Reboot and select proper boot device...

-Maverick-

-Maverick-

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Had this error on my laptop all this week and laptop reboots after two mins. Ran Malware Bytes, Avast and a few other Antivirus programs. The bios boot order keeps rearranging itself. Disconnected all power sources to see if CMOS battery would lose time, it doesn't, so the CMOS battery should be OK. Any IT gurus seen this before? Is my HDD toast? It's an ASUS N53S. Thanks
 
I think the "CMOS battery" really only powers the clock on computers these days, and on laptops it may or may not be constantly charged off other power sources anyway. Don't suppose you're leaving a USB key plugged in while booting, or some other external drive?
 
How old is the hard drive? That would by my first suspect.
 
TwistedKestrel said:
I think the "CMOS battery" really only powers the clock on computers these days, and on laptops it may or may not be constantly charged off other power sources anyway. Don't suppose you're leaving a USB key plugged in while booting, or some other external drive?
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No, all USB ports and CD Rom Drive are empty. When it shuts itself down, I reboot it to the BIOS and it's changed the boot order to CD Rom drive first, then the HDD. I then click on restore defaults which puts the HDD first and it lasts two mins and reboots itself to the "Reboot and select proper boot device..." black DOS screen.
 
DJM said:
How old is the hard drive? That would by my first suspect.
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Original. Laptop is around 3 years old. Some people with this error said to pull and reinsert the HDD, which I did. Some had success being a bad connection to the mother board. Any idea who stocks ASUS laptop hard drives or do I have to go to ASUS themselves?
 
question have you been using an external had disk at all?

Here is my suggestion and its going seem weird but do it. Pull your laptop battery out and leave it without power for 24 hrs

Also the Hard disk is generic you don't need a specific ASUS one just a matching one...honestly if you can boot into windows at all its probably not the disk(but there is a chance)...you could perhaps try a repair of the MBR but i don't know why that would change you bios options...
 
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The boot order change is likely a reflection of intermittent-detection. Sometimes your machine is picking up the HDD, sometimes it is not. When it is not, the boot order is switched, likely placing the HDD at the bottom of the boot order. Boot order really isn't important, its the drop out of the HDD. This is either a cable to the HDD, or a drive about to die. You can always pull out the drive and stick it in another machine to see if it boots. Alternatively, put a copy of linux on a USB drive, run it for a bit, and see if everything else generally works. There are too many variables, you need to isolate the root cause. Virus scanners, MBR's and the like are not likely to help you.

Newer machines may not have HDD's in the traditional sense that it looks like a harddrive, sometimes they are just small cards/PCB's now.
 
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Two50noob said:
question have you been using an external had disk at all?

Here is my suggestion and its going seem weird but do it. Pull your laptop battery out and leave it without power for 24 hrs

Also the Hard disk is generic you don't need a specific ASUS one just a matching one...honestly if you can boot into windows at all its probably not the disk(but there is a chance)...you could perhaps try a repair of the MBR but i don't know why that would change you bios options...
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Yes, been using 3 TB external hard drive.

I unplugged and removed battery overnight already.

It does boot into Windows.. in both safe mode and normal. Run any program and it lasts two mins and shuts itself down and returns to the black DOS screen with "Reboot and select proper boot device error". Bios is then changed to 1) DVD Rom 2) Realtek router 3) HDD. I hit reset to defaults, it moves HDD to position 1, DVD to boot position 2 and the whole thing repeats.
 
smergy said:
The boot order change is likely a reflection of intermittent-detection. Sometimes your machine is picking up the HDD, sometimes it is not. When it is not, the boot order is switched, likely placing the HDD at the bottom of the boot order. Boot order really isn't important, its the drop out of the HDD. This is either a cable to the HDD, or a drive about to die. You can always pull out the drive and stick it in another machine to see if it boots. Alternatively, put a copy of linux on a USB drive, run it for a bit, and see if everything else generally works. There are too many variables, you need to isolate the root cause. Virus scanners, MBR's and the like are not likely to help you.

Newer machines may not have HDD's in the traditional sense that it looks like a harddrive, sometimes they are just small cards/PCB's now.
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Ok, I'll grab a new HDD and see if that does the trick. I've read other testimonials on this error, and a new HDD never fixed their laptops. Makes sense tho that it's either a HDD, SATA cable, or motherboard. Is there any way to view the MBR? Is there an autoexec.bat file in these newer machines that could have been rearranged by a virus? One thing that was suspect was that it wouldn't allow any Antivirus program to run. Blocked them all. Like code was written to do this. I got Hitman Pro to run and it removed a bunch of pop up viruses. It rebooted and did this:

Edit

This sounds more like a virus infected the MBR as my Visa got hit with a bunch of bogus charges last week. I thought I was protected with both paid versions of Malware Bytes and Avast running scans constantly and running in the background.
 
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I have seen this when you plug the external hard disk it changes the boot order. Don't know why or how. You can try disabling that external HD from the BIOS. Do that before you spend money on a Hard disk. I honestly doubt the HDD is faulty always possible.
 
Two50noob said:
I have seen this when you plug the external hard disk it changes the boot order. Don't know why or how. You can try disabling that external HD from the BIOS. Do that before you spend money on a Hard disk. I honestly doubt the HDD is faulty always possible.
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It doesn't show the external hard drive in the bios.

Would system restore work at this point to repair MBR or is it too far gone?
 
