My HP laptop had already been taking five to ten minutes to get past the HP logo, although occasionally it would boot normally in under a minute after several hard reboots. I followed advice to restore the BIOS settings to their defaults, and now I get the message: "Boot device not found. Please install an operating system on your hard disk." I replaced the original hard drive with an SSD some time ago. What BIOS or UEFI settings should I check, and how can I determine whether the SSD or the Windows boot configuration is the problem?
2 Answers
Restoring the defaults may have changed the boot order or boot mode. In the BIOS/UEFI menu, check whether the SSD is detected and look for an entry called “Windows Boot Manager.” If it’s listed, move it to the top of the UEFI boot order and restart. Also, the earlier slow startup could be related to a nearly full drive or too many startup programs, but deal with the boot device error first.
That message generally means the firmware can’t find a drive with a usable Windows boot entry. First confirm that the SSD appears in the BIOS hardware or storage information. If it doesn’t, the drive may need to be reseated or checked. If the SSD is detected but “Windows Boot Manager” is missing, the EFI boot files may be damaged; a Windows recovery or installation USB can usually repair them. Avoid reinstalling Windows until you know the drive is healthy, since that could put your data at risk.
The original hard drive was replaced with an SSD. Is the setting I need specifically called the UEFI boot order? I’m currently looking through the BIOS menu.