I just bought an HP g series laptop from Best Buy and, upon booting it the first time, gave me a ‘No OS, please use boot disk’ message.
I powered down, booted back up normally.
This morning, it did the same thing again, but took 3 shut downs to fix the issue.
Now, aside from not buying a laptop from Best Buy, has anyone had this experience? I’m going back to the store today, but I’m curious as hell to know what’s going on with it. I’ve never experienced this type of issue before.
Sounds like either a bad HD or the boot device selection in the BIOS. Normally the boot selection is fall-through; try the first device, if no go, try the second choice, etc., but not always. Sometimes, boot devices can be excluded. It should usually be set to HDD or HD1 or whatever your C: drive is named in the BIOS. Other choices may be named Network, CD-ROM, USB and the like. I’d look at that first, it’s quick and easy.
You do know that it will work perfectly when you try it at BB, don’t you? 
Ditto, except you want your boot order to check the disk drive or USB slots first, before booting from your HD.
It definitely sounds like it may be a hardware problem with your HD, check if it’s installed properly and secure then check your BIOS settings.
I have no doubt in my mind about that one.
Thanks for info, I didn’t think to check the BIOS since the OS there is no boot disk included with these wonderful BB machines.
You obviously only have the one boot device and that is the hard drive. The boot file might be corrupted, but it works for you eventually. Therefore, I put my money on a faulty cable connection. I have had that very problems with old IDE cables and periodically I would remove and replace them. With a laptop, removing and replacing the drive would be a very simple task and that’s where I would start.