Installed into "No Bootable Device"?

Do you get the message after the Ubuntu installation?

Yes. I went through the installation process and now I have no computer function at all except the "no bootable device" message.

If you boot to the CD, do you still get the option to boot the first hard drive there?

actionparsnip: UGH! As you know I have two support requests #'s ...74 and ...75. The additional info I provided related to BIOS on the reopening of ...75 actually relates to ...74. Sorry. I'd be fine working on ...74 alone until solution to avoid confusion. Once again, sorry.

From ...75 reopening:

"I'm going to offer more info: I am accustomed, during preliminary install, to the Ubuntu page of partition bars. I estimated how much of the bar I needed for the Windows. But when I got to the "partitions area", and no bar page, I back-tracked and then resumed re- selecting LVM. Moments later, I got a small message window about EUFI (inaccurate acronym?) and BIOS. Don't know if that helps."

I was hoping that the USB disc solution for Question #402675 would work here. So, I plugged in the disc and started up. I didn't run into the "No bootable device" message. That is progress. But I proceeded to install 16.04 twice but each time I pulled the USB disc the installation disappeared and I was back to "No Bootable Device".

We need some more information about your hard disk.

Please boot the Ubuntu installer again - in the "Try Ubuntu without installing" mode.
Then open a terminal window and execute the command

sudo fdisk -l

copy/paste the output into this question document that we can see the output.

sudo fdisk-l and sudo fdisk-1 both give back "command not found"

There is a space character between fdisk and the minus character (and a small L afterwards)

Here you go:
Disk /dev/ram0: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/ram1: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/ram2: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/ram3: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/ram4: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/ram5: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/ram6: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/ram7: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/ram8: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/ram9: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/ram10: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/ram11: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/ram12: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/ram13: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/ram14: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/ram15: 64 MiB, 67108864 bytes, 131072 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/loop0: 1.4 GiB, 1459982336 bytes, 2851528 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Disk /dev/sda: 232.9 GiB, 250059350016 bytes, 488397168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: AA0FAB11-6536-41CA-8728-0003D35BACAE

Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1 2048 1050623 1048576 512M EFI System
/dev/sda2 1050624 484444159 483393536 230.5G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda3 484444160 488396799 3952640 1.9G Linux swap

Disk /dev/sdb: 3.6 GiB, 3880452096 bytes, 7579008 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1 * 62 7573919 7573858 3.6G c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

Disk /dev/sdc: 1.9 GiB, 2021654528 bytes, 3948544 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdc1 * 62 3945059 3944998 1.9G c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

It seems that you have already overwritten your Windows system. The sda disk contains only Linux partitions. Cause for "no bootable device" probably is the fact that none of the partitions on sda is marked as "bootable". This is something what the installer should have done.

My suggestions are:
Either re-try installing Ubuntu and very carefully check and answer the questions about installing the boot loader
or
Try the boot info script and/or boot repair; this might give detailed info how to correct the boot settings (and eventually make the required changes).

RE: Your first suggestion: I'm attaching a screenshot, midway through install, of where I believe I should "carefully check and answer the questions about installing the boot loader." What do you suggest here? I don't feel like I have ever had any success in manipulating partitions. On this new computer, I did wipe out the Windows in desperation because I was having trouble.

Which brings me to the future: I'm hoping to install Ubuntu, now, primarily for the boot loader, eventually wiping out the Ubuntu installation to put down Windows and then again installing Ubuntu on top of Windows. Does that make sense? Is discussion of Windows, in this case, a conflict of interest with you?

Woops. I don't see how to add a screenshot for you. It's a page called INSTALLATION TYPE and lists three "sda"s bracketed by two "free space"s.

Theoretically both variants (Installing Ubuntu first and then installing Windows as well as first installing Windows and adding Ubuntu later) are possible. The preferred way is having Windows installed first and adding Ubuntu later. (This is because Ubuntu is better in handling an already installed Windows system than the other way round.)

There is o possibility to adding a screen shot to Launchpad questions. You can upload the screen shot to any image hosting service of your choice and put the link to the image into the question document.

Here are my captioned installation option issues in four blog images:
https://installationphotos.wordpress.com/2016/10/13/first-blog-post/

I'm pretty sure I want the to install Ubuntu after Windows. But based on past (and present) experience I'm going to be plugging in the 16.04 installation disc numerous times before I'm satisfied. But I think the priority for us is to get the computer to accept an installation. Right? Am getting that understanding right? Once I get the 16.04 to accept and install I'll work on when it will be convenient to install Windows.

You have to choose whether you want Ubuntu to do all partitioning automatically, or if you want to do that manual.
In the screen before the ones you show on the web you can instruct Ubuntu to "use whole disk", and everything should already be done automatically.
If you want to do some adjustment, you have to use "something else" as already done.

I think there are two points to note:
1. The boot loader has to be installed to the disk itself, and not to a partition (so the selection at the bottom has to be /dev/sda in your case)
2. If you do manual space allocation, you have to define the mapping of the partitions to the Ubuntu file system:
Mark the line /dev/sda2 and click on "Change" and in the pop-up window select "/" as the mount point.

I did two installation attempts this morning. Still only getting "No Bootable Device" once Install Disc is pulled.

 In the first, I looked over the "Something Else" page options. I did nothing to the bottom line because it was already /dev/sda. I marked the line /dev/sda2 and clicked on "Change" . . . just to see and consider "/" in the pop-up. I didn't see "/" but I was given, maybe, ten options including FAT32. I took none of these options, as I was only sight-seeing. So I backed up. (Was the "Change" saved?) I backed up to the previous page and dumped "Something Else" for 'Erase the entire disc and install'. There were two other (less intrusive?) options. I think I also went with LVM. These options seemed the easiest route since there is nothing on the computer to save. Did the install. Won't boot.

At this point I'm feeling the faintest superstition take hold of my mind. Does it matter that I have no network connection and I have the cheapest weakest signal? So, I thought on this installation failure a while and decided to try again. This time, on page one, I noticed the OEM install. Decided to go with it. That's essentially what I want, I reasoned. Well, the results are posted at the top of https://installationphotos.wordpress.com/2016/10/13/first-blog-post/

Seems I have fewer options now. Could I have wiped out the functionality of my harddrive or something?

Just to identify possible options for further steps:

Do you have a possibility to connect your computer to the internet?

I can get a signal but when when a package of updates comes around my download meter says it will be hours or days before completion by which time my gig allotment will have run out.

I gotta tell ya, my hope is running out. I've devoted too much time, thought and energy at this point.

What result do you get when you try installing, and if you select "Use whole disk" and no additional selection (do not select encryption etc.)

Have you enabled secure boot in the BIOS settings?

I got the same negative result with your suggestion. The BIOS was ok.

The good news is I don't have kids. So I don't have to worry about their future in a world of extinctions, climate change and totalitarianism . . . . I'll work on my Ubuntu install instead.

I suggest that you boot into the installer again (in the "Try Ubuntu without installing" mode),
and then run the boot-info script, see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Info

http://paste2.org/U3nhPFHZ

I do not see errors in the output (just the confirmation "No boot loader is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda.")

I suggest that you now try boot-repair, see https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair