Hard Disk (3F0)

[Nishaat-HP]

Hi there,

I started up my notebook and all it said was

"Boot Device Not Found

Please install an operating system on your hard disk

Hard Disk (3F0)"

Can anyone assist me???

[Huffer]

Tap F10 as you power up and go into setup. See if there is any evidence of a hard drive there...check the boot order page and see if a hard drive is listed. It sounds like you need a new hard drive. Post back if you need specific directions on physical replacement, where to buy a new one at a reasonable price and software restoration. 

[MarioJB]

I got the same message on a very new EliteBook 8460p with a Core i5, which does show the hard drive and this occured after a BSD and reboot because of a POST failure.    Thanks for the tip, since I will go ahead and open a case with HP.

[Clairehsn35]

my sons is saying same its only a month old

[glo-me]

I HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM WITH MY PAVILLION DV6. REPLACING THE HARD DISK, DOES THAT MEAN I'VE LOST FACTORY INSTALLED OS ?

[RobertMfromLI]

---

@glo-me wrote:

I HAVE THE SAME PROBLEM WITH MY PAVILLION DV6. REPLACING THE HARD DISK, DOES THAT MEAN I'VE LOST FACTORY INSTALLED OS ?

---

Yes - you can order a restore set from HP at a nominal fee. You can find the link on your laptop's support page on the site - look up your laptop by the product *number* or serial number (both located on the bottom).

SITE NOTE: 

Sorry HP Forum Support People: but hard drive failure is NOT the only cause of this - no matter what ANY HP employee tech tells you for an OUT of warranty machine. A chipset failure on the motherboard can also cause this - thus purchasing any replacement hard drive will NOT fix that issue for those affected by such. Please instruct your customers properly in the future. The proper steps should include diagnosing the drive in another device or machine BEFORE even considering suggesting replacing the drive simply because the BIOS doesn't see it. The "BIOS" will NOT see a drive that the motherboard's chipset cannot see - and that has nothing to do with the functionality of the drive. 

I have even received *HP REFURBISHED* boards with this issue. At this time, due to such factors, the most recent machine I've got that has this issue is going back to the customer unrepaired with the suggestion to junk the machine (if HP's refurb boards are prone to the same issue - even newly refurbished, out of box", I am not going to saddle my customer with the repair cost and parts cost for a board likely to fail again - besides the fact that this will be the THIRD board (counting the original) for this machine). 

Gee, doesn't this sound a lot like one of the (many) failure types from a few years back for various nVidia chipset powered HP, Sony and other brand laptops? Perfectly good drives would no longer be seen? Hmmm... 

* I do not work for HP, never have worked for HP, but while working for CompUSA was an authorized and certified HP computer repair technician (and also hold various HP printer repair certifications), performing 100-200 laptop repairs a month. 

[jiwen]

I am also experiencing the same error.

I just purchased a 2560p from someone who upgraded to 8GB ram and re-installed Windows onto an 80GB SSD as the main drive, moving the original 500GB HDD to the DVD-writer bay.

It happened when I wanted to use the DVD writer, so replaced the HDD in the bay. After that, not only does Windows not load, I could not even go into the "full" BIOS setup. I could only get onto the "abridge" version of BIOS menu, which only allows me to view system info and a few other options but not go into the BIOS setup option of F10 at all.

With my limited knowledge on this, I am suspecting that, when the last person switched the 500GB HDD over to the DVD bay and installed Windows on the 80GB SSD, the MBR must have been left on the 500GB HDD's reserve System partition.

I am thinking, short of completely re-installing the whole HP system and windows on the 80GB SSD, is there a way to boot the SSD independent of the 500GB HDD since it is designed to swap between DVD writer and an additional HDD? I have just updated all windows updates and HP drivers, so would prefer if I don't have to clean install all over.

Hope there is an easy option to just recreate an MBR (if that is the problem) or otherwise.

Anyone with a workable solution?

Thanks.

[sr-pc-hulp]

I also got this Hard Disk (3F0) error message stating that the Boot device was not found.

This happened after installing a brand new OCZ SSD.

The Windows 7 64 bits Professional went OK and the restarts during the Windows installation gave no problem.

But then, all in a sudden this Hard Disk error occurred.

At first I thought I solved it by changing the boot order in the BIOS.

Standaard the HD is the first boot device and I changed that by making the HD second.

About 4 reboots went well after tis change, but then the same problem came back again.

What's a bit strange is that if I press F10 and go to he BIOS and leave the BIOS again, without any changes, teh system boots normally.

What can this be???? 

[jiwen]

I found a solution that worked for my case. Try it if you want as follows:

1. Mark partition active where Windows 7 is installed,

2. Use Windows 7 DVD or Windows 7 repair disk and proceed to Recovery Tool list to run Startup Repair up to 3 separate times with reboots.

To mark Windows 7 partition active, press Shift F10 when asked to select language after booting DVD or Repair disk, or choose Command Prompt from Repair Console's Recov Tools list, then type:

DISKPART
LIST DISK
SELECT DISK 0 (confirm from list this is Windows 7 Disk#)
LIST PARTITION
SELECT PARTITION # (replace # with Windows 7 partition#)
ACTIVE
EXIT

Now return to Recovery Tools list to run Startup REpair up to 3 separate times with reboots to write MBR to Windows 7.

I hope this helps.

[sr-pc-hulp]

The suggestions you gave, jiwen, might work.

Only after setting teh window partition to active I got a message that the MBR was missing and whatever I tried, I could get the MBR functioning again.

So what I did is teh following:

As this was a fresh Windows installation, it wasn't so much of a problem to geinstall Windows, but this time without the 100MB reserved partition Windows installer automaticaly makes if leaving this to Windows.

At first it looked like this had solved the problem. All went well noww and starting and restarting the laptop/Windows went without any problem.

So I thought I had solved the problem....but then, after installing Win 7 SP1 the problem was back again.!!!

Does anybody has any clue why SP1 is causing this? (and of course how to solve this).

Oh, the laptop involved is a HP Pavilion dm1-4100ed, 1 month old