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HP Recommended

the board might be bad, but if you got the 8 beeps if still might be possible to run the bios recovery

 

by chance did you enable the "compute" option in the bios before this issue started?

 

HP Recommended

No, i did nit

 

Hm. Idk why i get the 8 beeps. I did nothing different. 

 

 

HP Recommended

Remove motherboard battery and do all the steps to fully clear the capacitors on the motherboard (time, press/hold front power on button 5 seconds, clear cmos button, repeat 3 times, all with nothing attached to the workstation including keyboards, monitors, etc.

 

This may be important.... and do this..... put in brand new motherboard battery.  Start whole process over.

HP Recommended

Okay, thanks for  your reply. 

 

I installed a new Bios-Batterie. Also i tried to discharge the capacitors. After this provedure i put in the pwr-cable und the motherboard startet for a few seconds befor it shuts down. Normal?

 

Sometimes i get the 8 blinks. Unfortunately nothing else. The fans turn with normal speed, the usb-key ist fading. But...thats it. 

Does anyone knows what this mean? Is it posibble, that the problem are my USB-Keys? How can i check this?

HP Recommended

Hi

 

My Crisis recovery was not working.  tried more than half a dozen attempts 2gb drive was the smallest

 

What DID work

 

1. 8gb sandisk cruzer FIT

2. delete the partition from diskmgmt from another computer obviously.

3. create a new partition 512mb fat32 and I let it quick format

4. drop the bin file on I used 3.94

5. ALL drives disconnected (no cd in drive - but cd drive was technically still connected)  (easy to pull out all caddys)

6. NO other usb connected ( PS/2 keyboard)

7.  top front USB

8.  Pulled power supply out for a couple of mins

9  tapped the power button whilst  PSU OUT! (it did light up red button 4 beeps - psu failure - despite there being NO PSU plugged in)

10. I had no passwords and was installing same bios - so did not mess with Password jumper

11.  plug psu back in 

12. power plug in back

13. WAIT

14.  I took quite a few seconds to read and then a few mins to reboot a few times doing 7/8/ bleeps cycle as per the main very helpfull  post.

15. I pulled usb after than and it did its own thing no intervention - the display came up doing the 0 to 100%

 

I went through all this aside from the dropped and recreated partition - nothing until I used a 512mb new partition

HP Recommended

Thank you SDH and everyone for the info shared - you've already saved me so much time!

I still cant get my Z420 to flash the BIOS and I have a quick question (I'll put all the details after)

 

Is my USB stick being read or not? How long after reading the bin file before it reboots?

 

Everything looks ok on boot with the USB:

8 beeps

Power light goes blue

USB light is solid, then after about 10 rapid blnks the USB light goes out and stays out

and then the fans turn on up to max speed again, it never reboots (left it for 20 mins +)

 

It appears that either it is reading the USB but not able to go further, or it is reading it but disconnects the USB before completing

 

I tried deleting the bin file and watching:

USB light cycled through solid and blinking several times while PC repeating the 8 beeps

At one point it did 16 beeps!

Eventually it gave up beeping but power light kept flashing red 8 times

Fans ramped up again

It looked like it could read the USB and was searching for  the file?

 

Here's everything I have tried, the result is always the same

 

3 different USB sticks, msdos partition table, FAT32 partition (128mb to 1GB) with 512 block size

391A and 394 bin files (separately of course)

Front and rear USB ports

Jumper E15 set to recovery (1+2) (Correct as it then 8 beeps on start)

Removed green password jumper

Draining capacitors (5 second press pwr button with power lead disconnected - board lights and goes out correctly)

Clearing CMOS with button

Removing CMOS battery

Replacing CMOS battery

Disconnecting all peripherals and hard drives and removing other expansion cards

PS2 keyboard

No keyboard

GPU in either slot 2 or 5

Old GPU with vga connection

No GPU

No RAM (got the correct 5 beep error)

Only 1 RAM chip in correct slot

 

I am hoping i missed something or just need to keep trying different USBs because everything else appears to be working, any help would be much appreciated!

 

Back story - i made some changes to the BIOS settings and it didnt reboot. I should have left it longer before forcing shutdown. It was working perfectly, sigh.

 

Many thanks!

L

HP Recommended

Hi

 

I tried quite a few USB sticks - only one worked - some never did - even with smaller paritions on.

 

Most of them flashed on boot - then did what you describe - back to full fan.

 

THe exact model of stick I used was 8gb sandisk cruzer fit.  The file that worked was the same version as failed in the first place (older ones did not work - i.e it did not like an older version)

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cruzer-Fit-Flash-Drive-SDCZ33-016G-B35/dp/B005FYNSZA

 

I used an 8gb - but they don't seem to be available any more in that size  - they were from 2018

 

If you are in the UK - I can send you the stick I used if you want to try it

 

Jools

 

 

HP Recommended

Thanks Jools! That has given me some hope! I'll keep trying and will order a 16GB cruzer an see if it works for starters

If all else fails I might take you up on your offer of yours!

HP Recommended

There has been another post related to this process in the forum.   I'll try to find it and get the link up here.  The individual was getting no luck using a USB drive for the BIOS recovery process but did get success creating a CD-ROM instead.  That approach would take the USB complexities out of the picture and perhaps that was the key to his success. 

 

The recovery process takes a bit of magic to get this to work, but it has worked for a good number of us.

HP Recommended

@snowdej wrote:

Hi

 

I tried quite a few USB sticks - only one worked - some never did - even with smaller paritions on.

 

Most of them flashed on boot - then did what you describe - back to full fan.

 

THe exact model of stick I used was 8gb sandisk cruzer fit.  The file that worked was the same version as failed in the first place (older ones did not work - i.e it did not like an older version)

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cruzer-Fit-Flash-Drive-SDCZ33-016G-B35/dp/B005FYNSZA

 

I used an 8gb - but they don't seem to be available any more in that size  - they were from 2018

 

If you are in the UK - I can send you the stick I used if you want to try it

 

Jools

 

 



I wonder you tried it through specific partition size (such as 512mb) or format sector size (such as 512byte).

 

I tried recovery some different usb sticks

Sandisk 8GB Cruzer Blade 8GB...failed (FAT32 | Full Partition | 1000mb Partition | 512mb Partition | 256mb Partition)

Sandisk 32GB Cruzer Blade 32GB...failed

Sandisk 64GB Cruzer Fit 64GB...failed (FAT32 | 32GB Partition | 1000mb Partition | 512mb Partition | 256mb Partition)

I ordered Sandisk 8GB Cruzer Fit. which is you and other guys mentiond for successful recovery.

hope it work.

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