My son purchased a cheap (HP Notebook 17-p120mw) laptop from his uncle. I worked fine until yesterday. Now it won't boot. The original message was:

Hard Disk error
Please run the Hard disk in System diagnostics
Hard Disk 1 (3F1)
F2 system diagnostics
For more information, please visit www.hp.com/go/techcenter/startup

I tried booting using the F2 key and got a menu where I could do a memory check or a hard drive check. The memory check went fine. The hard drive test gave me this message:

No Hard Drive installed.

I suspect this means that the hard drive has a failed and the laptop is worthless, but I figured one of you experts might point me in a different direction.

Thanks in advance for any assistance you can provide. He does have some game files on the drive he would like to retrieve it at all possible.