Laptop Hard Drive Issue

WimslyOFFICIAL · July 29, 2017

Okay so my friend has a laptop hard drive issue. This isn't really asking for help, this is asking for what caused the issue based on 2 scenarios, the one i'm pretty sure happened, and the one my friends father thinks happened.

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Issue:

Whenever he boots in to windows, windows says "no bootable device found"

Me and my friend checked command prompt and checked disc. and... No hard drive found

My Scenario:

His computer was having issues about a year ago with similar effects to this one, just not to this effect.

He has owned his laptop (keep in mind its a crappy dell inspiron) for about 6 years now.

I feel his hard drive is slowly degrading due to overuse of the laptop and just poor design in the hard drive, which eventually led to this.

My Friends Father Scenario:

My friend went on a sketchy website and installed a virus which broke the PC.

He claims reinstalling windows will fix it.

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Keep in mind we don't need help I am actually building a PC for my friend so I don't need help on his end.

I'm just asking, which scenario sounds more legit, mine, or his fathers? (I'm mainly posting this because i keep telling my friend not to get his hopes up with 'reinstalling windows' fixing the hard drive because it wont work but he won't believe me)

(I didn't really know where else to put this)

Droidbot · July 29, 2017

Show him that it doesn't work.

Burn a Windows 10 USB and then boot to it and see what happens

Creed1 · July 29, 2017

I wouldn't think it would be a virus. Try booting from a linux usb/windows usb and try checking the disk for any issues. If you use linux, try to see the (S.M.A.R.T) status of the disk. From personal experience, 6 years is about the average life of laptop HDD's.