M.2 SSD not recognised on boot

[wowthatstings]

I have a 15s-fq204na laptop which, if I recall, was bought with Windows 11 pre-installed. It's currently running 24H2 and has had all the necessary updates installed and has the current BIOS. However, it's starting to run a bit slow and I want to do a fresh install of the OS.

I have a couple of installation USB's - one created with MS's creation tool and the other with Rufus. The laptop will boot from both USB's but in neither case does it recognise the SSD, so there's nowhere to install the OS. After searching the web, I found a lot of articles that say that the SSD driver isn't included in the ISO. I've tried putting the driver package onto a 2nd USB and using the search facility during install but I'm still not seeing the SSD. I did notice that in a lot of cases the articles referred to NVME SSD's but mine is definitely a SATA3.

Anyone any ideas please? (and how is it that this issue has been going on so long with no proper solution?)

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

The only suggestion I can offer would be to use the HP cloud recovery tool on another Windows PC to make a bootable USB recovery drive that will return the drive to its 'out of the box' condition.

Here is an info link for how to use the utility.  You will need a 32 GB USB flash drive for this.

HP Consumer PCs - Using the HP Cloud Recovery Tool in Windows 11 and 10 | HP® Support

You can download the software from the Microsoft Store:

HP Cloud Recovery Tool - Free download and install on Windows | Microsoft Store

Since you have to use the software on another PC, you will have to enter your notebook's product number in the tool's search Window in order to proceed to make the recovery media.

Your PC's product number is 3D4D8EA#ABU.

If you prefer to clean install Windows, you can try the drivers that I zipped up and attached below to see if they will work for Windows to find the SSD.

I believe your notebook's chipset may use the same drivers as the notebooks with the Intel 11th gen core processors.

Unzip and copy all of the files in the folder in the attachment to a USB flash drive.

Have the flash drive and your Windows installation media plugged into USB ports.

Boot from the Windows installation flash drive.

When you get to the screen where no drives can be found, click on the Load driver option, browse to the flash drive with the storage controller drivers on it.

If you check the box, it will only include the compatible driver.

If Windows still can't find the drive, uncheck the box to include the compatible driver and try any of the ones listed.

[wowthatstings]

Hi Paul

Thanks for your help. For some reason the OS wasn't recognising that I had Administrator privileges so I was unable to download the HP Cloud Recovery Tool. However, I used the drivers you attached and was able to access the SSD and re-install the OS.

I've realised that I missed a digit from the model ID - it should be HP 15s-fq2045na (6W7H4EA#ABU) - for which I had downloaded the driver package from the HP website. I had previously tried this driver and it didn't detect the SSD so I'm a bit puzzled that the one's you provided worked. However, as what you suggested worked I'm not going to worry about it 😏.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

You don't need to download the recovery tool as administrator from the Microsoft Store, but after you download and install it, you have to right click on it and select the option to run it as administrator.

When you downloaded the Intel storage controller driver from your notebook's support page, did you extract the exe file into its driver folder so you could browse to it?

You can do that by either running the file and canceling out of the installation or use the free 7-Zip file utility to extract the exe file into its driver folder.

You wouldn't be able to find the drive by copying and pasting the driver exe file to a USB flash drive.

[wowthatstings]

Hi

Apologies, yes, I meant it wouldn't let me run the HP tool. Not sure why, but I've tried since the re-install and it worked OK - not really sure what was going on there.

Re. the driver, I'd already seen that I needed to extract the actual driver file and had done that. I'm just not sure if I was 'offered' and downloaded the correct one.

Thanks again for your help

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime.

Glad to have been of assistance.

I took a peek inside the HP driver file on your notebook's support page (sp146929):

HP Laptop PC 15s-fq2000 Software and Driver Details

The driver should have been in the F6 driver folder you see when you explore the file contents of the sp146929 driver folder that is created.

If for some reason that didn't work, the driver may have been in the dhcu_VMD folder or the dhcu_Hsa folder.

The F6 file I attached is an IRST driver directly from Intel from February of 2023 and it has all of those files in the one folder.

The driver from HP is from November of 2022.