How in the world does one boot from USB these days?!!

[Philippe]

Still HP splash and spinner 2 hours on

he fact that the only drive being recognized is the USB drive

INACCESSIBLE BOOT DEVICE.

SSD is dead...

 

[carmen617]

SSD is dead...

Not necessarily. I had a similar situation a few weeks ago and somehow the drive had wiggled out of the socket and just needed to be reseated. I stand by my recommendation that the next logical step is to open the laptop and pull the drive.

 

[britechguy]

I am definitely far more convinced that the SSD is dead than I am of any other theory, but I'm not ruling out other possible causes, either.

But, because I always work on what I consider to be "the best working theory" the repair is in a holding pattern until a new SSD is received. If, somehow, the original were to be intact then I'd strongly encourage the owner to acquire an external enclosure and start using it as a backup drive. He's got no backup protocol of any kind in place at the moment, and is not an M365 user. A genuinely cash-strapped grad student, so I can relate (even if my time as same was over a quarter of a century ago).

 

[Philippe]

and just needed to be reseated.

Sure, it's possible... but highly unlikely.

 

[britechguy]

Sure, it's possible... but highly unlikely

On which we agree. The way these modules are inserted and held in place with a screw at one end, I have yet to encounter a loose one (and I've seen plenty).

While nothing is impossible, I prefer to deal with the probable/reasonably likely first. Without a doubt the greatest probability here is a dead SSD so I'm proceeding on that entirely reasonable assumption. Regardless of how it turns out, I will post "the end of the story." But since this client has had no backup protocol in place, were I to be able to resuscitate the SSD by some miracle, that one will become his backup drive for the time being. I am not sanguine that it will be able to be resuscitated.

 

[xrobwx71]

Any suggestions with regard to Optane?

Disable.

---

I'm with @Rigo about the missing driver. I had this exact thing happen to my PC at home. My two, brand new (month old), WD SX850X just disappeared. No trace anywhere, BIOS, DISKPART, etc. After some research, I found the driver, placed the driver on the bootable USB booted from the USB and like magic, they appeared. I did not have to re-install Windows. That was 2 years ago. No issues since.

 

[britechguy]

Well, we clearly have multiple possible forks in the road.

As I've said, I took one, and the one I personally think most likely to bear fruit, and will report back as events progress (or don't).

I simply cannot follow everyone's advice, and that doesn't mean that I don't value it being offered.

 

[Philippe]

No trace [in] BIOS [...] placed the driver on the bootable USB booted from the USB and like magic, they appeared.

Drivers made your disk appear in BIOS/UEFI? Magic indeed

 

[xrobwx71]

Drivers made your disk appear in BIOS/UEFI? Magic indeed

From what I remember. I turned on my PC one day, and it would not boot. I went into the BIOS, and there were no drives. I did some research on another PC, and from that, I added the drivers for the SSDs onto a bootable USB (Ventoy) I still have the drivers at the root of this Ventoy drive. I booted from this Ventoy drive and don't remember if I clicked, moved, or copied anything. I remember it booted into Windows like nothing had happened and has been fine ever since.

 

[sapphirescales]

Sweet Jesus, all of this just for a $30 SSD and 10 minutes of your time? After the thing taking more than 2 minutes to boot I would have immediately shut it off and pulled out the SSD, plugged it into my dock, and imaged it, and while it was imaging I would have grabbed a new SSD, restored a fresh Windows 11 image to it, popped it in, and figured out if it booted normally. All in all 10 minutes of time spent to figure out if we have a drive problem or something else weird going on. You're overthinking it. Time is money. You won't catch me wasting hours of my time fiddling with a questionable SSD and Windows install. It's just not worth it. And if it is a failing SSD, letting it sit trying to boot for hours and hours risks further degradation of the drive. When something like this comes into my shop, I image it immediately. I miss the service doors too but it's really not that big of a deal to take off a couple of screws and remove the bottom/palm rest of the laptop to access the drive. It takes like 5 minutes. What I hate is when they put the motherboard in upside down so you have to take out the entire motherboard in order to access the SSD, heat sink, fans, RAM, etc. Thankfully most laptops don't do that. I got one of those in the other day and I was swearing the whole time. I hate MSI gaming laptops.

 

[britechguy]

You're overthinking it.

In your opinion, but not in mine. I find it invaluable to add to my "recognition of precise issue based on symptoms" mental collection, and on first exposure to unusual conditions, that requires time and care.

It's my time (and, thus, my money). I get to choose both as I see fit.

It's also clear that this situation has proven intriguing to others for a variety of reasons. It wasn't a garden variety presentation.

Anyway, we're just waiting for a new SSD to arrive, then I'll install it.