No bootable device

[eugeneg]

I upgraded a Vista PC to Win7 with no problem. Next day I powered up and the profile records were corrupted; I booted safe using inbuilt Administrator but could not get into Control Panel - presumably the same corruption.

Fortunately I had just taken an image of the Vista disk so I restored that. Now I was getting a black screen after BIOS and before Windows logo. I booted off a Linux CD with no problem. I booted off a Windows 10 installation USB pen drive with no problem.

I figured the disk must have gone South like Sherman so I restored my image to a different disk - now I get 'no bootable device'. I switched the SATA cable and port on the mobo - same problem. I tested the voltages at the plug to the HDD but they were fine.

Ok so I must have a fault on the SATA circuit on the mobo. I installed a PCIe disk controller and attached my disk to that. The controller reported a functional JBOD but when it went to hit that thing... 'no bootable device'. It was then that I turned to Google and was prompted to reset the BIOS to defaults so I pulled the battery for 20 minutes. When I reset the date and booted again: 'no bootable device'.

Now I'm fresh out of ideas and asking for some suggestions.

 

[maxwellmelon]

check that your hard drive is set as a boot device in your bios

sounds like a mbr issue though and to fix it

http://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/fix-mbr-xp-vista/

 

[eugeneg]

check that your hard drive is set as a boot device in your bios

sounds like a mbr issue though and to fix it

http://helpdeskgeek.com/how-to/fix-mbr-xp-vista/

I booted off a Vista disk and hit the Repair option but no OS could be found !
So I took the HDD out and looked from another PC and there was no file system on it !
Tomorrow I will need to restore from the image again then check that I really did end up with something. More later.
Thanks for the swift reply anyway.

17/6 update: I see the problem - my Acronis Image is writing a corrupt header to the disk. I can recover individual files from the image but when I use it to recover the disk I end up with an unallocated (unformatted) disk where previously there was a disk I had only just finished formatting (not quick either). Over to the Acronis forum now.