Hard drive blank, recovery drive corrupted, no way to re-install Windows

[Peter_Collier]

Some time after doing the free update from Windows 7 to Windows 10 the laptop crashed and became in-useable.

after 4 attempts all by different Microsoft agents they managed to get it up and running again but my wife complained that it's been slow since so I decided to have a look for myself.

when I looked I found 6 partitions on the hard drive so I created a restore disk on a 64Gb pen drive, removed the hard drive and using my desktop PC deleted all the partitions and formatted the hard drive ready to re-install everything from the restore drive.

this is when I found out that the restore drive has somehow been corrupted and is now blank and useless.

now, all I get when switched on is a black screen with the messages

" Boot Device Not Found "

" Please install an operating system on your hard disk- "

" Hard Disk - (3F0) "

" F2  System Diagnostics "

" For more information, please visit: www.hp.com/go/techcentre/startup "

The web address re-directs.

can someone please help.

[visruth · Accepted solution]

Hi,


Your laptop came with Windows 8.1 64 bit from factory

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c04471211

Windows 8.1 activation key is embedded in the BIOS chip on board.

I assume that you've already successfully upgraded and activated to Windows 10 Home 64 bit previously

If so, you can clean install Windows 10 Home 64 bit by creating UEFI bootable Windows 10 installation USB using Microsoft windows media creation tool, follow this tutorial:
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/1950-clean-install-windows-10-a.html

Disable secure boot from BIOS setup, plug in the USB, change boot order to USB - continue with installation

Windows will be automatically activated after installation while connected to internet

Additional drivers from here: https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/hp-pavilion-15-p100-notebook-pc-series/7234915/mode...


Regards

Visruth

[Peter_Collier]

Thanks for that. Worked for a charm once I realised that I had to remove the pen drive as the laptop was re-starting.. If I didn't do that I just kept going round in circles repeating the install procedure.

[visruth]

You're very welcome 🙂