recovery message stating my pc needs to be repaired. How do I restore the system?

[nknav]

My son didn't shut off his computer. When he tried to turn it on, it stated that no hard drive was found. I then hit the esc button and tried f11 then f10 to restore the computer. After hitting the restore to factory settings, I received the below message. Can you please help me fix this? He needs it for his assignments and there are no computer techs open.

[WAWood]

@nknav 

Any full restore at this point will most likely erase the ENTIRE drive, removing everything on it. Is that what you want to do?

If this were mine, I would focus on recovering important files and moving them to a working PC before things on this PC get so bad that can't be done anymore.

Ordinarily, I would tell you to remove the drive, but since this came with an M.2 SSD, that might not be removable.

Thus the only other option is create boot media that can be used to start the PC independent of the internal drive.  Then when the PC is up and running, insert a USB stick and copy off the files and folders you need to save.

You will need a working PC on which to install an app and on which to create boot USB stick.

Macrium Reflect is a free tool that can be used to image and restore PCs, but it also has an option to create Rescue Media (in disk or USB form) that can then be used to bot and/or Repair your PC.

It is available from here: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

What I recommend is the following:
1) On a working PC, use this link to download and install a free copy of Macrium Reflect: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
2) Once that is installed, use the option to create a Boot USB stick (Other Tasks --> Create Rescue Media). This creates a bootable USB stick that runs a version of Windows PE.
3) Boot the PC from that USB stick. To do this, try pressing F9 repeatedly while booting to get a boot drive menu, or press the Esc key repeatedly while booting to get an HP utilities menu, and select the boot menu from that
4) Be patient ... as booting from a USB stick is really, really slow
5) Once in the MR recovery environment, you can then remove the USB stick.
6) Insert a USB stick for holding data and, down at the bottom left of the windows screen are some icons. Select the one on the right to open a form of File Explorer.
7) Use the File Explorer app to locate the files you need and copy them to the USB stick.

[nknav]

THANK YOU for your help. Now how do I restore the system? I keep trying to press f8 but the system keeps showing me the same error message.