laptop won't boot up

[nuley]

Dear friends

 

12-y-o son has a fairly new Lenovo G510 laptop, intel core i3, 4GB ram, 500 GB which has worked brilliantly running, I think, windows 8? until he bought a second hand King Kong PC game (I looked, it was published in 2005 and is completely wrong for this OS) and stuck the disk into the disk drive. Now the only message appearing on the screen after the Lenovo logo is:

 

No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key

 

I don't think it came with a boot disk, I think when I bought it I just opened it and it worked. (Probably appropriate for my level of expertise.)

 

If the worst comes to the worst, it was from John Lewis about 7 months ago so it should be under guarantee, but I'm hoping it might be simpler than that...?

 

Any help would be gratefully received! Thank you as ever.

 

All best

Nuley

[GRANDAD]

Hi have you tried removing the disc and doing a restore to previous point? it may be as simple as that, worth a try.

Or just turn off the power then after a couple of mins restart it should ask how you would like to reboot. suggest to a previous time. Good luck.

[Starbuck]

he bought a second hand King Kong PC game (I looked, it was published in 2005 and is completely wrong for this OS) and stuck the disk into the disk drive. Now the only message appearing on the screen after the Lenovo logo is:

 

No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key

So is the disc still in the laptop?

Firstly, try the solution offered by Grandad.

 

If you did need to restore the system back to factory settings, this link will explain everything:

Introduction to Lenovo OneKey Recovery 8.0 for Notebooks

[nuley]

Thanks for this. The disk is out but windows doesn't start - I simply get the black screen with the unbootable message. I'll try the onekey recovery Starbuck suggests. Thanks all the same.

[KenB]

Hi nuley, any luck with the problem machine ?

[nuley]

Hi there

 

No luck so far. I did the system restore which didn't work, so I have just done it again, and it still didn't work. From reading a bit further on the Lenovo website, I am wondering if I needed to create and save some sort of recovery point on a USB stick when the laptop was new. Which I didn't do, unfortunately.

 

There is an option to buy recovery disks from Lenovo which I think is probably the next step, unless you have any better advice?

 

Thanks again for all the help!

 

Nuley

[KenB]

Hi Nuley

 

There should be a separate partition ( section of the hard-drive) that has the backup on it.

 

Did you get this far?

[ATTACH=CONFIG]1474.vB5-legacyid=2562[/ATTACH]

 

If so you need "...Initial Backup" NOT "User Backup"

 

Does it go through the process or just hang ?

 

============

Do you have any means of connecting the problem hard-disk to another computer?

A Caddy [ enclosure ] for instance or SATA to USB-cable ?

[nuley]

Hi there

 

Thanks for your input. I've been putting it off for months as it's so frustrating...

 

I have had another go today, making sure I was following instructions to the letter, asking it to restore from initial backup. It went through the entire process and seemed to be restoring things. It then said it had completed and offered me the choice of shutting down or rebooting. When I rebooted, it went back to the same black screen which says 'no bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key'.

 

Do you have any advice, please?

 

thanks very much

 

nuley

[KenB]

Hi,

,

it was from John Lewis about 7 months ago

You need to check to see if the machine is still covered by the warranty as I suspect that the hard-drive has a problem.

 

No bootable device

This implies that the hard-disk cannot be seen - worst case ..... hard disk has died and cannot be rectified.

This is why the warranty is important - it is easier to send it away for repair.

 

I did the system restore which didn't work, so I have just done it again, and it still didn't work.

"System Restore" is different from Re-install.

I assume you meant System Re-install ? as you need access to the hard-disk to do a Restore.

 

Where do we go from here?

 

1. Check the warranty and contact John Lewis - priority.

 

2. If we have to continue [ no warranty ] you would need to take the hard-disk out and connect it up to another machine.

If we can access it from a second machine we may be able to fix it.

[ Instructions if necessary ]

[nuley]

Thank you Ken.

 

I have been trying to do the one-key recovery which I thought was called a system restore. I haven't tried to re-install anything as it all came pre-loaded, and I've nothing to re-install.

 

I will contact John Lewis!

 

many thanks

 

nuley

[KenB]

Get back to us if John Lewis draws a blank :)