Boot device not found error on an HP laptop
Check whether the disk is actually there.
- Answers
- What does the boot device not found error mean on an HP laptop?
- Topics
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- Full article on willem.com
- https://willem.com/en/2018-07-20_helping-people-with-free-software/
Summary
Boot device not found usually points at a failed hard disk or corrupted data. Run the BIOS diagnostics first: if the disk gives no signal at all, it may be broken, or in one case I saw, physically missing.
Full text
An HP Mini came to me showing this message at power on. The error normally indicates hardware failure or data corruption, so I ran diagnostics through the BIOS and got no signal from the hard disk at all. When I opened the laptop, the disk was simply not there: a repair shop had told the owner the machine was impractical to repair and offered a replacement, and somewhere along the way the disk had been removed. The repair was fitting a spare 160GB 7200RPM SATA drive. Getting at the bay meant carefully working around sticky tape, modern cost cutting that hinders repairability, but the disk fitted without further difficulty. Because the original Windows installation had left with the original disk, I reinstalled the machine, choosing Debian GNU/Linux, and the laptop worked again.