# Boot Device Not Found After Deleting EFI



## tripseven (Feb 2, 2018)

OK go ahead and laugh . When your done laughing...

Things were going so well until...I was trying to delete a folder named EFI on a USB stick but kept getting "Device Busy."

Then I followed some online code how to kill a process and goes something like the following:

`$ echo EFI > EFI
$ ls -a
$ df -k
$ sleep 1000 < EFI &
$ ls -a
$ rm EFI`

It didn't remove EFI folder from my USB stick so I gave up and used my laptop as normal. Did a reboot and now get BootDevice Not Found. Is there any way to recover from this?

OK time to start laughing again .


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## Maelstorm (Feb 3, 2018)

Are you sure that you were in the USB drive when you tried to delete the EFI folder?  That folder is kinda critical for booting.  If you have a recent laptop, they are UEFI with GUID partition tables.

Try booting off the FreeBSD install disk and going into the live system.  You can try and copy the EFI folder onto the HD and reboot to see if that helps.  Unfortunately, I don't know enough about FreeBSD's EFI booting system to be further help.


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## tripseven (Feb 3, 2018)

I must not have been in the USB drive. Tried booting off the FreeBSD disk and stick yet neither works. Just keeps going immediately to message:
"BootDevice Not Found"
"Please install an operating system on your hard disk."

Luckily this is my FreeBSD training wheels machine so I didnt lose anything important...other than a lot of work configuring.

Im just gonna let it sit for a while in case someone has a solution.

Thanks for the response!


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## Maelstorm (Feb 3, 2018)

Well that's strange.

Check the boot device order in the BIOS.  Make sure it starts from CD or USB first because it sounds like it's setup to try and boot from the HD only.


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## tripseven (Feb 3, 2018)

Tried to check boot order in BIOS many times but it never gets there. Always takes me back to System Diagnostic screen. Ran all the diagnostic tools and says all is well. Took laptop apart and pulled cmos battery. Powered on and got BIOS resetting to default...then back to the same loop of never reaching BIOS and normal boot giving BootDevice Not Found.

Im thinking me deleting EFI is irrelavant here as something much more is going on...


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## Maelstorm (Feb 3, 2018)

I agree.  It's strange that you cannot enter the BIOS setup.  Usually, you would hit F10, DEL, ESC or something to get in there.  But all laptops are different so who knows.  Since it *IS* trying to read the harddisk, that tells me that the hardware itself is good and that something else is wrong.  Even my laptop, you hit F10 to get into the BIOS, and that's an HP.


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## tripseven (Feb 3, 2018)

Yep, same here...F10 gets BIOS every time until now. ESC gets a list of choices but all of them take me to SYS DIAG screen. Laptop is HP Probook 4530s.

Thanks for your time!


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## tripseven (Feb 10, 2018)

Decided to fire up the ill-fated FreeBSD laptop again and this time it let me into the BIOS for whatever reason. I noticed UEFI was not enabled for some reason so I enabled it but a restart gave same error "BootDevice Not Found." Then I stuffed a FreeBSD boot only disk in, restarted and now at single user root@:/ # prompt. Could anyone tell me what I need to reload EFI and where it goes so I can save myself a lot of time starting from scratch?


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