no bootable devices found

Question

Hi,

I am facing an issue at laptop booting it gives “no bootable devices found”.

It started uut of the sudden it gave me the dell assistant screen which required bitlocker key that I did not have and I don’t think that I have enable encryption on my laptop, after a lots of search I was able to get the key inside my company active directory.

Now i have the key I don’t have the assistance screen anymore, it just gave me sometimes no boot available and other times no boot device found.

I tried couple of solutions I found on the community, resetting BIOS worked for me and I was able to lunch the windows after entering bitlocker recovery key, but strangely at each reboot I got the same error not bootable devises found and each time I need to rest the BIOS again.

Now I always get the same message: no bootable devices found, also I have disabled disk encryption for now.

Appreciate your assistant.

Thanks

okal · Accepted Answer

Further investigation it looks like the Windows Boot Manager (\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi) was not working, by resting the BOIS to default settings it sets it to (\EFI\Boot\BootX64.efi) and that works fine, when the windows starts it looks like it set it back to (\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi).

I was able to solve this with two ways:

The easy one, I added manually the (\EFI\Boot\BootX64.efi) as boot path and set it as the first option, and it works. With windows restart it kept this configuration without any overriding.
I tried to fix Windows Boot Manager it turned out the EFI partition was missing the driver letter, not sure why that happened but it looks like a common issue, you can find the solution for that on https://www.dell.com/support/article/en-us/sln300987/how-to-repair-the-efi-bootloader-on-a-gpt-hdd-for-windows-7-8-8-1-and-10-on-your-dell-pc?lang=en.

WendySW · Answer

Hi! This is a great post; thank you for the detailed information!

I'm having the same or similar issue:

"Hardware scan complete with no issues.

No bootable devices were found1 Possible causes could be a corrupt OS image or a boot device device is not enabled in BIOS setup."

The only option offered is a Shut Down button.

I don't have the technical knowhow to try your solution. Is it possible for you to explain:

* How you got to the boot path

* How you got to the Windows Boot Manager (repeated F8?)

* I'm very concerned about the possibility of losing files on my Dell. I do have an external hard drive but (a) don't know when I last backed up and (b) have a file that's become corrupted on my external hard drive that I need to access from my Dell to hopefully retrieve the uncorrupted file. I read through the Windows Boot Manager/EFI partition link you included, and there's a big message at the top saying you may lose files. Do you know how safe this method is?

bacillus1 · Answer

If you have a win 10 install media then booting off it and hitting Next then Repair may offer another option.

XPS

no bootable devices found

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