device 0 no bootable devices found error

[Jeff Roy]

my girlfriends dell latitude d600 laptop gives an error message when you try to boot it up saying "device 0 no bootable devices found".

i thought it might be the hard drive so we tried buying a new one but that didnt help. what else could it possibly be? thanks!

[rjfvillarosa]

What make and model of laptop is it and approximately how old?

[Jeff Roy]

dell latitude d600 and its about 2 years old

[rjfvillarosa]

What error message are you getting with the new harddrive?

[Jeff Roy]

Originally Posted by rjfvillarosa What error message are you getting with the new harddrive?

device 0 no bootable devices found error

[rjfvillarosa]

If the motherboard was bad I wouldn't expect you to get as far as that into the boot sequence, therefore it is either a dirty connector to the harddrive or the cable that connects the motherboard with the harddrive connector, usually refered to as an IDE cable.
Does that machine have a floppy disk drive?

[Jeff Roy]

Originally Posted by rjfvillarosa If the motherboard was bad I wouldn't expect you to get as far as that into the boot sequence, therefore it is either a dirty connector to the harddrive or the cable that connects the motherboard with the harddrive connector, usually refered to as an IDE cable. Does that machine have a floppy disk drive?

the machine does not have a floppy drive, however i have an external floppy...can i use that? would you suggest using compressed air to clean the hard drive connector out?

[glc]

Well, there won't be any bootable devices found with a new hard drive till you install Windows on it. Put the Dell reinstallation CD into the optical drive and boot it up.