No boot device available, press ENTER key to retry

[Trotter]

I'm looking for a quick solution on this one as I will be taking it to work with me tomorrow and delivering it afterwards.

On a cold boot (has been sitting off for a few hours) this Inspiron Desktop 537S will come up and say "No boot device available, press ENTER key to retry". No matter how many times you hit Enter it says the says the same thing. You can then give it a three fingered salute and it will boot on up, or you can power it down and power it back up and it will boot on up.

I have reseated the cables to the hard drive and the BIOS looked OK to me (first boot device is hard drive, second is optical, third is USB, all others disabled).

Suggestions?

 

[MindoverMaster]

I'd say the HDD or PSU is bad.

Did you try a different power plug into that HDD? SMART ever say anything to you?

 

[S0ULphIRE]

Does it work if you manually choose the boot device on startup (i.e press F8 or F12, whatever is the select boot menu button)?
Tried it with the USB and optical drives removed?

 

[erwincl]

When booting up, press Del or F2, depending on your BIOS model (check your manual). And then look for device boot up priority. If you are installing a new OS, point the first priority to CD/DVD, but if you have an OS already then choose HDD, then save your configuration, then exit. You PC should be able to see a bootable device.

Also, on the BIOS level, you will be able to see the devices detected by your computer.

 

[Trotter]

I'd say the HDD or PSU is bad.

Did you try a different power plug into that HDD? SMART ever say anything to you?

HDD checks out fine. I see no signs of the PSU being the issue, but I did go ahead and swap the HDD and ODD power plugs for the heck of it.

Does it work if you manually choose the boot device on startup (i.e press F8 or F12, whatever is the select boot menu button)?
Tried it with the USB and optical drives removed?

I didn't get to try manually selecting the drive, but the owner doesn't want to have to fool with that... she just wants it to boot without her having to mess with it every time.

It only does it on a cold boot when it has been off for a few hours, and not every time then.

When booting up, press Del or F2, depending on your BIOS model (check your manual). And then look for device boot up priority. If you are installing a new OS, point the first priority to CD/DVD, but if you have an OS already then choose HDD, then save your configuration, then exit. You PC should be able to see a bootable device.

Also, on the BIOS level, you will be able to see the devices detected by your computer.

Thanks for your input, erwinc1. I do this stuff for a living so I had already checked all that out. This situation just seems to be out of the norm.

 

[MindoverMaster]

You try resetting the BIOS, Trotter?

 

[Trotter]

No, but it has been firing up fine for the past few times. Maybe swapping the power cables did it... I dunno.

I will tell her to let me know if it does it anymore.