Hard Drive Short DST Check: FAILED. failure ID: "64P6XH-87P801-MFPX7G-60Q903"

[TylerBlevins]

Yesterday my HP Pavillion 14-av005la (energy star) displayed the "unmountable boot error" and would keep restarting until I forcefully turned it off.

However it is worth mentioning the computer would not do this inside the BIOS, UEFI options or inside automatic repair.

I ran system diagnostics (F2), and conducted a system test. 

The laptop did not pass the test because  Hard Drive Short DST Check: FAILED.

And it displayed the following failure ID: "64P6XH-87P801-MFPX7G-60Q903"

I've tried messing with some setting in the bios, multiple USB installations, different USB's, but so far no luck.

I can´t seem to find the failure ID means.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

You are missing a character from the first string of the code.

The code is 4 x 6 characters long.

[TylerBlevins]

thank you for bringing that to my attention. I have now corrected it.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Here is the failure report generated by the code you posted, minus your notebook's serial number.

Failure Information

Failure ID Tag Checksum HP Serial Number Test Date Failure Code Device Includes Error Message

64P6XH-87P801-MFPX7G-60Q903

OK

0000000000

1/1/16

303

Storage

Floppy Drive, Hard Drive, Memory Drive, Optical Drive, SCSI, Tape Drive

Hard Disk 1 Quick Test Failure

You will need to install a new hard drive and reinstall the operating system.

Below is the link to the service manual where you can find the hard drive removal and replacement procedure.

HP Pavilion Notebook PC (model numbers 14-av001 through 14-av099) Maintenance and Service GuideIMPOR...

You may want to consider replacing the 2.5" mechanical hard drive with a better performing 2.5' solid state drive (SSD).

After you replace the drive, you should be able to make a bootable USB recovery drive with the cloud recovery tool.

You will need to have access to another Windows PC running Windows 7 64 bit or newer and a 32 GB USB flash drive to create the recovery media.

Here is an info link for how to use the utility.

HP Consumer PCs - Using the HP Cloud Recovery Tool (Windows 10) | HP® Customer Support

[TylerBlevins]

I swapped the old mechanical drive for a brand new SSD and tried installing a fresh copy of Windows 10, the setup went well and no sudden restarts happened while installing windows  from the USB.

However just after the installer finished it freezes for less than a second and restarts, then the HP logo appears and eventually a Windows message "getting devices ready", but it freezes again for a brief second and restarts, then the HP logo appears (no "getting devices ready" this time, that only happens after first restart when installing windows) and the loading icon would freeze briefly and the computer restarts, so on until I'm forced to turn it off...

It is worth noting that inside the Windows 10 installer, the bios, UEFI options, etc, the computer does not restart like this. 

I ran HP PC Hardware system diagnostics UEFI (f2) BIOS version 1.16.0.0 and performed an extensive Hard Drive check.  

SMART CHECK: PASSED

Long DST: NOT AVAILABLE (1: NOT AVAILABLE)

I tried System Recovery (F11), and it says "Your PC/Device needs to be repaired"

File: /BCD

Error code 0xc0000098

I tried installing windows from different USB's, no luck. I tried installing windows 7 but it would freeze the second the windows logo appeared. I tried installing windows 10 via safe mode; nothing.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

Unfortunately, I don't know what the problem could be.

If you are installing W7 from a USB you have to make sure you boot the installation flash drive from the PC's USB 2 port.

You also need to have legacy mode enabled and secure boot disabled, as W7 is not compatible with secure boot.

Regarding W10, the only suggestion I can offer would be to download the ISO file instead of having the media creation tool make the USB flash drive and then use the free Rufus utility to make the USB flash drive for you.

Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way

Select the GPT partition style and boot the flash drive from the EFI USB boot device.

There could be a major hardware issue like a faulty SATA cable/connector or even a bad drive controller itself.

There is no telling.

[TylerBlevins · Accepted solution]

After some more tinkering and countless hours of testing, I manages to find the what worked for me:

To verify if it was a hardware issue or a short I opened the laptop and cleaned the components extensively just in case some piece of gunk was causing the whole system to short out, this changed nothing.

I then tried installing Pop OS and  shockingly Pop OS worked flawlessly, meaning that the problem had to be with the windows installation. 

As it turns out the solution to my problem was disabling safe boot and enabling legacy mode from the BIOS (It confuses me why legacy mode made such a drastic difference when installing windows 10 in my case).

Thank you for your support and fast responses. Much appreciated.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Glad you were able to get your notebook back up and running again.