Boot device not found" error on startup

Hey, I’m running into an issue with my PC. Every time I try to boot it up, I just get hit with a "boot device not found" error (hard disk 3f0). Anyone know how to fix this?🤔

Do you hear a faint clicking sound—like a rhythmic click, click, click—whenever you boot up?

Yeah, but this was happening even before the breakdown. You can hear it the second I hit the power button.

velveteagle95 said:Sure, but this was happening even before the recent breakdown. I hear that sound every time I hit the power button.

That clicking sound from your drive? It’s a sign it’s either fading away or has already headed to Valhalla.
If you're lucky enough to get it to boot one more time, move your essential files to a safe place immediately.

velveteagle95 said:Yeah, but honestly—that sound was happening even before this recent breakdown. It happens every single time I hit the power button.

If you can still get the laptop to boot up—meaning you can actually get into Windows—you should definitely back up all your files to a USB drive or an external hard drive right away. While you're at it, maybe grab CrystalDiskInfo? It’ll give you a much clearer picture of what kind of shape that hard drive is actually in.

So, I've got this HP Probook 6540b, and ever since I made the jump to Windows 10, my hard drive has started making this clicking sound right at bootup. It was totally silent back when I was running Windows 7. Now, I even hear it sometimes when I'm shutting the thing down. Look, the laptop has been running 24/7 for about two and a half years without any actual issues—no crashes, no blue screens—it’s just that weird clicking at the start and end of a session.

And get this: back when I had Ubuntu set up for a dual boot, the exact same thing would happen. Sometimes I'd even hear it while I was actually working in Linux. I did some digging and read somewhere that it might just be the drive head parking itself, so I didn't really lose sleep over it.

...Look, if it just clicks once, that's one thing. But if you're hearing it click 5 to 10 times in a row, then stop, then start clicking again every few seconds while it struggles to read from a bad sector just to keep going? That’s a massive red flag. At that point, you need to back up your data immediately while you still have a chance, then run some software to scan for and try to repair those bad sectors.

I ran a scan on this thing last year and didn't see a single bad sector. One click, and boom, done. Thanks 👍