Refurbished HP Elitebook 840 G1 Having Troubles Booting

[illyriashade56]

About two weeks ago my laptop began having troubles booting up. I would press the power button and it and the keyboard would light up, and then abruptly shut off, and it would do this once or twice before it finally started booting up. Until recently, it was displaying the error "WARNING!!! MACHINE IS NOT IN COMMITTED STATE" and I Googled it, but everything I found was extremely unhelpful considering I am not the most tech savvy. I checked for missing info that apparently can cause this error and found nothing missing, I ran a registry repair tool which didn't seem to help, and then I eventually gave up since my computer was still functioning besides the hiccups with it booting up.

I updated my Windows software about a week and a half ago and that seemed to zap this error for about a week and everything was booting normally, but lately it's come back. However, in the last two days that error message has disappeared and the problems booting have gotten worse, and it will cycle five or six times before starting up, even getting so far as the first booting screen before abruptly shutting off and turning back on. 

I ran a hardware diagnostics check, and it said it passed the SMART check, but failed the long DST and gave me this failure ID: UC0448-000AH5-MFGJLJ-61CD03. I don't know if updating BIOS would help and quite frankly I'm a little nervous to mess with any of that since I and not knowledgeable with computers and I don't want to kill my computer completely. 

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

@illyriashade56 

You experienced demonstrated a drive that was in the process of getting worse because it was failing -- and the code you have provided confirms that.  That error code means your disk drive is failing and needs to be replaced.

Once you have the replacement drive, read the information below about HP Could Recovery to be used to restore your PC to working condition:

If your PC is a 2016 model or newer, you should see if you can make a bootable USB recovery drive using the HP cloud recovery tool on a working PC. The recovery drive can then be used to install Win10 and the HP drivers and utilities that originally came with your PC. Here is the link: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c06162205

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If the HP Cloud Recovery is not available or does not work, you may have to look into ordering HP Recovery Media -- which is a set of DVDs and a CD, or USB stick, that will erase the hard drive (removing all data, settings, and applications, reinstall the original OS, drivers, and some HP Utilities. You have to order these from HP; they can not be downloaded.

You can look online for Recovery Media starting with the linked paged: http://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers

Once there, input your Product name or number. On your Software and Drivers Download page, select your Operating System and and Version. Click "Update"

If HP Recovery Media is available for your machine, down near the bottom of the page, you will see an entry for Order Recovery Media-CD/DVD/USB. Click the + symbol to expand that entry and click on Order Media for details.

Or, if you prefer, you can do the same by contacting HP Customer Support:
https://support.hp.com/us-en/contact-hp?openCLC=true

[illyriashade56]

Thank you so much for the help. I started looking around for a replacement drive, but they seem very hard to come by for this particular model. Do you happen to have any recommendations on where I could find one? Again, thank you for the help.