Computer not booting

[cadman44]

I had my computer on Sunday night when I went to bed. I woke up on Monday morning and it had a black screen with the following text:

No boot device available
Strike the F1 key to reboot, F2 to run setup utility

Sata 1: Installed
Sata 2: Installed
Sata 3: None
Sata 4: None

I tried to restart it and it is coming up with the same screen. What happened and how can I fix it?

[MaDef]

Can you post pc specs? make and model will suffice if it's retail.

Have you tried booting with the windows 7 cd/dvd and running repair.

[cadman44]

It is a Dell with Windows 7 that I bought at Best Buy in April.

I have not tried anything yet except for shutting it down and restarting. I will look for the Windows 7 cd/dvd when I get home tonight and try that.

Thanks

[MaDef]

Ok we're getting closer. There should be a model number somewhere on the front of the case, something like Dimension 4400. If there isn't it'll be on a sticker located on the rear or side of the case. With that number I can look at the spec sheet and know what hardware we're dealing with. and where to start looking for the cause.

the No boot device available error just tells me that the pc can't find the bootloader and load the OS. It can be caused by anything from the boot from device setting in the bios needs to be corrected, to a corrupted mbr (master boot record).

[cadman44]

Ok, I will check on that tonight and post what I find tomorrow.

[cadman44]

My computer is an Inspiron 580.

I could not find/do not have a Windows 7 cd/dvd. It came preinstalled and I don't believe that I got a disc with it.

[MaDef]

Dell has a built in recovery partition (not sure if you can access it if the mbr is bad). but try this, when you boot up, and while the dell logo is onscreen start pushing F8 and see if you can access the dell repair options. If you can get to the repair menu, look for a repair option (be carefull that you don't use the restore option as this will reinstall the factory image and you'll lose any files/programs you installed).

[cadman44]

I will try to get into the dell repair options. I may not have access to a computer over the weekend so I may have to post my results on Monday.

[MaDef]

Thats fine, I usually check this forum once or twice a day.

[cadman44]

I can not get into the repair options. I can get into the F2 setup menu and the F12 Boot Options menu. I hooked my old computer up so I should be able to check this over the weekend.

[MaDef]

You're showing 2 SATA drives (I'm going to assume one is the hardrive and the other is the DVD/CD drive). I'm going to also assume you haven't made any changes in the setup menu.

Enter the setup menu, and somewhere in the setup there should be a list of the SATA ports, next to 2 of them there should be the model number of the drives attached to the pc. they'll look something like this:

example: WDC WD800JB-00JJC0

post those back.

We're going to get the disk diagnostic utilities from the disk manufacterer, and make sure the disk isn't dead.

If you already know the disk make/model, you can get the utilities from their support site, and run them on the disk.

[cadman44]

Under the standard CMOS Features screen it has the following:
SATA 1 [Not Detected]
SATA 2 [ATAPI CDROM]
SATA 3 [Not Detected]
SATA 4 [Not Detected]

When I select the CDROM drive it gives me the following ID TSSTcorp DVD+/-RW TS-H653H

Also, you are correct that I have not made any changes in the setup menu.

[cadman44]

I also found under the boot settings that the 1st boot device is the CD/DVD drive, the second device is a removable device, and the 3rd boot device is disabled.

[MaDef]

Under the standard CMOS Features screen it has the following:
SATA 1 [Not Detected]
SATA 2 [ATAPI CDROM]
SATA 3 [Not Detected]
SATA 4 [Not Detected]

By the looks of it, the drive is either dead, or not connected. You can open the case and make sure the drive is still connected (power and data cables). But my guess is the drive died (for whatever reason).

You bought it 6 months ago from Best Buy (should have at least a one year warranty). I'd take the whole thing back and make them swap it out with another.

The other route you can take would be to buy another harddrive and a retail copy of windows and install it yourself.

[cadman44]

I will bring it back to the store this weekend. It is too bad that I will lose the some stuff that I have on the drive. I have most of it backed up but not the most recent things; most notably emails.

Thanks for the help.