reboot and select proper boot device

page type::article thing type::error message

About
"reboot and select proper boot device" is part of an error message which seems to occur when the BIOS cannot detect a bootable drive. There may be other drives present and functioning properly, but none are bootable.

A more complete version of the message is: Reboot and Select proper Boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key

Source
It's not clear if this message comes from the BIOS (firmware) or from software, but the former seems more likely since the latter supposedly cannot be loaded. Instances have been seen as far back as 2005 and on BIOSes from 2012 or so, so it is neither recent nor obsolete.

Leads
For fixing this problem with Linux, a program called bootfix may be the solution, but this has not yet been verified. Reinstalling the OS may also work, if that is feasible.