Can't find my hard drive!
Can't find my hard drive!
I bought a used HP Omen laptop recently. The inside showed a 256GB M.2 NVMe drive (the second slot was empty). I bought a brand new 1TB NVMe drive and swapped in it instead. Then, I put Windows 11 on it. Every time the computer restarts after an update, it shows "No Boot Device Found," even though HP Diagnostics/BIOS can't find it either. But if I hold Ctrl+Alt+DEL and let it reboot, it starts up fine into Windows. The drive tests looked good too. Even though the HP Diagnostics Utility ran a full check and all tests passed, nothing changed. I cleaned out the M.2 slot with some soldering iron and put the SSD back in. Then I installed Windows again. Same problem keeps showing up. I also checked the BIOS settings to make sure boot order is right. Is this maybe a BIOS setting issue? Or are there other steps I should try? The new drive was tested fine, and it was a fresh Windows install too.
I do not know what the BIOS on a HP laptop looks like. Do you have the choice to change boot method? It might be set to the opposite of which drive is connected, and restarting swaps that setting - My old Asus motherboard did this if it could not find a boot drive. Choices might include Legacy or UEFI or auto (this one can switch on restart). I hate how laptop manuals do not tell you anything about the BIOS except for how to figure out its version and how to update it - http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c06638241.pdf
You can't change between Legacy and UEFI in BIOS settings. There is a Secure Boot option (you can turn it on or off) and also a TPM setting that works automatically or stays disabled. Even if you change those things, the problem still happens. I moved my SSD to another M.2 slot, but that didn't fix anything either. At last I tried resetting BIOS settings back to factory defaults, but nothing worked there too.
Some of them have optane memory... But they need an Intel CPU - nope, it has an AMD one https://support.hp.com/au-en/document/c06657658 Does this show an error? Is there another code in the brackets? I scratch my head. Watching a similar model tear down makes me wonder if the drive itself is broken. What make and model of drive is it?
When it shows the "Boot Device Not Found" message, the screen says: Boot Device Not Found Please install an operating system on your hard disk. Hard Disk - (3F0) System Diagnostics (F2). At this point, if I press F2 and choose HP PC Hardware Diagnostics, there is a way to run a Hard Drive test. If I tell it to do the test, it shows me options for a "quick" or "extensive" test. Either option takes me to a screen that says "No hard drive installed." But if I reboot the system again, it starts up in Windows normally. I can go back into BIOS and run those tests; both "quick" and "extensive" pass on the second try. The drive that was there when I bought it is a "Patriot P300P256GM28 "(256GB). I tested that one and it worked fine. I swapped it out for a brand new WD Blue SN570(1TB) from Best Buy yesterday. That new drive also passed both the quick and extensive tests.