Chosen Solution

Hi everyone! Yesterday when I tried starting my laptop (Toshiba Satellite S55-A5295), I got the error “Checking Media - Fail " and “No bootable device – Please restart system.” This seems to be for no reason at all (I haven’t downloaded anything recently or made any changes), however my hard drive has been making some loudish noises, so I’m not sure if that’s the issue. I’ve read multiple forums and have tried everything I could find, but nothing has worked. Here’s what I’ve tried:

  1. Opened up laptop and took out hard drive, battery, then plugged everything back in a) removed battery, held power button 20 seconds, replaced battery re-connected to AC adapter
  2. Tried hitting the reset button
  3. Checked BIOS boot settings a) changed Boot Mode to CSM Boot, and back to UEFI Boot b) tried moving around the Boot startup (HDD/SDD) to the top c) tried loading Setup Defaults Is my laptop dead? I don’t have a recovery CD and am not sure what else I can do. All of the videos and forums seem to suggest the same BIOS boot setting changes. Please help!

@joanja ODD probably stands for Optical Disk Drive (your CD). It does sound like your computer cannot find an OS. You need a bootable disk so that your computer can start. Try to download an executable Live version of one of the many Linux distros. I use Puppy Linux whenever I try to recover data from HDD. Once you have that disk your computer most likely will boot up. Then you can try and see if it allows you to access your HDD. If so you know that it is an OS issue, not a hardware issue. If not, you are having a failed HDD. This may all sound like a lot but it is not. Just remain systematic and do one things at a time. This way you won’t get confused with trying to many things at once. Stay away from things like this " I should change SATA from AHCI to ATA or IDE” for now. It worked before and those settings do not impact your computer issues right now.

Hi @joanja dun worry, most probably the hard disk could be having some issues, when you access the BIOS, can you see your HDD?

it is 100% a problem with the hard drive.

Try to replace the cable connecting to the drive. If that’s not the problem,get a new drive.

Sounds like your hard drive may have died or your OS has corrupted. Either one means that, if you have any important data on the drive, you should definitely stop!!! trying to make it work, and bring it to someone who can help salvage your data. Good luck!

if nothing works and keep on error?