No boot device found - SSD not found

[TheFaceMan]

My laptop bluescreened last night. When it rebooted it couldn't see the SSD which has Windows on it. Startup just gives an 3F0 error with the message "Boot device not found". I tried troubleshooting - hard reset, disk check, all the repair options I could find. I even took the back off and reseated both drives. 

The diagnostics only saw one drive (the HDD), which passed all the tests (but isn't bootable and doesn't have an OS on it). 

The "HP System Diagnostics UEFI or HP UEFI Support Environment" could see the SSD (run from a USB stick, with the HDD removed) and it passed all tests, but it seems that UEFI can't connect at all to the SSD. The restore to factory settings won't even work, because I can't get it to see the SSD which has Windows installed.

Any help or ideas much appreciated!

[DavidSMP]

@TheFaceMan,

Thank you for stopping by the Hp support forums and a good day to you. I have reviewed the case will gladly assist you here. I also see that you've posted for the first time and it is an absolute honor to share this space with you. Your excellent troubleshooting skills and great attention to detail are amply appreciated. Kudos to you for that.

• DId this occur after a power outage or surge?
• Was this caused by an update that could have happened before the blue screen?
• Is it an SSD that came with the computer or a third-party SSD installed by you?

Let me keep you posted about a few things here.

• There is more to it than meets the eye and the issue looks hardware related.
• If you've upgraded the SSD by using a third party SSD drive then contact a local technician by removing the SSD and connecting it to another computer to check if that works to isolate the issue correctly.
• Also, remove the SSD on this computer and reinstall windows on the hard drive and check if the issue gets resolved.
• You could also remove the hard drive and reinstall windows on the SSD and check if it gets fixed.
• This way the issue can be isolated and the conflicts can be identified.
• You will need to use recovery media from a USB drive to perform a recovery on the computer. 

Good luck and keep me posted about the developments. If this helps, please mark this as “Accepted Solution” as it will help several others with the same issue and give the post a Kudos for my efforts to help. Thank you and have a great week ahead. 🙂

[TheFaceMan]

Hi David, thanks for your comprehensive reply.

• As far as I am aware there was no issue with the power - nothing else was affected.
• I hadn't run any updates in the day before the blue screen, and I had been using the computer for at least a couple of hours before it happened.
• It is the SSD that came with the computer - I hadn't removed the base plate or made any modifications until this issue came up.

If I remove the hard drive then the SSD is still not recognized, so I cannot install Windows onto it. The HDD seems to be working fine, and I have no reason to believe that I couldn't install Windows onto it, but that would only be half a solution - by the time I had set Windows up and transferred files etc. I should hopefully have a new SSD, one way or another, and I'd just need to do the same thing again.

Thanks again

[DavidSMP]

@TheFaceMan,

I read your super quick response and it is awesome to hear from you again. Your brilliant efforts and a great appetite to get to the bottom of things are amply appreciated. I understand where you come from. That is the way to see things at the moment. 

It has been an absolute honor to share this space with you and I hope things work out well. If at all this helped, then to simply say thanks, please click the "Thumbs Up" button to give me a Kudos to appreciate my efforts to help. If this helps, please mark this as “Accepted Solution” as it will help several others with the same issue to get it resolved without hassles.

Take care and have a blessed year ahead. and stay healthy 🙂

 Cheers!