HP Spectre x360 Convertible – Model 13-ae052nr – Won’t Boot – Fault with Windows or BIOS?

[Morris_Ruskin]

My HP Spectre x360 Convertible won’t boot.  I originally had Windows 10 and I believe I have updated to Windows 11. When I turn it on I get the black HP screen with the little circle turning at the bottom – which can go on for hours.  This started after I replaced the fans and was turning it on and off repeatedly to check that the fans were running.

I ran a disk check on the hard drive and it seems OK.  I’ve created Windows bootable USB flash drives and if I try to repair I get nowhere.  I also tried to “install” which started off fine but when it restarted it went back to the black HP screen with the spinning circle – even though the USB is still connected and USB is first on the boot list. 

I was able to start it with an Ubuntu bootable USB and was able to back up the hard drive onto an external drive.

The odd thing is that the bootable Windows USBs only seem to work once if I put them in a second time it seems to ignore them even though I’ve told it to boot from the USB.  If I boot to Ubuntu in between then I can use the Windows USB again.  Also at times “boot from USB” has not shown up on the boot menu.  Initially I assumed the problem was with Windows but now I’m wondering if it could be the BIOS – although I have not seen any BIOS error messages.  I did a Hard Reset and a CMOS reset and performed a manual BIOS recovery [WIN + B keys] – none helped.  I’m thinking about reinstalling the BIOS with a USB flash drive but before I do I thought that I’d see if anyone has any ideas about this.  Thanks