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- HP Community
- Notebooks
- Notebook Boot and Lockup
- HDD bay failure and black screen.

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08-25-2024 01:04 AM
I'm sorry I couldn't cut this long story short. If this is the wrong board for this problem please tell me where I should post it.
Out of the blue, a blue screen showed up with restart countdown, the laptop restarted and the background was changed by itself then I changed it to the normal one. in reliability report it says shut down unexpectedly. The next day, I ran windows defender full scan, no threats found. 4 Days later, once external hard disk was plugged in, the restart blue screen showed up again, restarted but the desktop back ground wasn't changed. The next day, it started to take quite a while to log into windows.
Three days later, I noticed a pattern on reliability report of the "shutting down unexpectedly error " showing every 3 days for four times. I ran sfc scan, did some fixes and then dism online iamge, scan health/ check health/ restore health once at a time, all completed successfully. I restarted the lapotop and hp preparting automatic repair black screen showed up then a blank black screen would show with nothing but the mouse cursor. I tried
windows key+ ctrl+ shift+ B, turning it on and off three times, all in vain. F11 recovery hangs up with please wait screen.
F2 diagnosis shows hard drive smart check passed. hard drive short DST failed and both system short and extensive tests failed.
Failure ID: RPP7MA-899C7B-XD7X7F-60VVM03
Hard Drive 1 - Primary HDD Bay.
Now I want to try the installation image usb- repair this pc but when it comes to boot order, and legacy and secure boot thing all lost on me.. so many takes on this on the web. I don' t know which one is the way to go.
How to change the boot order and get the usb to work? Then how and when to get the bios setting back to default?!
Not to mention it's a 6-7 year old hp notebook, windows 10 latest version updated.
Solved! Go to Solution.
Accepted Solutions
08-25-2024 06:47 AM
I doubt you will be able to fix the problem without installing a new drive.
But to answer your question, in order to boot from the USB installation media, have it plugged in to your PC's USB port.
Turn on the PC.
Immediately tap the ESC key to get the menu of options.
Select the F9 boot options menu and from that select the USB flash drive and press the Enter key.
The PC should boot from the flash drive.
To get into the BIOS, instead of selecting the F9 boot options menu after you tap the ESC key, you select the F10 setup option and within the BIOS menu there will be an option to set the BIOS to its defaults.
There should be no need to do that if you haven't been in the BIOS previously and changed any settings.
08-25-2024 06:47 AM
I doubt you will be able to fix the problem without installing a new drive.
But to answer your question, in order to boot from the USB installation media, have it plugged in to your PC's USB port.
Turn on the PC.
Immediately tap the ESC key to get the menu of options.
Select the F9 boot options menu and from that select the USB flash drive and press the Enter key.
The PC should boot from the flash drive.
To get into the BIOS, instead of selecting the F9 boot options menu after you tap the ESC key, you select the F10 setup option and within the BIOS menu there will be an option to set the BIOS to its defaults.
There should be no need to do that if you haven't been in the BIOS previously and changed any settings.
08-25-2024 04:55 PM - edited 08-25-2024 04:57 PM
You're very welcome.
I don't believe that you will be able to recover any data from the drive.
It has failed and you won't be able to install Windows on it, but I guess you have nothing to lose by trying.
Just make sure you do not delete or format any partiitons.
Install Windows over the old Windows installation, and it will create a Windows.old folder.
After Windows installs, you can explore the Windows.old folder, find your old user profile and copy the files from the failed drive to a portable hard drive..
That assumes you can get Windows to install.