HP ZBook not booting after running out of power.

[JohannesSL]

Hello everyone,

I have a HP ZBook mobile workstation which ran out of power yesterday. After reconnecting the power cord I powered it back on, but Windows just won’t load. It’s stuck on the screen showing HP and won’t get past that.

I googled the subject and found various solutions for what seems to be the same problem, but none of them worked for me (assuming I did it correctly):

• Hard reset holding down the power button for 2 minutes
• Booting and entering Windows button + B (or V)

Attaching screenshots of various menus I’m able to access.

Thanks in advance for any help on this. : )

Johannes

[Jupitero]

Hello,

It looks like your primary storage drive has produced a fault and needs to be replaced.

If you are not experienced with computer internals, I would recommend taking the laptop to a local (HP) computer service shop for further diagnostics, and a new drive. They can also help in cloning the drive contents to the new drive if the old drive is still working to some degree. The new drive will also need to have Operating System (usually Windows) and all drivers and software you use to be re-installed.

Please include your exact laptop model in your next response if you need more technical help, e.g. "ZBook 15 Fury G9". There have been numerous different ZBook models in the last 10 years, and they all have different hardware and technical manuals.

[JohannesSL]

Hello there, Jupitero,

Thank you! 

Can that really happen simply from running out of power? 

I'm not very experience with computer internals, so if what you're saying is indeed the case, I imagine I'd have to get professional help.

I will see if I can find the exact model when I get back from work and post it.

Thanks again.

Johannes

[Jupitero]

Hi,

Running out of power - or - powering off your computer is not really detrimental to its parts per se, but any electronic or moving part may fail any time for multitude of reasons only people in the electronics industry know.

Some storage drives - which all the computer manufacturers have used - have had firmware problems where e.g. it counts the power-on hours and when some threshold is reached and the counter goes to zero (or negative number), the drive effectively becomes unusable.

In any case, without further diagnostics it is next to impossible to say why your computer ended up in the state it currently is, and I recommend taking the laptop to a laptop repair shop to check the problem and how you can get it fixed.

[JohannesSL]

Hello again,

Thank you for the reply, Jupitero. 

I have now checked the model name and it's a HP ZBook 15 G4.

Regardless of that I assume I still would have to take it to a repair shop?

Question is if it will be worthwhile fixing it now as it's around 7 years of age. I believe it was (is?) a pretty solid workstation at one point, but 7 years is still a bit. Personally, I didn't have anything of value on the hard drive, but my girlfriend had a document of value stored there, so it depends on how important it is for her to retrieve it then.

[Jupitero]

Hi,

Whether it is worthwhile to fix the laptop really depends on your use case, economy, and your Zbook specifications. Zbook 15 G4 is the name of the laptop chassis, the base model may have been worth, say, €1000 and fully loaded your laptop may have been closer to €4000 back then. (...or dollars or pounds...) A high-end laptop from 7 years ago is still fine for many things. Base model laptop likely isn't worth it.

You can check the laptop hardware inventory at https://partsurfer.hp.com with your laptop serial number, and compare your laptop options (CPU, memory size, GPU, screen type, etc) to the Zbook 15 G4 Quickspecs document that lists all possible configurations.

The most important thing to consider now is the end of support for Windows 10 on October 2025 - your laptop is not eligible* for Windows 11 because the CPU is not supported. Other things to consider are the tear and wear your laptop has accumulated during the years. Does the battery still work, are all keys on the keyboard still fine, dead pixels on the screen? Fixing any of those is away from buying a new one. Any repairs done in a shop will also incur a cost. There is a market for non-Windows users and depending on the laptop configuration you can either live with a supported Linux version for years to come or sell the laptop since.

*you may force Windows 11 on your laptop in an unsupported fashion though.

Depending on capacity, a new storage drive will cost something like 50€ or less, and is an easily replaced part. Installing Windows or Linux into it is not difficult not very time consuming either, but if you are not computer savvy, I recommend taking your laptop to a professional for the data recovery job at least, and ask a service technician opinion on the matter as well. 🙂

For example, I'm still using a 10-year-old Zbook 14 G1 because it is perfectly fine for web browsing and consumption of almost all sorts of media. It was a reasonably powerful yet power efficient 14" laptop when it was my work/ field service laptop for several years, but now the battery won't last 10 minutes. I personally wouldn't fix any parts of it unless I got the replacement parts for free. Of course, the Win10 End Of Life is a problem for me as well.