Help please!!

marcarm

My son bought his laptop to me as something had gone wrong with it, every time he switched it on it said 'Boot device not found. Please install an operating system on your hard disk.'

I have W10 on a USB, but when I boot using that, it tries to install and I get to the option where I can select either repair or custom install etc. I select custom as Windows is not on the drive, but then it says 'we couldn't find any drives etc'. Tried to find the drivers for the hard disk, but the only ones I can see are .exe files and it will not recognise them when I browse for them.

Using a google guide, I tried to use the command prompt and List Disk, and the only thing it picked up was the USB that W10 is on, so it can't see the HDD to install it on.

Plugged the HDD into another laptop and it sees that, so the drive works but not sure what I can do to get my sons laptop to see it so I can install W10 on it.

In BIOS, I have:

UEFI boot order
OS boot manager
Internal CD/DVD drive
USB diskette on USB hard disk
USB CD/DVD drive
Network adapter

The legacy boot order is greyed out.

I even tried another HDD that I have in it and got the same error message Any ideas at all?

bengalknights

Have you checked if the relevant sata is working on the motherboard?

AndyPix

If this HDD used to work in the laptop, and still works in another pc, and you made no changes to the BIOS prior to this happening - then this is a hardware fault.


Either the SATA cable, or the socket on the motherboard.


Replace the cable first (borrow one from another machine before buying one - just to confirm that is the issue)

marcarm

Thanks, I assume the sata cable is easy to change?

AndyPix

Yes, that will be the easy bit..


Just be careful though opening up the laptop.
Some have very short cables with very thin wires connecting the stuff in the front to the stuff in the back and can snap very easily.


Best idea would be to search youtube for a "breakdown" video for your model of laptop.
Showing you how to take it apart

Fightsback

Please can you let us know make and model of laptop plus what OS is currently on the laptop.

marcarm

It is a HP Pavilion, it came with W8 but that was upgraded to W10 before it went wrong.

I have taken the old HDD out and connected it to my other laptop, that one can see all the files that are on the drive, however when plugged into the broken one I get the errors.

I just tried my HDD in it, and it picked it up but it also said that it was unable to load Windows onto that partition, so tried the original HDD and it found it, but was unable to use the partitions. A quick Google and I used a command prompt to clean the disk, and now it has found it and Windows is installing

No idea why it is doing it now, and hopefully will be ok when it has done, will keep the thread updated, hopefully from my son's laptop

Fightsback

Nothing wrong with the laptop, sounds like a corrupted UEFI partition on the HDD.

baza52

Fightsback wrote: »

Nothing wrong with the laptop, sounds like a corrupted UEFI partition on the HDD.

I was thinking the same.

I would go with booting from a Linux live cd and see if the partition can be repaired first.

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

marcarm

It's stuck in a bit of a loop now, it's currently getting critical updates so am just leaving it to see what it is doing.

Connected to the wifi and used express settings, now it's told me it might take a while!

marcarm

I'm in!! All seems to be ok so far touch wood *taps head*

Thanks for the advice, but I don't know what I did or how I did it!