Please understand that I am not very technical, so talk down to me, ok?
I came home to hear my desktop’s fan running full speed and very loud and warm. The screen showed (I think) the HP boot screen, like it got stuck while rebooting. It showed four things, like F1 for this thing and some other choices.
I powered down the box. When I turned it back on it asked me again, and I think I picked an F key at random.
Then it asked me “Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device.”
I don’t have a boot disc for this computer. It’s a few years old and I can’t find it. So I turned the computer off and on a few times, and now it just gives me a blank screen. Not even a “blue screen of death.”
It sounds like the hard drive failed. If you can get into the BIOS, does it list the hard drive as one of the boot devices? My guess is that it will not, because it doesn’t even recognize it as a hard drive any more. Most likely, you will need to replace the drive, although depending on the age of the machine, you may just wish to replace the system.
Sounds like a problem with the hard drive. It could be the drive went bad or it could be something as simple as a loose cable. It’ll be pretty hard to talk you through what you need to do on this forum. You’ll need to get someone knowledgeable to look at it. Do you know any computer wizards? If not, take it to a small computer store. Don’t take it to Best Buy. You’ll probably get better service at a local shop.
It often happens that the cable to the hard drive gets oxidized and loses contact. Remove and re-insert the power and data cable to the hard drive. Then try to reboot. The message is telling you the computer can’t find an operating system to boot from and this is the most likely reason.
I’ve done computer tech for 28 years, all of them professionally. I’ve seen problems with bad cable connections many times. Reseating cable connections is a cheap and easy diagnostic procedure once you’ve decided to open the box. This holds for expansion cards too.
I’ve been doing IT support professionally for over 20 years and I agree. What I have seen on older Dell computers with IDE cables is that the cable can lift a mm or two from the motherboard - just enough to lose contact - and reseating the cable fixes the fault. But they fixed that about 10 years ago.
On more modern computers, the cause is most likely one of:
[ul]
[li]the HDD has died.[/li][li]that the boot sector has become corrupt. [/li][li]the CMOS battery has failed and the computer is no longer seeing the HDD.[/li][li]the computer has been knocked and the SATA cable to the HDD has fallen off.[/li][/ul]
So, how old is the computer? If you listen to the computer right up close, can you hear a clicking or ticking noise?
It’s about 3 or 4 years old. It doesn’t get moved around much, and it definitely didn’t get moved between working the day before, and not working. So I doubt it would be a loose cable, but I suppose it was possible.
It sits in a roll top desk lower cabinet. It has a screened vent, but it tends to get hot in there, and we usually leave the door open. The door was closed, and it was VERY hot.
Heat could be the issue.
I have seen this before.
Open the case, and reseat the power and data cables to your main drive.
It isn’t difficult, and may resolve the issue.
Otherwise, I have revived a drive long enough to get its data by placing it in a ziplock bag and then in a freezer for an hour or so.
Yes, it sounds strange, but heat can do weird things to circuitry.
Good luck.
And even if the hard drive is fried, a competent tech can often revive it just long enough to copy all your data to something else. Mine failed because the fan failed and cooked the drive but I got all my data back due to an awesome tech who made house calls. Good luck.
I find it useful to keep a Ubuntu boot CD around so I can boot from that and check out the hard drive. Also most HP computers have a recovery partition, that you boot from when the primary partition is messed up and use it to put the computer back to factory settings.
I’ve also had some luck moving the hard drive to a external enclosure and accessing it, but if that is the case you can just use the Ubuntu disk and move the important files to a USB flash key.
reseat/wiggle the hard drive cables (with computer off) on both ends. try to boot.
if not then see if the CMOS/BIOS has the drive listed and that it is still a boot device. if not then reset those values. if it then boots the drive is still good.
if the values are in the CMOS/BIOS then the CMOS battery, wearing out or loose, can cause the computer to loose its connection to hard drives. remove and reseat the battery (with computer off). if not then measure the battery voltage (if you don’t have a DC voltage meter then take the battery to a computer or battery store and they will check and replace if needed).
if the CMOS/BIOS battery is good then the hard drive may be bad (either the booting information (which can be restored) or totally bad).
One thing I haven’t seen mentioned is to make sure you don’t have some other non bootable device in your machine that may prevent the hard drive from booting. For instance, if I try and reboot when I’ve left an SD card in my internal card reader, my machine will go to a black screen and hang just after POST. Same on my work machine if I’ve left my USB external hard drive on.
Be careful of the heat issue - best to keep the room closer to normal room temp.
I am not a techie - just saw too many fried computers in our computer lab (with symptoms just like yours) before I put a sign on the air conditioning unit saying it had to stay on at all times. Haven’t had a single issue since.