Fix No Bootable Partition in Table at start up
For the last 2 days in my Christmas holiday, I have struggled to accomplish one of my ambition that is having three operating systems dwell inside my new laptop. XP, Vista, and Ubuntu that was the most ideal installation sequence if you want turn your PC into triple boot device, but that is not an option in my case. My laptop come preinstalled with Vista and the stupid product recovery discs will erase all partitions, turn it back into Vista brick. At one point, I face this blank black screen with a message “No Bootable Partition In Table” when I try to boot the laptop.
How to fix this “No Bootable Partition Table” ? If your PC produce this kind of weird message, big chance you have modified your Master Boot Record (MBR) or your PC can’t find one. You don’t need to understand what is this, but it is record on your hard drive that contains boot instruction. These are options that you can do to fix this.
Have a look if you get the right device to boot. New Computers today are capable to boot from numerous devices including CD/DVD drive and Flash Drive/USB devices apart from HDD. if your computer try to boot from flash drive / disc without any master boot record, it will throw this error message. Try to remove any USB devices and CD/DVD from your PC. Try to make sure the boot sequence point to your HDD first in BIOS setting.
If the first step does not solve any problem, you have to recover, restore, or create new MBR by using your operating system disc. This task can be daunting for some people, you may want to get IT Savvy to get this done for you.
Windows Vista installation DVD can be used to fix master boot record of your Vista installation. Other option is installing other boot manager such as GRUB which is used by Linux Ubuntu. You can google “Fix master boot record” to get into detail of this.
June 26th, 2009 at 5:21 am
Hey thanks for posting this, i had a usb plugged in and nothing was on it but i think it must of been trying to boot from it, thanks soo much!
Rob
July 15th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
Thank you! That was very helpful! Turns out I also had a USB plugged in.
July 16th, 2009 at 5:28 am
Ditto. You saved me with the simple suggestion of checking for USB drives. I had unplugged a RAID drive in order to make a backup, then when I tried to boot, got this message. I, of course, assumed that I had in some way corrupted the boot sector of the RAID in the process and after fiddling with it for quite a while, finally got online and found this post. It never occurred to me that the computer would change the boot drive selections in its own BIOS, but it did, and the hard drive was no longer even listed. When I removed my USB drive, it then re-added the hard drives in the sequence and booted fine. Whew. Never dreamed it was anything that simple.
July 16th, 2009 at 8:57 am
It was also got me to scratch my head, and go through series of reboot. It turns out to be simple usb drive problem
Happy to help others through this blog.
July 16th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
thank you so much i had a usb plugged in too, panic over!
August 12th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
I too had a USB device plugged in, and removing it solved the problem. Thanks!
Rob
August 25th, 2009 at 10:43 am
Omg! You saved me man. I thought i was going to break it forver! LOL. Wow. Thanks.
August 31st, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Omg i was in shock, THANKS !!
September 3rd, 2009 at 4:05 am
Thank
I had a usb plugged in!
You’re a life saver!
Thank you sooo much!!
September 12th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Thanks, was having the same exact issue, Problem Solved !
October 31st, 2009 at 11:36 pm
OMG!! To think I was going to wipe everything, or reset the HD array, when it was a flash drive!!! You should have seen my terror! Thank you soooooo much!
November 7th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Hooray…I too had a usb in and all was fine when I unplugged it. Thank you.
November 9th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
Thank you!
November 14th, 2009 at 3:15 am
I also had a USB flash drive plugged in and as soon as I took it out, windows started up normally. This was very helpful! Thank you so much for this post! I’m so happy my problem is fixed!
December 15th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
dah! who would have thought one little usb drive could cause so much of a problem.
December 23rd, 2009 at 5:56 pm
another usb plugged in, thanks for the help
December 24th, 2009 at 11:45 am
thank you, you are my hero
January 9th, 2010 at 9:23 am
i have a problem with the same error message “no bootable partition in table”. I have a dell laptop without cdrom with windows xp but windows stoped working. I tryed to reboot using the usb and i keep getting that error..how can i reboot my pc?
