No boot device availible ..help I don't know what to do.

[Kamikazi5983]

Ok so I turned on my computer this morning and I got the message "no boot device availible" with the option to press f2 f12 keys. So I'm guna go through what I did the last couple days because I'm buggin out right. Maybe someone can see if I did something wrong or help me. I was looking around the inside of my computer moving stuff around to see how many and what type of power pins I have to upgrade my gpu. The only thing I unplugged was the 8 pin connector to my mobo(8 pin white wire). Other than that ijust moved stuff around. I was looking online and saw it was a hard drive error so I went inside changed the wires and went into the bios and it didn't detect it (fml). So yesterday I was preparing for my first overclock I downloaded a bunch of stuff from guru3d like rivatuner, hwmonitor, CPU-z, and maybe something else. This computer is under two years old with NO signs at all of hard drive failure. Oh yea I was also playing around in nvidia control panel mainly just fan controls. My drivers were kinds funny though as when I failed to attempt to install the new ones they wouldnot download and the only options in my npanel were perforance and settings or something. Someone help me I'm goin nuts. Thanks

 

[Motopsychojdn]

You'll get more help if you post your system specs on here too,
btw did you plug the 8pin wire back in? you didnt say is all,
Moto

 

[Kamikazi5983]

ya sure srry it's a dell 630i 750w psu, e8400, dual 9800gt sli, the only way I got the name of the mobo was on CPU-z and obvi it's not working but it's the stock that came with it from the factory, wolfsdale 320 gb hd. Leme know anything else. Any help isappreciated. And yea I pluggedthe 8 pin back into the mobo

 

[Mugsy]

"No boot device" is usually one of three things: either your HD's power is unplugged/misplugged, the HD data cable is unplugged/misplugged, or the boot record was wiped out (unlikely).

Can you boot from the Windows CD? If so, the problem is your drive/connection, not the MoBo or BIOS.

Recheck your connections (plug and replug to be sure) and verify BIOS sees the drive. Reboot. If that doesn't work, boot the Windows CD and see if it DETECTS your Windows installation on that drive. If not, try the drive on another PC (a cheap USB enclosure for $15 can be invaluable. Get one if you don't have one).

If you can still read the data on the drive via another PC, you can back it up, then put the drive back, reformat and reinstall.

 

[festerovic]

How many drives do you have in the system, both hard disk and optical? It's possible to get boot disc error when there are multiple hard drives, and the iDE/SATA ports that they were in originally is changed up. Windows boot,ini sees the drives as a representation of which port on the motherboard the drive is plugged into, not as C, D E etc.

The reason I mention this is because many times you install multiple hard drives, the system gets put on the first disc, but some kind of boot info is on the second, so when the drives are swapped on the mobo, they lose track of which is the boot and which is the system. Sorry if that is confusing, I haven't had my Dew yet.

 

[Kamikazi5983]

reply to mugsy (theres no reply button if i click the option to next to select best answer for some reason . go figure): thats what i thought at first too. right i was screwing around inside i either forgot to plug something back in or i hit it by accident. i checked the wires to the hd then (after it didnt work) i hooked it up with two completly new wires one to the psu and the other to the mobo to no avail =(. you mean the cd i used to install windows?

my computer does not see the drive either when i tried to autodetect it in the bios? and i dont have another computer sadly to test that on as im using an ipod touch to see if i can save my only computer lol.

 

[Kamikazi5983]

reply to festerovic: optical meaning a cd drive? yes. i also found (when my computer wasnt giving me agita) that there was like my main hd (c: i believe) and another smaller one (d: drive i think) one was for all my programs and everything and i dont know what the other one was i think it possibly had my windows stuff come to think of it. however im not sure. the funny part is theres only i hd in the slots so i dont know if it is an actual seperate drive or just space set aside in the c: drive.

 

[Kamikazi5983]

Best answer selected by Kamikazi5983.