No Bootable Devices Error

[romh]

Hi, I have a Dell Laptop with Windows Xp and I cannot boot it. I cant even press F8 to get to safe mode or anything. I get the following error
No Bootable Devices. Press F1..... etc......

I tried booting with the Windows OEM CD, and I chose the option of doing a repair install, it copied all the necessary files to the hard disk, then when it prompted to restart, it restarted and went back to the same error.

I tried going to the repair console, and tried repairing the boot sector, and nothing. Same problem. I've done things from the site:

http://www.webtree.ca/windowsxp/repair_xp.htm#How to access Safe Mode:

Could anybody give me some insight as to what is happening? Or what could I do next?

Thanks a lot.

 

[schtek]

can u get into bios on the laptop???
if so see if you can see it is detecting the hard drive???

"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."

 

[linney]

There is plenty of good suggestions on the site you linked to that in normal circumstances should get you going.

All that is left to suggest is that you look at a failing hard drive or RAM.

Did you try running ChkDsk /r from the Recovery Console, and the FixMbr command?

Your hard drive manufacturer will have free bootable diagnostic software to thoroughly check your drive.

To check your RAM.

http://www.memtest86.com/

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp