Solved: Hard Disk 3F0 error, but actual hard disk confirmed to be wo... - HP Support Community

Zweitaktmotor · ‎04-08-2024

I know this error message has been discussed several times already, but my situation is different:

My laptop suddenly displayed this error message. It originally came with a 250GB SSD which I replaced with a 2TB SSD. Both of them now generate this error message in the HP Envy, but also both of them work perfectly fine when used as boot devices on another computer.

The F2 diagnostics all pass.

This leads me to conclude that this is not a HD failure. It is either a physical chip failure in the laptop or a BIOS problem.

Is there any way to update the BIOS for this model without Windows?

What else can I do to diagnose?

Many thanks.

Zweitaktmotor · ‎04-11-2024

Hooray, problem solved!

First of all, many thanks to all the contributors, your help was much appreciated, although in the end I did not follow your more complicated advice and looked for a simpler solution first.

The following summary may help other users in the future:

- I have an HP Envy laptop, running on Linux Mint Dbian 5. All Windows installations were removed.

- While running on battery power, my laptop suddenly crashed out. When I tried to restart it, I got the 3F0 error.

- At first I thought the SSD was corrupt and replaced it with a spare, but I only encountered the same problem with this one as well.

- Following advice from this thread, I enabled BIOS legacy support and managed to boot manually via EFI, using the Esc key, then the F9 key, then finding the grub64.efi file on my disk.

- This was an ecouraging workaround, but unfortunately, the laptop would still not boot automatically.

- We discussed that this might be a corrupt BIOS issue and that some users have found a way to flash a new BIOS image, albeit with the help of a separate Windows computer to create a rescue USB. The procedure seemed quite long, but I had already downloaded the correct BIOS version for my laptop and was prepared to got through with this.

- First, however, I was looking for a perhaps easier and more fail-proof procedure and searched the repository of my OS (for non-Linux users: This is the equivalent of your mobile phone app store.)

I found the following packages as possible solutions:

1. Grub-rescue-pc

GRUB is the Linux bootleader that kicks in immediately after the BIOS. It identifies all OSs that are installed on a disk, lets you choose one and makes sure it starts. If this gets corrupted, you can still look at the content of the disk from another computer, but you cannot use the disk for booting.

Grub-rescue-pc has 3 images for either a CD-ROM, a floppy or a USB stick that lets you boot your pc externally and (presumably) repair Grub. I downloaded it but have not tried it yet as this was not my problem.

2. Flashrom

This is a commandline program that apparently can flash your pc with a new BIOS image (such as the one I downloaded from HP). It has, however many options to cater for many different hardware and software versions. Getting this wrong could have made my problem worse.

3. Boot Repair

This almost seems to easy to be true, but it did the trick for me!

It comes as a small graphical interface with 2 buttons. One says "Recommended Repair (repairs most frequent problems)" and the other one says "Create Bootinfo Summary (to get help via e-mail or forum)" There is also a scroll-down for advanced options.

The first button worked very well for me. While one might assume this repair only affects the particular disk installed in the PC, in my case it made both of them bootable again in one go, presumably by putting something right in the BIOS as well.

As for the second option, it is encouraging that there is community support available there as well. The Bootinfo it creates is quite comprehensive.

Hope someone will find this experience helpful. 🙂

View solution in original post

BeemerBiker · ‎04-08-2024

Try restoring your system and using the new 2TB SSD

Unless I am mistaken your Product ID is 1DL53EA#abu and you have cloud recovery

Go to the below site and enter your product ID including the 3 characters after the # character
You have cloud recovery you can restore your system using a 32gb flash.
It may take an hour or more to create the recovery USB.
https://d34z73bbtpzgej.cloudfront.net/

Go into the BIOS and set all defaults. Save setting and reboot using the USB flash

You will have to use the 256gb SSD to locate and restore personal documents. Attach it to a USB3 adapter and look for your personal docs.

Lemme know if it works!

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this post useful click the Yes button. If I helped solve your
problem please mark this as a solution so others can find it

Zweitaktmotor · ‎04-08-2024

What exactly does it restore? Windows? - I haven't used or needed Windows since 2009.

I bought this laptop second hand and the first thing I did was to wipe it clean and install Mint Debian 5. It worked perfectly well until this happened.

