No Boot Device Available

Hopefully this is not a major issue, but it doesn't look good. My fiance's used her computer (desktop) yesterday with no issues, everything was running fine, and then closed it down. Today when booting up, she gets a black screen with the following message: No boot device available SATA 0: Installed SATA 1: Installed SATA 2: None SATA 3: None She's tried re-booting several times, but the same error message occurs. She is looking for her boot-up disk that came with her PC, and will try to boot up from that. But in the meantime, is there anything I can do? I haven't yet tried to boot up in Safe Mode, so I don't know if that works. What should I do? Thanks, in advance, for any help you can provide…

How old is the PC and is it still under warranty? Yes, you could initially try to boot into safe mode and choose "last known good boot". That would be the first thing to try. Cheers, Lee

Thanks Lee… She got this PC on Christmas 2008 (2 years old)….and I'm not sure about the warranty, but I doubt it. We did the F8 during start up and selected "last known configuration", and now seems to be working fine….a little slow at the moment, but it's working nonetheless! So I hope that was the solution…and thank you so much for helping out! Do you think there may be a virus/spyware/malware on it? Should I run HiJackThis and post in the other forum? Let me know what you think and thanks again. Happy Holidays!

I'm glad your back up and running It sounds like some software on the PC caused a fatal error and the PC basically freaked out. It was probably due to a poorly written piece of program or driver code. I would be checking for unsigned or out of date drivers and especially any browser add-ons (highly suspect of poor code). Check the PC also for any programs that are not very well known and widely used. And if there is any Peer to Peer software being used, get rid of it as those sites, apart from being a great source of Melware, have software flavours that are regular OS coffin lids. You might have a Malware problem, but Melware's goal is not often to make a PC un-bootable. Any recently added software installed (especially freeware)? We don't use HJT here. It is way out of date software that except for a few new sparkely features added by Trend Micro when they took over ownership of it, the program has had no serious update for years. The Melware team here use far better software and if you think you may have a Melware problem, head on over to that section of the forum and follow their directions to a clean bill of health. One thing is for sure, whatever caused that problem has not gone away, so perhaps a Melware check and then back here if the PC has no infections and we can look into the results of an 'Overdrive' test to see what's what on the PC. Cheers, Lee