Solved “Boot device not found” - Hard Disk - 3F0

retexan599 · Nov 19, 2023

After attempting to power on, I am getting this screen:

I have carried out the steps listed in this reference:

HP PCs - Hard disk 3F0 boot device not found error | HP® Customer Support

I have repeatedly held down the F10 key, Esc key, etc. and then ran the diagnostic tests and reset the bios, etc. as suggested in the reference. The diagnostic tests passed, but still get that error screen.

This is a relatively new OEM machine received in May 2023. Had the same problem a few weeks ago, ran the diagnostics, everything passed,and eventually the system booted up for reasons I don’t understand.

There have been no changes to the tower, internal, boards, etc. since I received it.

Any help appreciated,

POLYSIUS · Nov 19, 2023

Is it possible to boot into the Recovernment Environment. Let it "crash" 3 times and after that it should boot into Recovernment.
Press F10 and check the BIOS. For some reasons that I don't understand it changes from UEFI to BIOS. It always happens when the CMOS Battery is getting empty. Check if you use RAID or AHCI.
If you can't boot into Recovery, you need a boot stick to check the BCD.

in command prompt:
X:> diskpart
list disk
Check the disk number of your 256 GB OS disk. It should be 0
if it is 0 type otherwise take 1
sel disk 0
list par
the first partition should be FAT32 formated and appr. 100 MB in size
type
sel par 1
format quick fs=fat32 label="System"
assign letter="S"
type
list vol
Check if Windows is C !!
exit

bcdboot C:\windows /l en-US /s S: /f UEFI

exit
reboot and enjoy
Attention:
Whenever you replace your BCD you have reconfigure your Recovery.
The winre.wim is still there. (mostly harddiskvolume 4)
If you don't know how to do that ask and don't play with reagentC commands!

retexan599 · Nov 19, 2023

The only ”boot stick” I have is the original Windows 11 ‘Recovery Drive’ USB stick that I made just after bought the computer. Might that be the one you are referring to? Also, don’t know what you mean by the term BCD?

POLYSIUS · Nov 19, 2023

Did you try the 3-times crash? BCD is the bootfile from your first ESP-partition.
Your USB should be the Recovery disk. I don't know how it is configured, but you have to look for command prompt
The steps are written above after X:>
The text in bolt letters are the input commands.
Print it so you have them when you are in the process.

retexan599 · Nov 19, 2023

POLYSIUS said:
Did you try the 3-times crash? BCD is the bootfile from your first ESP-partition.
The steps are written above after X:>

Well, at this point it has ‘crashed’ more than three times and I don’t see any ‘regovernment environment’.

POLYSIUS · Nov 19, 2023

So boot from your USB. The BCD is corrupt. And check your BIOS settings first!! <F10>
You also can copy the text from post #2 to notepad and save the textfile to your USB. Then you can use copy&paste.
After each command you get a system response. And don't add any spaces to the commands.

Ghot · Nov 19, 2023

retexan599 said:
Well, at this point it has ‘crashed’ more than three times and I don’t see any ‘regovernment environment’.

I think he means, let it crash three times in a row... without you doing anything in between.
That should bring up the Recovery Environment.
Sort of like when we do ctrl + alt + del three times on the login screen, to bring up Task Manager.

Also the key to enter the BIOS might be ESC or F10

POLYSIUS · Nov 19, 2023

Ghot said:
I think he means, let it crash three times in a row... without you doing anything in between.

No Sir, there is a flag counter that will be deleted after the first successful start

glasskuter · Nov 19, 2023

I'm curious about something. Back on 11/10 you wanted to do a repair install(though you did not indicate why) You were having problems creating installation media at that time. I feel some action might have led up to this no boot issue. Could you please say what, if anything, you attempted to do before this issue began....and why.

Ghot · Nov 19, 2023

If your computer is unbootable but you don't have any bootable disk, you can use hard reboot to open Windows recovery environment on startup.

Press the Power button and hold down until your computer completely shutdown. Then, press the Power button again to turn it on. This is one time hard reset, you need to repeat this operation 2 or 3 times.

