BSOD 83 (NO_BOOT_DEVICE): causes and diagnosis

Status / error code:		Category:

Constant name:
Source:		Operating System:
Description: Windows could not identify or use the boot device required for system startup.

Could be also:
Constant	Type	OS
ERROR_FAIL_I24	Win32 error	Windows
ELIBEXEC	errno	Linux
EDEVERR	errno	Mac
ELIBACC	errno	Solaris

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MAILSLOT_FILE_SYSTEM	LM_SERVER_INTERNAL_ERROR

NO_BOOT_DEVICE

Boot device selection failure for NO_BOOT_DEVICE

NO_BOOT_DEVICE is bug check code 0x00000053. This code belongs to early boot and storage initialization. It indicates that the kernel boot path could not find or use the device expected to contain the boot/system volume.

How to read it in a dump

The important evidence is the boot phase: firmware, boot manager, OS loader, kernel storage initialization, or file-system mount.
Check whether the disk is absent, the controller mode changed, the boot driver is missing, or the partition layout no longer matches the boot configuration.
Distinguish it from later mount or file-system bug checks that happen after the kernel has already reached normal I/O initialization.

What to check

Check UEFI/BIOS storage mode, NVMe/SATA/RAID drivers, virtual machine disk attachment, BCD entries, and recent imaging or partitioning changes.
If a dump is available, inspect boot-start storage drivers and the device stack.
On virtual machines, verify the disk controller type and boot disk mapping.

References

Dump evidence

Preserve the complete dump, the four bug-check parameters, the exact Windows build, loaded-module list, and the event timeline immediately before the stop. AllStat summarizes the condition as “this result”; that sentence identifies the failure class, while the parameters and stack determine which object, driver, processor, or subsystem instance was involved.

Analysis order

Run WinDbg !analyze -v, then inspect the documented meaning of each parameter instead of relying only on the probably-caused-by line.
find the earliest abnormal event: driver update, firmware change, device reset, storage error, verifier report, resource exhaustion, or application hang connected with boot / device.
keep third-party filter, security, storage, graphics, and virtualization drivers in the module inventory; removing evidence before dump analysis can obscure the responsible path.

Do not repeatedly reboot a machine affected by this result before collecting the dump and event logs. Recovery actions should follow the component identified by the stack and parameters, not merely the symbolic stop-code name.

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