New RAM not working after BIOS update

[techuser2025]

We’ve got over 100 HP ProBook 455 G9 laptops at work, and we recently upgraded their RAM from 8GB to 16GB. We installed the new memory without any hiccups over the past few weeks. But then, last Friday, things took a turn after a Windows Quality update that included a BIOS firmware upgrade. Out of nowhere, several of these upgraded laptops just stopped working!

Here’s what’s happening: when they try to install updates, they ask for a restart, then show a black screen saying the BIOS firmware is being updated. After a few minutes, everything goes black, and the system won’t boot back up. The fan starts making a loud noise, the keyboard lights are flashing, but that’s it—silence!

We’ve tried all the usual fixes to get into the BIOS, but nothing worked. As a test, we removed the new RAM, and right after that, the system came back and finished the BIOS upgrade. But here’s the kicker: it won’t accept the new memory anymore!

The laptops that didn’t get the BIOS update are running fine with the new memory. They’re on BIOS version HP V78 Ver. 01.16.01 (from August 12, 2024).

The RAM we bought is the "Crucial 8GB DDR4-3200 SODIMM - CT8G4SFRA32A," and the troublesome BIOS version is HP U78 Ver. 01.19.00 (from April 11, 2025).

Any thoughts on what could be going on?

[TzortzisG]

Hello techuser2025.

It would be nice if HP's BIOS developers came here to tell us what they were thinking when they made these awful firmware codes. There are two issues I know about, but I'm not sure if either one will help you debug this issue. The first one is that post-G8 Business laptops (and in some rare cases G8 systems) exhibit -on occasion- this strange behaviour where, after changing RAM modules (even if that means just swapping them from one slot to the other), the BIOS seems to go into an unbootable state, with LEDs blinking, the fan sounding like a jet engine during takeoff, the system completely unresponsive, etc, etc. The laptop seems bricked, but if you leave it alone (might even take more than 20 minutes) it does "its thing" and comes back to life. The DDR5 G9 Business laptops were the first ones that were reported to act up like this, but later on users with DDR4 G9s also posted similar experiences.

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/ZBook-Firefly-16-G9-6V2U8PA-RA...

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/Black-screen-and-fan-at-max-sp...

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/Will-450-G9-take-1-35v-3200-me...

The second issue is with the "SFRA32A" modules themselves because, although Crucial gives out a "guaranteed compatibility" for various HP systems, the VFM chip organization they use (in this case 1Rx16 8GB) can sometimes be hard to swallow for these systems. I generally avoid this particular line of DDR4 Crucial RAM, and advise other users here to also choose something else. It's possible that the UEFI firmware update (for some unknown  reason) has made these (already semi-problematic modules)  incompatible. Somehow it seems that the first issue seems more likely though -in this case. Try reinstalling the offensive Crucial RAM and seeing if giving it enough time allows the system to adjust......