Then, you may see the Windows logo screen, Please wait, or Diagnosing your PC message. After loading, click See advanced repair options in the Recovery window. If you see Automatic Repair window, click Advanced options.

POLYSIUS · Nov 19, 2023

You can try: Remove the recoverysequence entry from your BCD and you will not be able to load the winre.wim!
But all this does not help retexan599 to solve his problem.

Fabler2 · Nov 19, 2023

As it's still in warranty I would contact HP.

retexan599 · Nov 19, 2023

glasskuter said:
I'm curious about something. Back on 11/10 you wanted to do a repair install(though you did not indicate why) You were having problems creating installation media at that time. I feel some action might have led up to this no boot issue. Could you please say what, if anything, you attempted to do before this issue began....and why.

Quite possibly, you’re right about that. I was trying to get the proper desktop to show on my screen. The repair install was previously suggested as a way to accomplish that, but as you note, never did the repair install. What I ended up doing was your suggestion at

Trouble with User Accounts and Desktop Display

I have clumsily messed up my computer and not sure how to proceed. I was trying to fix the problem noted in this thread: "Open file location" or “Save image as” opens to Desktop folder instead of target folder. One course of action was to see if a new user had the same problem. I created a...

www.elevenforum.com

As I recall, the first instance of this boot problem occurred about that timeframe; in fact, once the computer booted up again at that time, I have just left it on sleep, and today was the first time I actually powered it off and tried to boot since then, as I was afraid this problem might reappear.

The iso for that repair install was downloaded to the original user folder, but has been deleted since then.

retexan599 · Nov 19, 2023

Not knowing what else to do I went ahead and rebooted the computer from the USB recovery drive that I made after I bought the computer. The operation was successful and the system was restored to its original Windows 11 specifications. The main thing is different now is that This PC only recognizes Drive C: and the USB recovery drive. It’s not recognizing the secondary hard drive that I have built into the computer tower; most of my files are on that internal platter. I looked for a tutorial on how to get This PC to recognize the internal drive. I couldn’t find one. Possibly I should make a new thread for this problem?

Ghot · Nov 19, 2023

retexan599 said:
Possibly I should make a new thread for this problem?

Naw... ya just have to get the right person to help. Like @NavyLCDR

I like to call him: Lt. Cmdr DiskPart

glasskuter · Nov 19, 2023

retexan599 said:
I looked for a tutorial o

There is a very good chance that you either installed Windows on the wrong drive, or at the very least, that the boot configuration files were written to the wrong drive. (Windows will write the BCD files on the first UEFI drive it sees, not necessarily to the drive where Windows is installed. ) (New Intel 11th generation and later require Intel Rapid Storage Controller to be installed during the install process for all drives to be recognized.)

Clean Install Windows 11 Tutorial
Step 2 of Clean Install Windows says
Temporarily disconnect all non OS hard drives until Windows installation has finished for the following reasons:

To avoid you mistakenly deleting or formatting the wrong disk or drive.
To prevent Windows Setup from installing the boot configuration files (bootloader) to a different connected hard drive instead of on the disk Windows will be installed on.

In part, Step 11 says:
If RAID is enabled in UEFI/BIOS, Windows Setup may not see any drive(s) available to select to install on.

In this situation, you could either disable RAID in BIOS/UEFI or select to "Add driver" to install the RAID driver from your OEM/motherboard manufacturer's chipset.

AMD Quick Start Guide- Chapter 5: Install AMD-RAID Drivers (PDF)

Intel Support - Installing the Operating System onto a RAID Volume—F6 Install Method

If no drives can be found during Windows 11 or Windows 10 installation (Intel 11th Generation processors)

retexan599 · Nov 19, 2023

glasskuter said:
There is a very good chance that you either installed Windows on the wrong drive, or at the very least, that the boot configuration files were written to the wrong drive. (Windows will write the BCD files on the first UEFI drive it sees, not necessarily to the drive where Windows is installed. ) (New Intel 11th generation and later require Intel Rapid Storage Controller to be installed during the install process for all drives to be recognized.)

