No Bootable Device???
My Gateway is only 5 months old, running with Vista. Last night I noticed it
had frozen at 4:40pm, so I shut it down and restarted only to get error
messages and can’t boot up. First it said Windows failed to start and I chose
auto repair. That said “cannot fix problem”. It runs the Intel Boot Agent then
says “no boot filename received. No bootable device–insert boot disk and press
any key”. I bought it from Best Buy and the only disk it came with is the one to
reinstall all and start from scratch.
I didn’t have time to mess with it this morning so I entered this forum from
work and will call Gateway when I get home but don’t have much confidence in
their tech support capabilities. Any help is greatly appreciated.
There are a few things you can try. This may be caused by either a hardware failure (your Hard Drive failed on you) or it could be a virus that’s deleted your Master Boot Record (MBR.)
First let’s make sure that your hard drive is okay. What you’ll need to do is restart your computer and wait for the screen with the Gateway logo on it. At the bottom of the screen it will tell you to press either F1 or Del to get into setup. Just press whatever it tells you. Wait a moment or so and you should be looking at a screen similar to the one at the right.
What you need to do now is select Standard CMOS features and you should see a screen like the one below.
Now in the list that you see you need to see your hard drive there. You’ll be looking for the name of an HD manufacturer. Various manufacturers are: WD(Western Digital), Maxtor, Seagate,and Samsung. If you don’t see a hard drive there then the drive itself is probably gone and you need to buy a new one. If however you see the Hard Drive then recovery is possible.
I’m assuming that you have data on the Hard Drive and you’ll want to back it up. In that case you’ll need to use something like a Knoppix live CD. You can download the files here: http://www.knoppix.org/If you don’t know how to make a live CD just ask in the form above.
You will also have to buy an external Hard Drive to transfer your files to. These will start at about 100 bucks. Basically what you’ll then do is boot from the disc (again ask if you need info on how to do that) and load the Knoppix Operating System. From there you’ll be able to see your files and just drag them over to the external Hard Drive.
Now for the harder part. You need to go into the recovery console. To do that you need to insert the recovery discs that you received from Best Buy and follow the prompts from those discs. You can try doing an “non-destructive” restore and that might fix your Windows boot files but chances are if it couldn’t repair Windows before it won’t do it now.
Nope. Your probably going to have to do a “destructive” restore and reinstall everything from scratch. Follow the on screen prompts from the programs on that disc and ask again if you run into any problems.
The Fake Geek
P.S. I would also get that Hard Drive checked out even if it appears to work after the restore. You can run a free program called MemTest to do that. If anyone needs help on running MemTest give me a shout out.