Can I still save my HD? "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key" error

[Gabe D]

Hello, my computer recently went down with both a bad motherboard and CPU, which I have replaced. The problem now is that upon booting up I am getting the error: "PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel PXE ROM. No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key." I've verified that my HD is connected properly and listed in the BIOS. I don't have an OS disc or any sort of a boot disc. There are some files on my HD which I really need to get to, any suggestions on what to do here? Can I buy a Windows 10 disc and somehow rebuild my HD without formatting? If I need to buy another HD can I put this one in as a secondary drive and still access the files?

Thanks!

 

[Gabe D]

Hello again, as an update I purchased a SATA to USB cable and was able to hook the hard drive up to another computer and am currently accessing the files which are still on the hard drive. For any hard drive/OS 10 wiz people out there, seeing as how I can still access the hard drive & copy files from it, is there any possibility of copying system files to the hard drive or overwriting existing, possibly corrupt files, in order to make it bootable again?

 

[Gabe D]

Ok, looks like I solved my own problem again though this time by finding a very helpful post on Fixya from someone who had a similar issue some time back and found a solution. I don't know if this would work in all situations or if it only applied because the issue came up at the same time as I changed my motherboard though what I did was go into my BIOS, then to the ADVANCED menu, then changed the BOOT MODE from CSM Boot to UEFI Boot, and then saved the changes. The hardware took a very long time to update after that though eventually my login and desktop came up and now all seems good.

 

[idmmarketing28]

Ok, looks like I solved my own problem again though this time by finding a very helpful post on Fixya from someone who had a similar issue some time back and found a solution. I don't know if this would work in all situations or if it only applied because the issue came up at the same time as I changed my motherboard though what I did was go into my BIOS, then to the ADVANCED menu, then changed the BOOT MODE from CSM Boot to UEFI Boot, and then saved the changes. The hardware took a very long time to update after that though eventually my login and desktop came up and now all seems good.

I just want to say thank you Gabe.

Your post helped me get back Windows after screwing myself up. A week ago I bought an Acer, and yesterday cloned the HDD to SSD 2.5 SATA. I believe the problem was it was trying to install an update upon restart of the HDD when I was cloning.

Installed the SSD which worked initially. Then restarted and it tried to install an update and Windows couldn't boot up again. As a stupid novice I went into my BIOS and changed settings, but couldn't get anything to work.

Then I decided to remove the SSD and install the HDD again. Upon installing I was getting the "PXE-M0F: Exiting Intel PXE ROM. No bootable device" message.

On my other laptop I researched for a solution and came across your post because it was the same exact message I was getting. Following your instructions to change the BOOT MODE from CSM Boot to UEFI Boot and saving the changes did the trick. Now Win10 is loading again as it should.