Clean Install Windows 11 Tutorial
Step 2 of Clean Install Windows says
Temporarily disconnect all non OS hard drives until Windows installation has finished for the following reasons:

To avoid you mistakenly deleting or formatting the wrong disk or drive.

To prevent Windows Setup from installing the boot configuration files (bootloader) to a different connected hard drive instead of on the disk Windows will be installed on.

In part, Step 11 says:
If RAID is enabled in UEFI/BIOS, Windows Setup may not see any drive(s) available to select to install on.

In this situation, you could either disable RAID in BIOS/UEFI or select to "Add driver" to install the RAID driver from your OEM/motherboard manufacturer's chipset.

AMD Quick Start Guide- Chapter 5: Install AMD-RAID Drivers (PDF)

Intel Support - Installing the Operating System onto a RAID Volume—F6 Install Method

If no drives can be found during Windows 11 or Windows 10 installation (Intel 11th Generation processors)

That has evidently what has happened; I see now that the operating system was installed onto the wrong drive.

It was installed onto that secondary internal drive instead of the SSD drive. Good grief... Right now I have no idea how to proceed. No doubt I will have to reboot the computer from the USB Recovery again, somehow ensuring it boots into the SSD drive. How do you recommend I do to do that -- don't know how to disconnect the secondary internal drive.

God, what started out as a simple problem....

retexan599 · Nov 19, 2023

And what even further worries me, after I have booted a new system from the USB on the correct PC drive, what happens the next time I have to power off the computer and let it reboot on its own? Will it then boot correctly, or will I get back into that error screen I showed in the first post?

glasskuter · Nov 19, 2023

Wow, you are in a pickle.If windows did indeed install on the wrong drive, the data that was on that drive is gone unless you have a backup of the data. It's doubtful any of the data can be recovered without paying some hi-tech data recovery company a lot of money.
The OS should always be on the Nvme drive, not on the HDD so you will have to clean install windows again.

Pre-requisite- download the Intel Rapid Storage Controller Driver from HP. https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/hp-envy-desktop-pc-te02-0000i/2100828663
Extract the drivers to a folder on a separate usb drive (not your installation drive) Here is Dell's procedure for doing this, but it's the same for HP. There's some good screenshots in that article as well.

How To Load The Intel Rapid Storage Technology Driver To Install An Operating System On An NVMe Storage Drive | Dell US

Remove power. Open the case and locate the HDD. It will have 2 cables connected to it...the sata cable going to the motherboard and the power cable. Disconnect the sata cable.

Insert both your installation usb and the usb where drivers are installed.
Reconnect power and boot the computer to your installation media. Install windows using this procedure.
Clean Install Windows 11 Tutorial
When you get to step 11 you will see this screen.

Click Load Driver and point to the location to the folder where you extracted the IRST drivers. You should then see your nvme drive. Delete all partitions on the drive and proceed to install windows on unallocated space.

After installation is complete you can reconnect your storage drive.However, know that drive will be useless to you until it is repartitioned. But that is another task. Get windows up,and working on the nvme and report back.

POLYSIUS · Nov 20, 2023

Congratulation! You are the Winner of the Jackpot!

See in post #4 I mentioned: Your USB should be the Recovery disk. I don't know how it is configured, but you have to look for command prompt.
But you decided to go your own way and right now it's very likely that you have 2 ESP-Partitions. It's also likely that the NVMe is just offline. See the diskmanagement and activate it. Shut down and unplug your HDD.

retexan599 said:
And what even further worries me, after I have booted a new system from the USB on the correct PC drive, what happens the next time I have to power off the computer and let it reboot on its own? Will it then boot correctly, or will I get back into that error screen I showed in the first post?

I hope it is like that and you should hope so as well. Now you go your own way or you follow the steps how to fix it. It's your choice.
One more possibility is to use the BCD from your HDD and reconfigure it for the use of the Windows partition on your NVMe.
But create a PE based boot stick first. It can be the MCT.