Question Computer shut down with "Locking..." message, now HDD isn't detectable

[cybervegeto22]

Hey all.

A coworker of mine came in to my office yesterday and started shuffling the computer across the floor, because it was in his way. I was on the computer while he obliviously did this, staring at him in disbelief. My disbelief turned to dismay as he moved the chassis maybe 4 inches, and the screen showed me a "Locking..." message before shutting down. When I tried rebooting, it loads a black screen that shows, "No hard drive detected." I can press F2 to continue or F5 to run diagnostics.
Neither of those work. I tried taking the HDD out and plugging it directly into my personal PC to retrieve files, but the drive is still not being detected.

The PC is running Windows 10, and features an old school mobo (nothing but VGA for output) and a 5400rpm hard drive. Could it be that the HDD was damaged? Or is there some sort of encryption thing going on that actually locked the drive? This is not a high-end PC or even up-to-date, it is from 2015 and is used in a property management office. So I wouldn't think encryption would even be an option, outside of ransomware.

What could be causing this, and what are my options?

 

[rgd1101]

restore from backup

 

[cybervegeto22]

restore from backup

When the hard drive isn't recognized by any machine? Explain?

 

[rgd1101]

the backup you should be making on a work pc

 

[cybervegeto22]

the backup you should be making on a work pc

Yeah, like I said this is a property management office... its primary function is to make orders for maintenance parts. There are appliance lists on that computer which can easily be reobtained, so thankfully none of the files are really that important.

What I'm curious about is the "locking" message, followed by a dead drive.

 

[rgd1101]

what was the exact message? don't remember ever seeing/hearing about "locking"

 

[cybervegeto22]

what was the exact message? don't remember ever seeing/hearing about "locking"

I've also never seen something like that before - it literally just said "Locking..."
It looked like a standard shutdown screen, black background with the Dell logo. Our IT dept has nothing showing on their end, and I can't find any reason online for why that message would have displayed.