How repair "No Boot Device Found" during boot

I get this message during my boot...........

Its lost the boot sector so we need to know if the drive is OK can you boot from anything else and see the drive and does it show in the bios?

I have been using the drive (C) and it does show in the BIOS. I can boot into the C drive if I place the installation CD in the tray and close it. As I'm booting, I get a message that says if I want to boot from the CD, wait five seconds. So I wait and my machine continues to boot correctly into Drive C. I want to add that there is a second drive internal to my PC that is there to hold data only (Drive D).

I forgot to mention in your other post:


Go to your BIOS settings, and check to see if your Main Drive is prioritized above your Data Drive.

The way I would set the Boot Priority:
(Since you have a CD-ROM Drive):
1: CD-ROM Drive
2: Your Main Drive
3: Your Data Drive

It is possible that your Data Drive set itself more prioritized than your Main Drive. If that is the case in your BIOS settings, then that error, that you're seeing, could happen.

OK, this is strange! I set the BIOS the way you suggested and when I booted my machine, I received a message which said "Invalid Partition Table." So I changed the boot sequence to:
Internal HDD
P5: Samsung SSD 840 EVO 1TB

My machine booted normally!!! Maybe I need a lesson on how to set the BIOS sequence.....

The BIOS choices are:

Diskette Drive
Internal HDD
P5: Samsung SSD 840 EVO 1TB
CD/DVD/CD-RW Drive
USB Storage
Onboard NIC

It used to be that the sequence didn't matter (for the most part). So, I definitely need a lesson in the correct way to set the BIOS sequence. What is going on? Why would one boot sequence require me to have the installation disk in the tray - and why would another boot sequence tell me Invalid Partition Table? FYI: I've been struggling for a solution for years and now I finally have one. But I don't understand why this sequence works and the others don't. Perhaps they make sense to you now that I've explained all the choices and which sequence works. Please help me. I want to learn something here.

Press the Windows key +X and choose Disk Management. Please attach a screenshot of Disk Management window showing the lower pane showing all the drives.
Is Windows that you boot into on the SSD? Or internal HDD?
Was Windows ever on the HDD? If so, and you are booting into the SSD Windows? If so, when you installed Windows on the SSD, and you did not unplug the HDD, Windows uses the already existing Boot files on the HDD to boot the computer. If you unplug the HDD you probably won't be able to boot the computer.

Disk Management.pdf

I'm booting into the SSD (FYI: The other internal drive is also an identical SSD to the OS drive)
To my knowledge, I've never used the internal Data drive as an OS drive. I believe Windows was never on it. However, I've had these drives for many years and can't be absolutely sure. I've never unplugged the internal data drive while installing Windows. I have images of all my drives. Would that help if I wiped my data drive - then reinstalled from the image?

I've lost the ability to 'see' your last post. If there are more questions to be asked, I am right here. Thank you..........

Some thoughts on this. All this depends on if your drives are MBR (legacy bios) or GPT (newer UEFI). Adjust for your actual setup, but assume: drive C: (in bios called P5: Samsung SSD 840 EVO 1TB?) is the drive you installed windows to. Drive D: (Internal HDD?) is another storage drive.

When installing Windows with C: as the target, a lot of the time it will decide to put boot/system files on D: for some @##$ing insane M$ reason. In that case the BIOS/UEFI must point to D: to boot, into C:. I remove EVERY other drive from my PC when installing Windows because of this. PITA!

Try hitting F11 (varies from motherboard to motherboard, some F12?) during post (BIOS startup before Windows boot) to get into a boot screen list where you select the drive to boot from. Try with each drive, if one boots normally, that is not C:, your boot files got split up like this. Your "boot" drive is D: but your operating system is on C:.

Also these UEFI systems will "think for you" and change the boot preference whenever they want. Like mine is my main drive ONLY, with the rest disabled, but the second I slap a bootable flash, DVD, or external drive on there, it will enable and change to that one on the top of the list.

I guess it really depends on the BIOS (motherboard) manufacturer.

First of all, I'm glad you were able to play around and actually figure out the perfect sequence.

And what I mean "it depends on the BIOS" is that on my computer, I have my CD-ROM as the first one the BIOS should check for (to see if there's a CD that it should boot from). But if there isn't a CD, then it will look at the next item in the sequence, which is my Main Drive that has Windows installed on it.

So since your BIOS says something about having a CD missing, then it shows that message? Or something like that.

I guess one thing to remember from all this, which shouldn't really be necessary to remember, is that if you want to boot from a CD, then you would put your CD-ROM drive as the first item in order. But I'm sure you shouldn't have to deal with this "inconvenience", as long as your Windows 10 is running fine. Suppose some weird error occurs, then you can ask about it here, and helpful people would ask you to have your BIOS boot from the CD-ROM, as a reminder if you forget. I know I would forget. So don't worry about it, as long as your Windows 10 is up-to-date and running well, with no weird things happening.

I must confess that I don't understand how this happened. I'm using Legacy BIOS. My main question now is how do I get this all straightened out? I'd like to not have boot files on my data drive (if that's what's happened) and I'd like the BIOS sequence to behave as it should and as it did for many years. Can you help?