No bootable devices--strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup

[kagaw3000]

Hello experts!

Please help me on this one. I have a problem in my OLD laptop. I have a problem on booting up, i got this error problem: "No bootable devices--strike F1 to retry boot, F2 for setup utility". The files inside my laptop are important, and it crashes. Is there anyway to boot in my computer and get the files?

Here is my OLD laptop specs:
* No CD/DVD drive(broken/damaged) - i cant boot thru the CD.
* Cant boot thru USB drive - my motherboard cant support USB boot.
* Diskette drive 3 1/2 floppy(still working)
* 256 mb RAM
* 11 G hardrive
* windows XP OS
* DELL laptop

Please bear with my laptop specs. i know its an old age one. i just want to get the files inside it.

Hope these will help you to fix my problem. Please i need your help.

Thank you.

[Kazemagic]

im guessing this situation.im not sure about it has a high chance of useless
take out ur hard drive and plug it in ur main pc if it supports it

[kagaw3000]

is there other way except to take out the hard drive?? I didnt know what caused this problem, i didnt even changed my hardware nor partitioned my hard drive.
Please help.....

[Kazemagic]

then there is a low chance that there will be a solution because ur laptop cant boot through cd or usb.
this is gonna be trial and error
go to setup utilities then browse throught wat option there is and post it here

[kagaw3000]

tnx to ur help muaan!

i'll try to take out the hard drive of my laptop then put in an enclosure to see if the harddrive
is still working.

[Solaris]

As you mentioned if you have your floppy drive working then you can recover using a 'damn small linux' or 'puppy linux' bootable image from a floppy disk.

http://www.wikihow.com/Revive-an-old-PC-with-Linux

[Kazemagic]

no problem
happy that i can help

[Rush]

I agree with Solaris. Use DS Linux or some other 3.5 bootable OS.
If that won't work and since its an old laptop with an 11GB HDD, it's IDE, and most PC's dont have a compatible interface. The best enclosure for one of those is those cheapie media players that have usb access.
Like this: http://cgi.ebay.com/2-5-IDE-HDD-MEDIA-PLAYER-DivX-DVD-SD-MPEG4-AVI-MP3-TV_W0QQitemZ320359950784QQcmdZViewItemQQptZPCC_Drives_Storage_Internal?hash=item4a96f0e9c0&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65%3A12|66%3A2|39%3A1|72%3A1205|240%3A1308|301%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A50
Although, that's $40. I got mine for 20, ripped it apart and use the sled as an interface to recover data off of old laptops like that. It has been worth it's weight in gold to me. Quite literally.

[hellnoire]

Rush, quick FYI... it's DSL, not DS Linux

DS Linux is something completely different.

[kagaw3000]

tnx to all to your help!

i'll try to boot thru floppy drive. tnx solaris!