My wife's laptop seems to be dying after a coffee spill. They keyboard is pretty much done (some buttons enter 2 letters, some none at all, some repeat all the time) but we hooked up an external usb keyboard to get around that. It's only used at home.
However, after it reboots it also can't find the hdd anymore. That happened twice before yet it started working again after a few tries. Today it didn't want to come back to life anymore. It passes all the internal diagnostics except for no HDD found. I opened it up, took the hdd out, checked the cable and connections and it all looks clean. The spill didn't reach that deep. I put it back in as to get down (or rather up) to the keyboard you pretty much have to take everything apart. Not something I'm prepared to do yet with my ageing eyes and big clumsy fingers.
It didn't help, still no bootable devices. Miraculously an hour ago it finally managed to come back, windows failed to boot last time warning ofcourse, continue. Last time updates installed 7:15am (failed) which caused the reboot and apparent death state. I turned auto updates off for now to prevent it from rebooting again. Updated the last backup and everything seems to run smoothly.
What can be the problem? Why does the hdd have problems starting up after a reboot if everything is fine once it's running?
Is it the HDD or could something be wrong on the motherboard?