HP Laptop Boot Device Not Found

[Spartan900]

The HP laptop 15-cx0999na has been running erratically, then failed to boot.  BIOS reports as Hard Disk Error 3f0.  Ran F2 Diagnostics, hard disk recognised ok, and all tests passed.

Installed a brand new HGST 1TB hard disk, same error message, Windows 10 install DVD cannot find the disk, and yet BIOS diags again shows it is present.  Windows 10 setup states, "We couldn't find any drives..."

I have tried resetting the BIOS to defaults, and also completely disconnecting the battery for a minute or two.  Makes no difference.

It's not under warranty any longer.  Anything else that I can try, or is now an expensive doorstop?

[iomare]

Hi,

What i would do personally.

Do away with the 2.5" HDD and insert an M2 PCIe NVMe SSD. You can get from your desired brand and capacity. Something like the Samsung 970 Evo Plus would be considered the best, however even cheaper ones such as the Crucial P2 would be much faster than any 2.5" drive. It will also give an amazing boost to the everyday performance of the PC.

Service manual:

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c05985643

Hope it helps,

David

[Spartan900]

Thank you for your suggestion David, but how does this get round the problem of the hard disk, any disk, not being recognised by the BIOS with error 3f0.

I have subsequently proved to my own satisfaction that both the original and the new disks are fully readable in another system.

[iomare]

Yes, it is strange. You say HP diagnostics sees the drive. So if you perform the long or short test on the drive it runs for a long while and then presents a rsult for the test? (passed)

I mean 3FO could mean that the BIOS sees the drive but there is no OS installed on it.

Could the bootable USB drive have a problem? Did you create it with the media creation tool from Microsoft on another PC.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

It would be interesting to see what happens if you take the hard drive from the notebook attach it to another PC and install Windows 10 on it. Then insert it in the notebook again and see if it boots to Windows 10.

Or use a Linux mint live bootable USB drive and see if it sees the Hard Drive.

However as i said above the best idea and the amazing performance gain is worth installing an M2 PCIe NVMe SSD. It will feel like a new PC.

Regards,

David

[Spartan900]

Many thanks again for your help.

The long and short tests both complete without errors.

I have just put a test install of Windows 10 on another HDD on a Desktop machine.  That boots up and works fine.  Unfortunately, same problem when I move that HDD into the HP laptop, i.e. 3f0 error.

I used the Microsoft Media Creation Tool to make a bootable USB flash drive, and I also tried using a genuine retail Microsoft Windows 10 DVD.  Neither could 'see' the HDD on the HP laptop.  Both media work fine on another machine.

Do you know what I ought to see in the HP's Boot Option Menu?  With Setup Defaults loaded, this is what is showing:-

Internal EFI Shell

Boot from EFI File

The Internal EFI Shell is set as the default within this menu.