Hey all,

i recently ran DBAN (using the autonuke function) to wipe my dads old business laptop, and now have a big problem.... There is a cd drive attachment for this laptop, and everytime i try to reinstall windows 2000 (its an old computer), the following error appears:

"No boot sector on hard disk - No bootable devices - press F1 to retry, F2 to go to options"

:-O wat do i DO?!?! how do i get this thing up and running again? i am also running DBAN on another of my computers which is much newer, will the same thing happen?

I surfed a bit and came across a bunch of stuff about MS-DOS boot disks and an FDISK function or something, but how would i use these things? i also dont have the option of running anything from a floppy disk.

Any help would be GREATLY appreciated,

Jon

have a look around www.bootdisk.com and you should fine file and info for creating a boot disk[cd] for when you have no floppy drive ,and just do a search for fdisk and how to use its command to create a new bootable partition on the drive

And because you saw this msg :
"No boot sector on hard disk - No bootable devices - press F1 to retry, F2 to go to options" - you were not actually booting from the cd. DBAN obviously wiped the disk but left the MBR intact, so the code from that has been loaded, but then it cannot locate the boot sector on the hdd... cos you wiped it. Anyway.. that is wot it is telling you. Reset your boot order using the F8 key at startup [F2?, or whatever key combo BIOS tells you to use] to set your cd as first boot device.

aaahhhhh. i got it. fixed the mbr and it boots fine now. also didnt work because my copy of windows 2000 is apparently pirated :P thx guys

Er... right. Glad you are sorted re the MBR, anyway.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.