BTW, I have already tried to boot the laptop from an external source, but no luck so far. I even changed the boot order to put USB first, but still end up on this screen.

tk_srq · ‎04-08-2024

@Zweitaktmotor,

Did you turn on legacy support when you installed Mint Debian? If legacy support is somehow turned off, Debian won't be loaded, causing the 3F0 error. To find out enter F10 BIOS setup on bootup and click the System Configuration tab then Boot Options. If you see legacy support disabled, just enable it, save the change and exit.

Zweitaktmotor · ‎04-08-2024

Many thanks for taking the time trying to help me.

Mint Debian did not need legacy support when I installed it and has been running happily without it for the past 6 months.

But out of interest, I have just turned it on and tried to boot. The error message now reads: "No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key"

Again, this happens both when trying to boot from an internal or from an external disk.

It seems to me that the BIOS has somehow "forgotten" how to look for a boot device, because the disks I am trying to boot with are otherwise known to work.

Zweitaktmotor · ‎04-08-2024

OK, I experimmented some more and may have jogged something:

I found an old Windows install disk (Windows NT, in fact) and tried to load this in an external CD-ROM drive with legacy on. This actually worked. Next, I tried the Mint Debian 32bit live disk (CD) with legacy on and it worked. Same with Mint Debian 64bit live disk and, finally, with an external 2TB physical HD (not SSD) having Mint Debian 64bit installed. This worked as well.

This is at least some success that I did not see a few hours ago. But the laptop still refuses to boot from its internal drive (currently 250 GB SSD). It looks like I have to make a backup clone of this internal drive and then try to install Windows NT. Let's see what happens then...

BeemerBiker · ‎04-09-2024

@Zweitaktmotor wrote:
What exactly does it restore? Windows? - I haven't used or needed Windows since 2009.

I bought this laptop second hand and the first thing I did was to wipe it clean and install Mint Debian 5. It worked perfectly well until this happened.

Using cloud restore is a quick way to get system back running. I was unaware you are running Linux. Frequently, when doing a clean install, the boot is missing a driver to access the NVME and the cloud restore has that driver in addition to other HP specific drivers..

I am only familiar with the Rufus and Ubuntu. When configuring the boot USB in Rufus, did you enable UEFI and GPT in addition to enabling secure boot on the laptop?

You wont get much help here on Linux. I suggest you use ChatGPT

Thank you for using HP products and posting to the community.
I am a community volunteer and do not work for HP. If you find
this post useful click the Yes button. If I helped solve your
problem please mark this as a solution so others can find it

Zweitaktmotor · ‎04-09-2024

Yes, the installation is UEFI compliant. What worries me is that everything worked fine for about 6 months, then the laptop suddenly shut down and when I tried to restart it, this happened.

Anyway, many thanks. Just having this discussion gave me some ideas and encouragement.

And if everything fails, I have to buy another one. Luckily my data was safe.

tk_srq · ‎04-09-2024

It sounds like Debian has boot system files in efi partition just like Windows. If you know the exact boot system file and where it is in efi partition, then you may be able to boot into Debian manually using "Boot from EFI File" in F9 Boot Option Menu. The reason I'm saying this is that if Debian can be booted manually, that means Debian's boot system is intact and that BIOS somehow failed to detect Debian's bootloader.

If the OS is Windows, you can navigate to \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi from Boot from EFI File to boot Windows manually. Bootmgfw.efi is Windows' boot manager file. I assume Debian has a similär boot file but I just don't know if you can navigate to it though.

Zweitaktmotor · ‎04-10-2024

Hi,

Thank you for this advice, we are getting somewhere.

What you described does not work with Legacy turned off, but it does work with Legacy turned on. I get two options:

- Boot from EFI file

- Boot from Hard Disk

The second option does not work, but the first one takes me to the EFI folder where I find 4 files. I only recognise one. It has the word "grub" in it, which is the Linux bootloader. If I choose this and press Enter, my system loads up OK!

This is great, but it is only a workaround that does not solve the underlying problem. As you said, the BIOS fails to detect this bootloader automatically.

Incidentally, when this happened for the first time, I was using the laptop on an aeroplane on battery power. I was down to about 25%, when the laptop suddenly shut down. I left it at that, but starting it up on mains power later, I got the 3F0 error message. Could it be that the sudden shutdown caused some damage?

But that would not be damage to the SSD as I have two SSDs running into the same problem. At the moment, I installed the alternative SSD in the laptop, not the one I used when the crash happened.

Hard Disk 3F0 error, but actual hard disk confirmed to be working

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