HP Stream 11 will not post at all.

[jxkie]

Recently I dug out my old HP Stream Notebook 11 to use for college work and to my despair turned it on to see that it will not post. The power light turns on, and upon holding Win + V and the power button for three seconds (as stated in the online support guide) the caps lock light blinks twice then pauses for a few seconds before blinking twice again.

I don’t care about the data on the laptop, as it was running an old as heck version of Win 8, so if formatting the drive or any methods that might remove data are available then I’ll use them. 

If this laptop is a lost cause, then I can just use my acer laptop but it would be nice to get this machine running again because of its small form factor making it easier to carry around at college. 

Thanks,

 Jake

[WAWood]

@jxkie 

Ordinarily, when a laptop no longer boots into Windows, this means that the boot records (known as the BCD) have become corrupted due to a failing drive and running diagnostics confirms this to be the case. Folks then replace the laptop drive, use the HP Cloud Recovery option and a 32GB USB stick to make recovery media, boot their laptop from that media and do a full restore.

With this PC, this is a much more difficult situation.

First, this PC does not actually have a laptop hard drive. Instead, it has a memory stick configured to work like a "disk drive" -- so, it has a stick of EMMC memory instead of an HDD. This is very small, usually 32GB, so it is too small to do any major Windows Updates since Windows takes up nearly all of the "drive".

Second, the SSD, unlike the SATA SSDs in other laptops, can not be replaced by the consumer. So, when it fills up, you can't replace it with a larger one. And when it fails, you can't replace it with a new one.

Thus, you can try running diagnostics to test the drive -- but if it fails, you will have to take this PC to a laptop repair facility to have them replace the SSD. You can not replace it yourself.

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.