Mac OS X boots to “No bootable device — insert boot disk and press any key”
Update 10/21/2012: This problems seem to be still pretty common. This page gets several hundred page views a day. As such, some of the comments are extremely useful to look at, particularly one of the first ones from Steve. Best of luck! Ask questions in the comments and I'll try to be of help.
This is a pretty scary problem if you run into it. According to the guy at the Apple Store, it's a pretty rare one too. Being such a rare problem, it's not very well documented. It just showed up one time when I rebooted the computer. More or less, when your computer restarts, it's goes to white screen for a while and then it goes to a black screen with the white text "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key" and hangs there. Restart the computer and it does the same thing. Needless to say, when you need to take an online quiz before midnight, you start freaking out.
First of all, you will only have this problem if you had BootCamp running another OS on your computer at some point. If you haven't, then this is not your problem. The issue is that BootCamp did not unpartition your Windows disk space correctly when you removed it. It happened to me because I had Windows 7 on my computer via Boot Camp, but then I uninstalled it and then put it on via Parallels (good choice, by the way.)
After some consulting with my owners' manual that night of the quiz, I found if you hold option (the alt key) during the white screen, it will allow you to select your Mac OS X partition and start your computer as per normal. You can actually keep doing this every time you start up if you prefer. I actually thought it would kind of be a nice security feature because if your computer restarted, no one would be able to figure out how to start your computer.
As I imagine most of you want to fix it, here's how you do it. Open Boot Camp Assistant from Applications/Utilities. Going through Boot Camp Assistant, create another 5 GB partition as if you were going to install Windows again. After the partition is created, use Boot Camp Assistant and delete the partition. If you do it correctly, it should fix your problem.
Your alternative is just to go the Apple Genius Bar and let them do it. That's how I did it because I couldn't find anything on the Internet that showed me how to do it.
October 22nd, 2012 - 02:30
You saved my life. Cheers mate
October 24th, 2012 - 00:14
This just happened to me today! I was worried that I had to reinstall the OS – and since I haven’t backed up my files for a while that would really suck!!
Anyway, this tip did the trick for me – thank you so much!!
October 26th, 2012 - 14:10
Great job with this forum, it worked like a charm. Thank you very much!
October 30th, 2012 - 03:24
+1
The June 11th post by Iain worked for me too! Yaay!
November 3rd, 2012 - 13:46
Thank you very much, it worked and I am back in business.
November 7th, 2012 - 10:33
Thanks for that very valuable info
November 7th, 2012 - 10:49
Thank you very much, it worked and I am back. So good
November 7th, 2012 - 18:21
you are the savior….thanks a lot!!!
November 8th, 2012 - 10:04
I had the same problem on boot. When I ran boot camp assistant, it asked if I wanted to remove windows 7. Perfect solution. Thanks.
November 10th, 2012 - 11:10
Thanks
This saved me
November 11th, 2012 - 04:24
Thank you very much,its great to have poeple like you.Thanks again.
November 17th, 2012 - 15:04
Do you think you could upload a tutorial on youtube
November 21st, 2012 - 11:35
Thank you, thank you, thank you! Cheers!!!
November 25th, 2012 - 19:27
Hi !
S
I apologize for my english since it is only my second language. I tried your advice but when I hold the alt button, the only choice that appears is Windows ! I am scared, does that mean I don’t have OS anymore ? If I try to insert the original OS installation disc, there ain’t no place I can install it so I really am in a dead end, I don’t know what to do… I read a lot of threads on different forums but everybody seems to be able to have the choice between Windows or OS. What can I do ?
November 26th, 2012 - 14:08
Thank you very much. It worked for me.
It wasn’t the BootCamp that caused the problem for me, but Paragon NTFS. At its setup page I set “Set as startup”, then after restart I saw “No bootable device – insert boot disk and press any key” warning. But as I mentioned pressing “ALT” key saved my life, my works, etc.
November 28th, 2012 - 06:20
Thanks! Worked perfectly! Mine wasn’t boot camp related. Mine was the result of using clonezilla to reimage the hard drive. Same end result though. Thanks for this!!
November 28th, 2012 - 06:25
Also, I should note that going to system preferences-> startup disk and selecting my hard drive fixed it for me
November 29th, 2012 - 12:47
thaaaaaaaaaaaaaanks!!!!!
you saved my life!!!!!!!!!!!!!
thanks thanks thanks!!
November 30th, 2012 - 10:24
Oh man, thanks so much. I was scared shitless
November 30th, 2012 - 21:27
Just thank you
December 1st, 2012 - 02:25
Superb tip!
Panic over
December 1st, 2012 - 09:48
When you say restart are you just holding power button tip it shuts off? Bc I’ve done this a few times holding down option key and it hasn’t allowed me to choose my start up. I could really use some help. Thank you.
December 8th, 2012 - 21:18
Thanks for the tip it work good but at the screen i see
Macintosh HD and Recovery so I click on Macintosh HD
It work like a champ thanks I will take it to genius to
Fix permanent so that I will not have to press Alt on
The white screen all the time.
December 19th, 2012 - 08:17
Thanks a lot!!!
December 21st, 2012 - 21:27
Wow, genius dude! I actually had bootcamp installed on my previous drive and after I put in a brand new solid state drive with nothing on it & wanted to install a new version of Leopard/Windows I got the dreaded “no bootable device” prmompt. So it seems that it’s not just uninstalling Windows from your old drive that’ll cause the problem but also putting in a brand new drive with nothing on it. Thank YOU!
December 29th, 2012 - 11:55
Happened to me while connected to a seagate external drive. Alt worked. Thanks.
December 31st, 2012 - 01:12
Brilliant advise.worked a treat the hold option whilst on white screen.think I will leave on sleep for the mean time. Hello
January 1st, 2013 - 05:15
Hi,
Thank You!
As for Roland, I have installed recently Paragon (NTFS).
I thought it was due to my iphone being connected during the backup.
)
January 15th, 2013 - 11:35
I had this problem so I called Apple Support and did not have a clue except to direct me to Microsoft – they had even less idea. I have only had my Mac for a week so this was a steep jump up the learning curve. Thank you so much.
January 18th, 2013 - 15:10
You are a genius! Thanks a lot
February 16th, 2013 - 07:21
Thanks so much mate .. You really saved me !
March 2nd, 2013 - 18:22
All of the above ! Lord bless you!
Nafi
April 3rd, 2013 - 20:58
I wasn’t using boot camp nor was I / have I installed Windows on my Mac but I just had the same problem and I tried the proposed solution of holding down the option button and it enabled me to properly reboot.
April 14th, 2013 - 05:26
Lifesaver, cheers mate