My HP Pavilion Notebook says ‘boot device not found’? help!

[fairymjc]

Whilst watching Netflix, my laptop crashed and turned back on with the message ‘boot device not found’. I have followed the steps the virtual assistant has asked me to (press f9 upon reboot etc), and have tried removing the hard drive (I think! I’m not very tech savvy) and replacing it but the error message won’t change. 

If I need to pay to have it fixed I will but I’m aware this could take a week or two and I need it much sooner so would prefer fixing it myself! 

Any advice would be appreciated 🙂 

 

[WAWood]

@fairymjc 

You were Streaming while watching Netflix, right?  That can be really demanding on a laptop -- as it drives all the cores on mine to nearly 100% when I do that.  That can cause overheating and that will crash the laptop. 

While I would not think this would have damage the drive, you never know -- and need to check it.

If your PC is new enough to support UEFI, you can use these steps to test the hard drive: http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c00439024

If not, to check the drive you have to follow these steps:
1) Press Esc key repeatedly, several times a second, while rebooting the laptop. Do NOT hold the key down, just press it over and over.
2) Eventually, you will see an HP Startup Menu
3) Press the Function key for testing the hard drive (usually F2) and let it run.

[fairymjc]

Spoiler

Thank you for the reply! I just tried this and it says ‘no hard drive installed. please check that the power and data cables are connected properly’... 

Its so bizarre it was functioning completely fine, especially as I mainly use it as a TV! 

Edit: I just tried your first solution too and weirdly I don’t have an option for diagnostics or tools, only ‘main, security, system configuration, exit’