I do hope you can help. I'm having the same issue as the elusive Lorrainex, so I hope no one minds me reprising the thread.
To recap on the issue (and give some more specifics), I recently turned on my computer to find the message "No bootable devices", press F2 or F12… blah, blah, blah.
I'm running Vista on a Dell laptop. It's about two years old. After some fiddling, that message stopped appearing, but now every time I turn the laptop on it asks me if I want to start the machine in recover mode or normal mode. No matter which of these options I select, the computer still does not boot.
I did a bit of research and attempted a system recovery with two different CDs. No joy. The one that was recognised by my computer (the other didn't even boot) tried to reinstall Hal (?) and another element. However, I think it may be windows that is now missing (?).
I've also struggled to recover any files from the computer, and would like to transfer as much as possible onto an external hard drive. However, if this isn't possible, I have consigned myself to losing the data (most is backed up anyway).
So, after the two failed recovery attempted I bit the bullet and decided to reinstall Windows. My research said that this should help. I borrowed a friend's copy of XP (is this allowed? Legal? Noticeable?) and tried to boot from F12 but again had no joy. Bah! Could the problem be that I was trying to replace Vista with XP?
So, in summary:
- computer says "No bootable devices"
- I tried to recover windows with two disks… recovery didn't work, plus struggled to back anything up
- Tried to install XP afresh (overwriting Vista), but it wouldn't boot from the disk.
Please can you help?!
Thanks in advance
Tim