No boot device found

When you turn your computer on and you get the error No Boot Device found, it might be confusing.

Do not panic most of the time it’s usually an easy fix.

You probably had been turning your computer on and off for a long time without problems. In this article you will learn how to fix, No Boot Device found error. This is caused by a number of different issues so we will start with the basic and then the advanced.

First, make sure your hard drive is connected, obvious right but let’s rule that out.

Removable devices causing no boot device found

The most frequent cause of the Boot device not found error are connected external devices for example a flash drive, cd/DVD disk, or external Harddisk. To fix the issue remove any flash drives and external hard disk that are connected also eject a disc from the CD ROMs.

Press enter or CTR + ALT + Delete to continue to reboot. Your computer should be able to boot from the C drive with your operating system, be it windows 10 or windows 11.

Okay, lemme explain a bit more. When you turn on your computer, it looks for the operating system, windows 10 or windows 11 or any other operating you might have installed. It checks your hard drive, flash drives, or any connected storage medium.

When it does not find an operating it can’t turn on hence giving the error you are facing

Fix No boot device found using Boot order

The error also happens when windows find the first device in the boot order does not containing any operating system files.

For instance, let’s say the computer is set to boot from the CD. When you turn on your computer, the computer does a  search for a disc containing your operating system on the CD rom.

If there is no disc or the disc that’s in the cd or thumb drive doesn’t have the windows operating system it’s improperly configured then you get the error. You will be prompted to press any key to continue then your computer will restart again.

To fix this, when the computer is turning on, press F12 if it’s a dell laptop to view Boot options.

You will be shown the various devices that are connected which might have an operating system, select the one that has an operating system.

Then select the Harddisk which contains the operating system. Alternatively, to permanently fix the issue. Interrupt the boot process on the Dell logo splash using the F2 key on the dell computer. You will enter the BIOS or UEFI menu, and navigate with the arrow keys on your keyboard to Boot order. Now rearrange the boot order using the directed keys either + – keys or arrow keys.

In most circumstances, your hard drive is the one containing the operating so set it as the first boot device

Press F10 to save the settings. Now boot the computer.

Legacy Support

If you have an older computer you might have issues with UEFI boot. Basically, there are two types of interfaces BIOS and the UEFI. When you turn on your computer one of the interfaces is loaded, on older motherboards, its the BIOS which you see by mainly the black or blue background, and the controls can only be done with the keyboards.

UEFI has a visual interface where you can use your mouse to click to navigate as shown in the images below. If your operating system was installed with MBR setup you can only boot in BIOS if you attempt to boot with UEFI then you will get the error boot device not found.

To be able to boot with UEFI your operating system needs to have been set up with GPT.

If what I said above doesn’t make any sense just switch between the two options Legacy boot or UEFI boot and see if your computer will boot in any of the modes.

USB Flash drive No Boot device found

If you are trying to boot from your flash drive and you getting the above error, operating system not found on this device or any other related problems. That means your USB drive is not bootable or it is not correctly configured. You will need to properly create a properly bootable flash drive.

Merely copying windows files to a flash drive will not make it bootable. I have had people ask why it’s not working when they had just copied the windows operating system files to their device.

There are multiple ways of creating a bootable device. You can use third-party tools like Rufus or use command prompt or PowerShell.

How to create bootable flash drive

Create a bootable USB using Rufus

Rufus can create bootable USB flash drive with windows 11, windows 8, and even windows 10. You will need to have a functionally ISO image of the operating system. You can download operating system from the windows website or your computer manufacturer’s website

Go https://rufus.akeo.ie and download Rufus

1. Insert the USB flash drive that you want to use a boot device
2. Double click the exe file
3. Click on the disk like icon and browse to your
4. Select the iso image containing the operating
5. Select GPT to make it UEFI bootable or MBR if you want to use legacy boot
6. Then click start
7. Just make sure Rufus detected the correct flash drive before clicking start. All data that is in the flash drive will be irrecoverably destroyed.
   You will have to wait for a couple of minutes depending on the speed of your computer and flash drive.
   After it’s done you can insert the flash drive into the computer and boot from the flash drive

Create bootable flash using command prompt

With windows diskpart you can create a bootable USB flash drive

1. Start Command Prompt as administrator.
2. Type “diskpart” command.
3. Type list disk, and then click ENTER. The will list all the disks on the computer.
4. Note the drive number or drive letter of the USB flash drive. For example, in the screen shot below there is no flash drive but my harddisk which is Disk 0. If you have other drives there will be listed here.
5. At the command prompt, type select disk <Z>, Z is the either the drive number or drive letter of the USB flash drive, and then click ENTER.
6. Type clean, and the click ENTER. This command deletes all data from the USB flash drive.
7. Now create a new primary partition on the USB flash drive, to create the partition type create part pri, and then click ENTER.
8. To select the partition that you just created, type select part 1.
9. type format fs=ntfs quick, and then click ENTER. This will format the drive.
10. To format the partition as FAT32, type format fs=fat32 quick, then press ENTER or return key.
11. Type active, and then click ENTER.
12. Type exit, and then click ENTER.

Now you can copy the contents of your windows file to the root of the flash drive
Then you can boot from the flash drive.

You might also be interested in Dell laptop wont turn on

Harddisk problems causing no boot device found error

If the harddisk is malfunctioning you can also get this error. Also if the Operating system containing the hard disk is corrupt you will get the error message. To fix you will have to reinstall the operating system.

You can also check if the hard disk is being detected in the BIOS. If it’s not being detected switch off the machine and try reconnecting the cables on the hard drive.

Another option would be to run the Dell hardware diagnostic tool. This will check all your hardware for issues. You can run dell diagnostics to check for hardware issues

Let us know if this was helpful, and leave a comment below for questions or insights you might have