Error: "Missing operating system. No bootable device"

tthom

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For reference: Acer Aspire v15 Nitro running Windows 8.1

I made a mistake. A friend gave me a USB drive and I wanted to format it, but the USB was actually broken and didn't show up. What I thought was the USB was a drive with a name containing the word "Pushbutton". I formatted it and the computer ran fine until I restarted it. Upon restart, I am getting the error:

"Missing operating system.
No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key"

I've been working on this problem for a little while and at first suspected I messed up the MBR. I loaded the windows 8 startup disk on a USB and ran various repairs to no avail (including bootrec stuff in the command prompt).

I have no idea what I did. I know all of my files are still in there somewhere. I didn't do anything to the main disk or partition. I think I formatted some kind of partition that is related to booting up the OS.

I'm not sure if this changes anything, but my hard drive is full disk encrypted using VeraCrypt.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1
I don't know about VeraCrypt, but with MS encryption, you need an extra BOOT partition that is not encrypted. Perhaps that is what got clobbered.

If you have access to another working PC, then you should download the Minitool Partition Wizard Boot CD and make a CD or USB stick from it. To make a USB stick, you'll also need to download RUFUS and use that.

Once you have that, boot your machine and see what partitions are on the drive.
 

My Computer

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