No Bootable Devices-strike F1 To Reboot F2 For Setup

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fryedman

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Hi All,

When I switch the laptop on I get the following message and 2 beeps:

'No bootable device(s) selected'

'strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for set-up utility'

I then retry the boot, but get the same message appearing on screen.

I then try the set-up utility, where I experimented with the boot configuration. I basically changed the Boot First Device option from 'CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive' to 'Internal HDD', restarted the laptop and got the following message and 2 beeps:

'No boot sector on hard disk - 'strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for set-up utility'

It seems like there is no O/S, so I tried booting a Win2K disc I have, but cannot by pass the above messages. Does anyone have any suggestions? Look forward to your replies.

Regards

AD

dell latitude c840
 
What operating system are you installing? If it's Windows Xp, boot from the cd and follow the instructions on the screen.
 
Xp

OK I`m looking a bit silly now,

so all I have to do now is install the new o/s and she will be ok?

I thought that I had to try get into the system, so I guess that the H/D is blank or locked and installing the new O/S will make this Pc work fine?

if thats the case I`ll do it tonight

thanks for that

I will give it a go

XP pro
 
didnt work

I put the win xp disk in and dos didnt fire up and then nothing happened

I made a dos disk to get there but It wont recognise the cd drive when I fire up the xp disk

Ive done the Eeprom and all was well
Ive done the new serice tag xxxxxxxx

now I need to get into the pc to either install XP or use the Hd that is in there now

any ideas ???????

cheers
 
Start the pc and press either F2 or Delete to enter your bios. Find the page that has the BOOT Sequence and set it to CD, Floppy, Hard Drive, etc...Just make sure CD is first. Save and exit with the XP CD in the drive and when it says press any key to boot off of the cd, do that, press any key and the Windows Setup will take off from there...

Here it is right from Microsoft

Perform a clean install of Windows XP
A clean installation refers to removing all data from your hard disk by repartitioning and reformatting your hard disk and reinstalling the operating system and programs to an empty (clean) hard disk. You should back up all important information before you perform a clean installation of Windows XP.

For additional information about important things to consider before you partition and format you hard disk and how to partition and format your hard disk by using the Windows XP Setup program, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
313348 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313348/) How to partition and format a hard disk in Windows XP
After you have backed up all your important information, follow these steps to install Windows XP:
1. Start your computer from the Windows XP CD-ROM. To do this, insert the Windows XP CD-ROM into your CD drive or DVD drive, and then restart your computer.
2. When you see the "Press any key to boot from CD" message, press any key to start the computer from the Windows XP CD-ROM.
3. At the Welcome to Setup screen, press ENTER to start Windows XP Setup.
4. Read the End-User License Agreement, and then press F8.
5. Follow the instructions on the screen to select and format a partition where you want to install Windows XP.
6. Follow the instructions on the screen to complete Windows XP Setup.
 
If you have any problems just ask and I'll help you and if you want to read a good, detailed set of instructions read THIS
 
it didnt see it comming

Hi me again I did what you said but it keeps comming up with NO BOOTABLE DEVICES

I tested my disk in another Pc and it is fine, strange

could this be because of the Bios eeprom chip i just shorted and reseting the service code ?

or if the hard drive has a password, but wouldnt show a password page requesting it?

cheers for your help

Ad
 
Are you sure the hard drive is set to master and plugged in to IDE0 on the motherboard and the CD drive is the first boot device?
 
checked those all ok I think

how do you set it to the master and i sure it pluged in because its spinning but not reading the xp disk

could the HD be locked?
 
No it's not locked. Look on the back of the hard drive and you will see little pins and a small palstic thing over some of them. You will see SL CS MA near the pins. Make sure the jumpers are on the MA pins, CS might work also but sometimes it doesn't.
 
Then the cd drive is not set as the first boot device, or even the second boot device. How old is your computer?
 
looks new

the pc is latitude c840

H/drice 2002

bios A06

setup page says 1999-2002 but I think thats the program date

pentium 4

winxp

nvidia geforce4go
super vga
 
thanks

mate I will have to follow this up tomorrow as it is 313 am here in Japan and I got an early start in the morn,
thanks for your help and I hope to catch you up tomorrow night
cheers snd goodnight

ad


I just got that message, i will try a friends xp disk tomorrow and i will let you know the results.
 
got it working, looking for drivers

Gday mate,

Well you were right, it was the disk, My buddy had a dell winXP install disk and that worked fine, thanks for the help anyway.

Just looking for the drivers for the vidio card/ everthing

Any links that you know of

cheers

ad
 
i tried reinstalling the OS and it just kept saying the same thing, i also changed the boot sequence and it still kept saying the same thing, also i checked the bios and it doesnt show that there's even a HDD connected
 
i don't understand

what cd to hdd i don't understand for example: 1:internal hdd 2.whatever can you tell number and name please i having problem with my computer can you help me?

Hi All,

When I switch the laptop on I get the following message and 2 beeps:

'No bootable device(s) selected'

'strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for set-up utility'

I then retry the boot, but get the same message appearing on screen.

I then try the set-up utility, where I experimented with the boot configuration. I basically changed the Boot First Device option from 'CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive' to 'Internal HDD', restarted the laptop and got the following message and 2 beeps:

'No boot sector on hard disk - 'strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for set-up utility'

It seems like there is no O/S, so I tried booting a Win2K disc I have, but cannot by pass the above messages. Does anyone have any suggestions? Look forward to your replies.

Regards

AD

dell latitude c840
 
I've got an easy but weird trick that worked for me.

This is a problem I see on many Dell Laptops. I go to ITT Tech and students are assigned Dell Latitude laptops, and I am the one who usually fixes them. All I do is unscrew and pull out the CD drive. Then turn on the laptop, push ESC when it shows an error about the disk drive missing, it should boot up. Turn off the computer, put the disk drive back, This has worked for me on several occasions, I'm not sure why, but it works.
 
Pull out CD drive, turn it on, push esc when the grey error screen pops up, OS should load. Turn back off, put the disk drive back in. Turn on. It should work, I've fixed many Dell with the same problem, and for some reason this works.
 
Hi at all.
I have the same problem with my Latitude C600/C500.
WinXP was installed but it didn't worked so fine, so I decidet to Install an Ubuntu on it.
I used my WinXP setup disk as an 'Partition Manager', erased all Partitions until the hdd was brand new,
made a new 5gb partition - so there were 35gb unpartitioned left.

After that, I put in my self-made-ubuntu-setup -cd -(it's ok!) and then -

No bootable devices--strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility

No chance to get trough it, tried the boot-sequence in every order - nothing

@realm1: My Laptop has Docking Stations for Batteries, CD-Drives, ect.
So there is no error about a missing disk drive. Any Idea?
 
I had the same problem after I reinstalled a fresh Windows XP OS on a Dell Latitude. Select F2 to enter the bios settings and change to the boot order page. Ensure you have a diamond symbol to the left of each device you need to boot. After I rebuilt the laptop these settings had been disabled and they needed to be enabled. Select each item and press the spacebar to enable the item. Once enabled it should show bold white with the diamond symbol to the left. Hope this helps out. It was driving me nuts and I rebuilt this machine at least 3 times trying to get this to work correctly. So far, I have not had any problems booting up the laptop. Kurt
 
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