January 29th, 2010 at 7:02 pm
i have a problem with this error :no bootable partition on table.I was trying to copy an image clone and after i copy it when the pc is restarted it shows this message.It seems like it doesn’t boot on HDD but only on CD-ROM.I disconnected everything :usb and removed cd from cd-rom.And after this still shows the same error message.I tried every position of jumpers ,and on BIOS in b ooting options i have put the HDD only.Pls can anyone help me with this problem ?
January 30th, 2010 at 6:16 am
Are you using image clone on HDD? my guess is that you image clone doesn’t include the boot partition.
February 26th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
Add me to the “me too” list. My wife is soooooo thankful that it was something so simple as we really can’t afford to get the computer fixed (and I don’t want her using mine). Gotta love Google for pointing me in the right direction, and you folks for giving me the answer. Peace reigns in our house once. Thanks once again.
March 1st, 2010 at 1:21 pm
hahaha. I was just bout to get frustrated, then I read this, and noticed my flashdrive still plugged in. Bingo.
March 9th, 2010 at 5:01 am
Whew! “That was easy!” I had just copied my old hdd onto a bigger, faster one. And was using a thumb drive to transfer other stuff that wasn’t originally on the old hdd. I had forgotten that I had the thumb drive plugged in for like a week. At first I thought that something “didn’t take” when I copied the hdd! I would try restarting the machine to rid myself of the error and it would resume booting up! I googled this error message when I came across this awesome page! THANKS FOR POSTING THIS! YOU’VE SAVED ME A BUNCH O’ FRUSTRATION!!
March 18th, 2010 at 3:57 am
This worked for me too, but I checked the boot sequence and it was not set to USB as #1. Stranger yet, the machine booted and has been running fine.
????
March 22nd, 2010 at 7:01 am
LOL DAMN I HAD MY FLASHDRIVE PLUGED IN -.- THANKS >D
April 17th, 2010 at 12:29 am
Thank you so much! I thought I had buggered up my pc again…
May 1st, 2010 at 8:41 pm
Thanks alot!
Just got this error, freaked me out!
atleast now i know how to deal with it
May 4th, 2010 at 11:05 pm
THANK YOU! I was about to have a user ship a laptop back but a google search brought me here. Thanks again
May 20th, 2010 at 12:23 am
Thank you for sharing your solution. There was a USB device plugged in in the back of our loaded lab computer too. It saves a lot of time and no frustration
Cheers
June 22nd, 2010 at 7:40 pm
You saved my life! Just off to Paris to do two days’ training and thought I had big problems. This is what the internet is all about – helping one another. Unplugged USB key and bingo!
July 3rd, 2010 at 9:02 pm
Thought I damaged my son’s PC now… Relieved to find out that it was indeed a USB that caused a few extra grey hairs!
July 29th, 2010 at 11:51 pm
thanxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ure a savior!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
August 7th, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Thankyou so much! Turns out I had left a usb stick in overnight that I forgot about. I removed it and it worked fine! You’re a saviour!
August 17th, 2010 at 12:39 am
Thank you very much. Like a lot of other people that have visited you here, I also had a usb device plugged in. I don’t fully understand most of what you said, but however it worked, it worked. Thanks again, you saved me a lot of trouble.
August 19th, 2010 at 3:19 pm
tnx! for the help!!! appreciate it s0 much!!!
August 24th, 2010 at 12:55 am
thank you very much…though this was posted 2008 it still works like magic to date. another usb case here. again thank u and have a good day..
August 26th, 2010 at 11:23 am
I have a essor laptop without CDROM. My Laptop’s OS has been damaged and by using winxp with USB(formate the use and coby the all item from xp cd) but one of the error in my laptop “No bootable partiton in table”
Please help me what should i do for reinstalling laptop.