The MBR is simply information on where the machine should look to start running windows. Once you see a windows loading screen, it is not likely to be the MBR. There is no autoexec.bat, that was back when windows used to run on top of DOS, which hasn't been the case for a while. start -> run -> msconfig if you want to play around with what boots. The fact you still get a reboot after 2 min in safe mode suggests something fairly serious. Safe mode runs with a minimal set of drivers and requirements. I still suggest getting a USB key, putting linux on to it (check out http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/), this will creat a bootable USB key for you. If this runs fine, its either the drive or something on the drive. This will give you a better understanding where to look. It could be something else, or 2 issues, i.e if your CPU fan is weak/plugged, it could be overheating and rebooting. Usually you get a blue screen or a lockup, but thats not always the case.

Work on isolating the variables.
 
MLadin said:
It doesn't show the external hard drive in the bios.?
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It may only show when it's connect get it to boot into windows, leave it connect reboot into your bios and see if it's there..then if it is move it to the bottom of the boot order.

It's trying to boot from something and that something isn't Bootable
 
MLadin said:
Yes, been using 3 TB external hard drive.

I unplugged and removed battery overnight already.

It does boot into Windows.. in both safe mode and normal. Run any program and it lasts two mins and shuts itself down and returns to the black DOS screen with "Reboot and select proper boot device error". Bios is then changed to 1) DVD Rom 2) Realtek router 3) HDD. I hit reset to defaults, it moves HDD to position 1, DVD to boot position 2 and the whole thing repeats.
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Oooohhh... I misunderstood your first post. While it's technically possible it's the hard drive, you have something else going on here. Is it exactly two minutes before it restarts? Does what you're doing affect how long it takes to restart (e.g. if you turn it on and do nothing, will it restart?) A shop would probably call this a "bad motherboard" (technically likely true, but that covers a whole lot of ground). Another possibility is RAM having gone bad, but usually that manifests with a blue screen
 
Buy a drive from some rip off crap place like Best Buy. Try it out. If it works, return the drive and buy one from a place that isn't designed to rip people off. Costs nothing.

Sounds to me like the connection to the drive is bad or some issue with the PCB on the drive or motherboard. Have you checked the SMART status of the drive?

Any ticking or other strange noises from the drive? Does it do anything in particular before the reboot happens?
 
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unL33T said:
Buy a drive from some rip off crap place like Best Buy. Try it out. If it works, return the drive and buy one from a place that isn't designed to rip people off. Costs nothing.

Sounds to me like the connection to the drive is bad or some issue with the PCB on the drive or motherboard. Have you checked the SMART status of the drive?

Any ticking or other strange noises from the drive? Does it do anything in particular before the reboot happens?
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Thank you all for all your suggestions, I am trying them.

I have no problem buying a new drive, it's paying $199 for Windows that has me stalled. I want a new drive, clean install. My current is pre-installed Windows 7 Ultimate. Key is on the bottom of the laptop. But don't know how to get my pre-installed Windows onto disk or flash drive. Some suggestions are to call ASUS and ask for Windows CD's. Or download via Torrent, but the machine shuts down at about exactly 3 mins. Was acting so like a virus (avoiding all Antivirus programs executables) that I thought to download a less popular antivirus program thinking it may not be written into the code of the virus. So I downloaded Vipre and it found Trojan.win32.generic.bt Vipre found it in quick scan and recommended full scan but the machine goes to blue screen of death after 3 mins (Collecting information for crash dump), shuts down to black screen, flashes ASUS logo, then the error of the title of this thread. "Reboot and select proper boot device..." This is quite a popular and hair pulling error if you Google it. I took hard drive out and rammed it in after cleaning connections. Took RAM out and cleaned those connections as well. No dust inside the machine as house is very clean. Started it up without hard drive removed and installed hard drive with machine running to see if it would reset itself and detect it. No difference. It shows in the BIOS, but after every crash, boot order is reversed from defaults putting CD ROM drive first. I hit reset to defaults, machine moves HDD back to first, CD Rom second in line to boot, save settings, back into Windows, crash after 3 mins running Windows, boot order once again is reversed. I'm focusing on this drive order as many YouTube videos show that this simple fix of going into bios and resetting order has repaired their laptops. Comments are all "thank yous." Mine reverses the bios on every crash, hence my concentration on viruses. Window's Defender was also shut off (more virus activity). My Visa got jacked for $1000 in fraudulent charges from Aliexpress last week (more virus activity). The other somewhat fix for this that some had luck with is to simply remove the HDD and reconnect it. This fixed some people's machines. I've exhausted all of my IT knowledge. CHKDSK /R got to 7% and crashed over and over. I'm at the point of replacing the HDD with a fresh install of Windows. It's just gonna hurt paying the premium for Windows, when I already paid for my pre-installed Windows 7 Ultimate.
 
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Save everything you want off the old drive. Re-install the OS onto the wiped old drive before replacing hardware.
 
You just need to got hold of a copy of win 7 ultimate and install with your code.
 
You don't need to but windows again. If you have the code you can get a copy from anywhere and install using your code. You just need to match editions.

Microsoft actually offered copies for free download until a couple months ago. They still offer it but the online download tool won't give you a copy for OEM codes.
 
I wouldn't blow the money on a new drive & replacement recovery disks until you're sure that's what's wrong. Also, do NOT run things like chkdsk (especially not /r) or Disk Defragmenter at the moment - combining them with spontaneous restarts only makes things worse
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