I don't remember, but reckon it was about £500 - might have been £700 at a push, as I think I ended up going higher than I meant.

Although I'm not confident opening it up, it's true there's no harm to be done that's worse than "doesn't work at all", which is the current position, so might be worth a try as a last resort.

Edit: Hmmm. I bought it in 2019 for £629.

Edited by TLM (Fri 31-Jul-26 08:23:29)

To me it reads like an intermittent hardware fault. That could be the drive or system board or incompatible/out of date firmware. However before you open it up to physically check drive, re-seat any memory modules etc, do as others have said and completely reinstall Windows from scratch. I’d also update the BIOS to the latest version.

The HP support website (hopefully) should give you reinstallation media files for your particular machine.

Otherwise It’s fairly trivial to download and make a bootable Windows 10 installation USB stick.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

Otherwise It’s fairly trivial to download and make a bootable Windows 10 installation USB stick.

"Boot device not found" from the BIOS/UEFI screens isn't going to be fixed by reinstalling an operating system. This is possible SSD failure, and where if it does boot, checking for HP's own update tool and running it could install new SSD firmware.

If its been dropped onto a hard floor it may have worked loose a connector, its probably not an M.2 unit, as its Win10 and ~5 years old, its likely SATA, maybe in a 2.5" chassis, and something has moved by 2 mm.

A repair shop, or cafe is a good idea.

A clicking disk like this normally indicates a hardware problem with the disk itself. Most likely given the age of the device and the nature of the fault - it doesn't sound like a software problem. I don't think there's any point in reinstalling the OS on that disk.

Replacement disks are fairly cheap (£40 or so, depending upon size) and likely to be easy to replace. Do you know what particular model it is? - you can normally find online instructions on how to replace a disk.

Definitely never been dropped. Scarcely even been moved since new. Set up and stayed there.

If it's clicking it sounds like a conventional hard drive rather than an SSD (although this would be a good opportunity to upgrade to an SSD). Six to seven years is the high end of the expected lifetime of a mechanical hard disk so it's not a big surprise if it's now failing. The disks in HP laptops are normally fairly accessible so replacement should be easy; but it does depend upon the model number.

An SSD should breathe new life into this machine - about £50 for a 512GB SATA SSD. Drop in replacement for a mechanical disk.

Yup, it is conventional, not SSD.

In which case, it’s quite probably a limping / dying mechanical drive. Strange that it reported a clean bill of health…

I’d probably drop a cheapish SSD in there. Would be quite transformative

In reply to a post by TLM:

Definitely never been dropped. Scarcely even been moved since new. Set up and stayed there.

Then its possibly either a firmware in the drive fault where the computer can't "see" the drive electronically, or the drive itself is just failing.

In reply to a post by TLM:

I could doubtless learn how to reinstall it from online resources, but I don't have a copy to reinstall.

I can hear it clicking to try to read the disk as it attempts to boot. It tries three or four times then defaults to the error condition. The weird thing was that restoring the BIOS fixed it, allowing it to boot, and demonstrating that it definitely had an OS (and data, because all my stuff on my home screen loaded up alright). But the fix didn't stick, because ten minutes later it crashed, and started with the same nonsense.

That do sound like a hard drive fault if it is clicking, but not sure how it passed an extensive test. Smart test only test the electronics as far as I know.

If it is the drive, then the data is no doubt gone getting it back could be costly.

If you have a second computer you can download Windows 10 from MS website and stick it onto a usb stick.

Your best bet is to see if you can find someone close that doesn't charge a fortune, sadly it is becoming more difficult.
The other thing is to have a look at some YouTube channels and learn how fix it.