Using a HP laptop, i7 relatively highly spec'd, it's about 3-4 years old, I've been checking the hard drive with windows diagnostics relatively frequently and always show up fine.
About a year ago I upgraded to a 1TB SSD and cloned the original HD onto it.
Last night it suddenly started completely freezing. First chrome started closing itself, then it started freezing completely.
I managed to run MWB which found a Trojan and quarantined it. An avast boot time scan showed nothing. I've been resetting it continuously trying to get into diagnostics before it freezes but now it won't even load.
It offered troubleshooting options while booting, I tried to reset windows without losing my files, it started running and then encountered a problem. I tried again and when I selected the restore without losing files option it didn't even start, it just said that it couldn't run.
I rebooted again and now got a black screen saying "boot device not found. Please install an OS on your HD"
Any insight into what might be likely going on / suggestions about how to proceed?
All my work files are in Dropbox and will be fine b"ah but my wife has stuff on the HDD that she'll be very upset to lose.