No bootable disk on start up

This came up on my friends laptop? What is wrong? What must he do?

Thanks guys

Without any further information first thing is to check into the bios & see whether the hard drive is set as 'bootable'.

Check in BIOS setup that the HD is still detected and that it is set first to boot.

If so run HD maker's HD Diagnostic extended CD scan.

What does this mean? I have a compaq presario that keeps showing this. I put another HDD in and it is saying the same thing. Does it mean the old HDD was buggered and I need to do something to the new one to sort out boot order or anything? or is this not a HDD issue. I have two broken compaq presarios here. One with no screen working and one saying no bootable disk drive. Help. I must be able to get one going? Thanks

Are you trying to install Win7 on the new HD? Boot the installation DVD and not the HD to try install as shown here: Clean Install Windows 7

If your computer has more than one HD then make sure the one you wish to boot is set first to boot, or unplug the other especially during install.

Not sure why you would expect a new HD to boot or give any more than a message that it cannot boot until it has Win7 installed upon it?

A little background on this before we end up spinning our wheels in focusing on the drive itself...

Reasons for Screen not working after a knock

TWardy said:

What does this mean? I have a compaq presario that keeps showing this. I put another HDD in and it is saying the same thing. Does it mean the old HDD was buggered and I need to do something to the new one to sort out boot order or anything? or is this not a HDD issue. I have two broken compaq presarios here. One with no screen working and one saying no bootable disk drive. Help. I must be able to get one going? Thanks

It means that the BIOS did not detect a bootable device during the POST. It could be that the BIOS boot order, or boot device option is not set correctly. Or if it is set correctly, that the hard drive is not bootable. There could be a hardware fault preventing the device form booting. A motherboard fault or bad data or power cable to the drive.

It could also be that by your friend standing on his laptop he may have damaged the connection from the hard drive to the motherboard, or a number of other things in there.

The HDD I tried putting in came straight out of another laptop with Win 7 on it

Is this the laptop that was damaged by being stepped on?