HDD suddenly stopped booting (no media present). Can only access BIOS.

[amygdaland]

MSI GP60 2PE Leopard running Win 10. Core i7 @ 2.6. Nvidia GeForce 840M. 8 GB RAM. 750 GB Western Digital HDD.

I was using my laptop as usual, then left for literally 5 minutes to help my mom with laundry. When I came back, the power was off. I just assumed it ran out of battery, so I plugged the power cord in and turn it back on. The "no media present" error showed up and it went into BIOS shortly after. I also noticed the fans are running relatively high/hot when it's just in the BIOS.

I tried restarting, taking the battery out/putting it back in, taking the HD out and reinstalling it, but it's still not working. I think the HD is still showing up in the BIOS (correct me if I'm wrong), but it refuses to boot from it. The boot order priority is set to HD as #1.

The HD's contents are accessible from another PC, and a diagnostic scan yielded no problems. Yet it still gives the "no media present" error on my laptop when trying to boot off it. Cannot boot into safemode by hitting F8 - still gives the error and sends me to the BIOS.

I heard the latest Windows 10 update screws some things up, but I'm not sure if my PC has updated to that version. What could have happened in that 5 minutes to create this problem? Is there anything I can try besides backing up/wiping/reinstalling Windows?

Thank you in advance.

 

[Colif]

its an MSI laptop error, that error is to do with hdd yet as you say, it checks out in other PC and is showing in BIOS - http/www.tomsguide.com/answers/id-3417772/msi-laptop-checking-media-presence-media-present.html

F8 doesn't work in Win 10 unless you set it up first, its off by default. Security reasons.

If you can’t load MSI Windows normally, you can press [Del] key to boot into the BIOS setup menu during power up your Notebook.
1. Check out the storage information under "Main" tab and make sure bootable SSD or HDD is detected.
2. Enter the "Boot" tab settings, and try different setting in "Boot mode select" item, such as switching "Legacy" to "UEFI" and vice versa.
3. Then press F10 to save settings and exit BIOS setup. Check out which boot mode can boot normally.

see if those or final solution here helps

https/forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=286553.0

I don't suppose there is a boot option called UEFI: Hard disk?

 

[amygdaland]

its an MSI laptop error, that error is to do with hdd yet as you say, it checks out in other PC and is showing in BIOS - http/www.tomsguide.com/answers/id-3417772/msi-laptop-checking-media-presence-media-present.html

F8 doesn't work in Win 10 unless you set it up first, its off by default. Security reasons.

If you can’t load MSI Windows normally, you can press [Del] key to boot into the BIOS setup menu during power up your Notebook.
1. Check out the storage information under "Main" tab and make sure bootable SSD or HDD is detected.
2. Enter the "Boot" tab settings, and try different setting in "Boot mode select" item, such as switching "Legacy" to "UEFI" and vice versa.
3. Then press F10 to save settings and exit BIOS setup. Check out which boot mode can boot normally.

see if those or final solution here helps

https/forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=286553.0

I don't suppose there is a boot option called UEFI: Hard disk?

I set the boot mode to legacy instead of UEFI and it booted - I'm not sure what that means.
Thanks for your help!

 

[nialloconnor.ireland]

I had a very similar issue with an MSI WS60 2OJ Running Win 8.1 - It began by the BIOS requesting I enter the system time & date (this suggested the BIOS back up battery failed or BIOS had some other issue and it lost settings..). After entering the time and date the "No Media Present" displayed and it cycled back to the BIOS config screen.

The critical actions required for a successful boot were all simple BIOS configuration changes:
In SATA mode Select AHCI
Selected "Legacy" boot mode
Ensure the disk configuration is not set to RAID (This was the defaulted BIOS selection on my laptop)