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@rscharferwrote:

Hello.

My problem :  When I turn on my computer, I get the error message "no bootable devices found."

I am trying to install Ubuntu on my computer.  I downloaded the .iso (ubuntu-16.04.4-desktop-amd64.iso) to a usb drive.  I added a boot option called "Ubuntu" which uses this .iso file so that it is now listed under Boot Sequence.

I disabled Secure Boot, and when I press F12 on start up, Legacy Boot: USB Storage Device is listed as the first option.  When I select this option, I just get a blank screen with a cursor in the top left hand corner.  Under UEFI Boot, I have the Ubuntu option that I created earlier.  Selecting this just brings me back to the screen that typically says "no bootable devices found", but it doesn't even say that this time. It just shows the red circle with white cross.

 

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You don't need to turn off Secure Boot or make any other changes to your system to install or run Ubuntu in the Live mode.

When making a USB bootable drive, the drive has to be made bootable.  After that you mount the .iso and copy over the files.  If you have a bootable drive you can change the OS and still be able to boot it.

There are a couple of ways to make a USB drive bootable.  I like to use a command line with Diskpart and other folks think using Rufus is easier.

There are numerous reports by users of messages such as you received concerning Boot problems.  As far as I know, no one cause or fix has been tied to the message you received.  I have seen it if I changed my SATA controller on my XPS 13 9365.

Thanks!  That was it.  I need to make my usb drive bootable : ) 

Have the drive available and open an administrative command prompt.

Use the commands below and Diskpart can take just the first 3 letters of the command, so lis is list and par is partition, etc.

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Diskpart

lis dis

From here, select the drive number of your USB drive and use it where the X is for the commands.  Make very sure you have the correct drive.  This does wipe the selected drive.

select disk x

clean

cre par pri

format fs=fat32 quick

active

assign

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DISKPART> lis dis

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          465 GB  6144 KB        *
* Disk 1    Online         3823 MB      0 B

DISKPART> sel dis 1

Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> clean

DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.

DISKPART> cre par pri

DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition.

DISKPART> format fs=fat32 quick

  100 percent completed

DiskPart successfully formatted the volume.

DISKPART> active

DiskPart marked the current partition as active.

DISKPART> assign

DiskPart successfully assigned the drive letter or mount point.