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CompTIA

220-1002 · Question #15

Ann, a user, calls a technician and reports that her PC will not boot. The technician confirms the memory, power supply, and monitor are all working. The technician runs internal diagnostics on the…

The correct answer is B. No boot device available. When the BIOS cannot detect any bootable storage device, it displays 'No boot device available' before the operating system ever attempts to load. This is distinct from errors where the drive is found but the OS or bootloader is missing.

Hardware and network troubleshooting

Question

Ann, a user, calls a technician and reports that her PC will not boot. The technician confirms the memory, power supply, and monitor are all working. The technician runs internal diagnostics on the PC, but the hard drive is nor recognized. Which of the following messages will be displayed?

Options

  • ANTLDR not found
  • BNo boot device available
  • COperating system not found
  • DBIOS ROM checksum error

How the community answered

(49 responses)
  • A
    4% (2)
  • B
    94% (46)
  • C
    2% (1)

Why each option

When the BIOS cannot detect any bootable storage device, it displays 'No boot device available' before the operating system ever attempts to load. This is distinct from errors where the drive is found but the OS or bootloader is missing.

ANTLDR not found

NTLDR not found is a Windows XP-era bootloader error that only appears after the BIOS has successfully identified and handed off to a bootable drive.

BNo boot device availableCorrect

'No boot device available' is the BIOS-level error displayed when POST completes but the firmware cannot find any drive or media to boot from. Because the hard drive is not recognized at all, the system cannot progress further and stops at this firmware-level message.

COperating system not found

'Operating system not found' indicates the BIOS found a drive but could not locate a valid OS partition on it, which requires the drive to first be recognized.

DBIOS ROM checksum error

BIOS ROM checksum error indicates corrupted BIOS firmware and is unrelated to hard drive detection or boot device availability.

Concept tested: BIOS POST error messages for missing boot devices

Source: https://www.comptia.org/certifications/a

Topics

#no boot device#hard drive not recognized#POST error#boot diagnostics

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