

 

[RaenCamp]

I got ubuntu on a dvd and booted to that and it work! I am currently using ubuntu, but when I tried Gparted it cannot find my hard drive. The partition does not show up. What does this mean and what can I do to fix this problem?

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

I'm no expert on hardware issues, (or anything else for that matter) but it sounds like the problem really is with the hard drive.

If you can get access to a USB Converter, and try plugging it into another computer, then it might see the hard drive if the problem is in your computer and not the drive itself.

Does the hard drive light flash when you try to boot, indicating that the drive is running or can you hear it spin up if you put your ear on it?

I suppose that it's worth trying to unplug the drive from the laptop and plug it back in if you don't mind taking your laptop apart.

If that doesn't help, then you've already learned how to put in a new one.

Mike

 

[Saltgrass]

When you boot the Ubuntu "Try without Installing" option, your partitions should be shown along the left side of the screen as Hard Drive Icons. When you start GParted, it should see your drive and its partitions. Make sure the correct drive is selected in the upper right.

If the drive is not being recognized, it would appear some type of hard drive, or controller problem is involved as Mike mentions. If something has corrupted the drive to a point it is not recognized, doing a Chkdsk from offline might help, but really hard to say.

Where you go next will depend on what you want to do. Changing out the hard drive might help pin down the problem, but that is an expense you may not want to incur. Restoring your install to factory specs might be an option if you are willing and have the capability of doing that. But if the hard drive is having a problem, it may not last for long.

 

[RaenCamp]

I took it out and plugged it back in already and still no change. If I do a reinstall to factory setting does that mean that the drive might be ok? Because that is what I wanted to do, but I need to get my files off of the drive first. I will try the suggestions but I would like to ask - is there a free program to recover lost data from inaccessible drives? Just in case it really is dead.

 

[MikeHawthorne]

Hi

Normally you would be able to see the drive and copy all of the data to another location, i.e. an external hard drive after booting to the Ubuntu disk.

Since it doesn't see it, there's not much you can do.

You won't be able to reinstall to the disk either unless the computer recognises it.
The problem is that unless something sees the drive you can't do anything to it, like running check disk or installing to it.

If you put in the Windows install disk, and it sees the drive, then you should be able to fix it, by running a repair install and keeping all your data intact.

But you have to be able to see the drive to do that.

You can try downloading an .ISO file for the version of Windows that you have, with service pack one, and make a bootable install disk.

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You will need to make a disk from the file using Imgburn.

The Official ImgBurn Website

Put in the disk and if it sees your drive, do a repair install.

Repair Install - Windows 7 Help Forums

But if it doesn't see your hard drive you're out of luck.

I don't know of any software that will recover an unreadable disk, there are places that do that by taking the disk out of the drive and reading it in some kind of machine, but it's very expensive.

I keep saying this but, Backup everything on your computer to a safe place not in the computer. If you only have a small amount of stuff you can use DVDs, most people will need an external hard drive.

Mike