Hey everyone! I'm trying to fix my girlfriend's HP Elitebook laptop that she bought used about a year ago. It has a 512GB NVME SSD and originally had Windows 11 on it, but now it's not starting. I keep getting either 'Boot device not found (EF0)' or 'An operating system wasn't found.' I checked the HDD in the BIOS, and it shows up fine, and the SSD is working when connected externally. I've tried changing the boot order and switching to legacy boot from secure boot, but nothing seems to work. I attempted to reinstall Windows 11, but that fails with the same boot error during the restart phase. Then, I tried to install Linux Mint with a bootable USB that worked on other computers. I can start with the live USB and begin the installation, but it fails around 75% with an 'Errno 5 Input/Output' error. I suspect this could be a problem with the SSD or RAM, or a BIOS/UEFI issue, which worries me. I want to run a RAM test using memtest86 from Grub via the live USB; can anyone advise how to do that? Additionally, is there a way to further test the SSD, even though it seems to work fine as an external drive? Thanks for any help!
2 Answers
If you haven't already, check out HP's support page for troubleshooting steps. Since you can boot from a live USB, I recommend running Memtest86 from there to check your RAM. Just about every live Linux distro has it available, and it’s a good way to rule out RAM issues. You could also use GParted Live, which has both Memtest and GSmartControl, a tool that checks the health of your SSD.
It sounds like you might be dealing with a hardware issue with your SSD or UEFI settings. You could try booting from an EFI file. When you're in the boot menu, look for an option to 'boot from EFI file' and navigate to your SSD; you should see a path like `EFI > Boot > bootx64.efi`. That might help you get past the boot issues!
Thanks for the suggestion! I’m going to try running Memtest86 tonight and see if I can pinpoint any RAM issues.