Z420 at start up , I see no HP logo, just black screen, this after I changed boot sequence.

[pipitone]

I wanted to boot from a DVD to upgrade the OS.  I went into the Bios, Attempted to change the boot sequence

so that the boot would be off the DVD.   

At boot time , I useally see the HP logo, with a message to hit escape or f10, and then windows comes up.

Now I see no logo, nothing but black screen. 

After about a minute or two, all the fans in the workstation come on strong and make lots ot noise.

Thei OS  does  not boot, system is "Dead" ? 

I tried to clear the CMOS by disconnecting everything and pressing the Yellow button on the mother board , 

No change.

How to I get back to the default configuration ?????

Thanks in advance for any help.

Joe

[MtothaJ]

---

@pipitone wrote:

I wanted to boot from a DVD to upgrade the OS.  I went into the Bios, Attempted to change the boot sequence

so that the boot would be off the DVD.   

At boot time , I useally see the HP logo, with a message to hit escape or f10, and then windows comes up.

Now I see no logo, nothing but black screen. 

After about a minute or two, all the fans in the workstation come on strong and make lots ot noise.

Thei OS  does  not boot, system is "Dead" ? 

I tried to clear the CMOS by disconnecting everything and pressing the Yellow button on the mother board , 

No change.

How to I get back to the default configuration ?????

Thanks in advance for any help.

Joe

---

Can you still enter the bios?

IF not, the black screen + fans on full power after a while is one of the symptoms of a corrupted bios.

[pipitone]

Hello , 

 I can not get into the bios, or do anything.

Joe

[pipitone]

Also I tried the windows and B keys method  to recover a stored copy of the bios, but maybe I do not have the HP_TOOLS partition on my hard drive. 

I am able to download (from another machine) sp78208.exe,  HP Z420/Z620 Workstations System BIOS.

How can I get it loaded to a system that is apparently not recognizing any peripherals?

thanks, Joe

[MtothaJ]

---

@pipitone wrote:

Also I tried the windows and B keys method  to recover a stored copy of the bios, but maybe I do not have the HP_TOOLS partition on my hard drive. 

I am able to download (from another machine) sp78208.exe,  HP Z420/Z620 Workstations System BIOS.

How can I get it loaded to a system that is apparently not recognizing any peripherals?

thanks, Joe

---

For boot block recovery have a look at page 65 of this manual: http://h20628.www2.hp.com/km-ext/kmcsdirect/emr_na-c03424977-1.pdf

Basically it is supposed to happen automatically if the bios is corrupted and the appropriate bios file is inserted on a CD or FAT32 formatted USB pendrive (use one of the back USB 2.0 ports). On the USB you put just the actual bios file - the .bin file inside the package and not the whole package.

In practise this recovery does not always work but its worth a try.

[pipitone]

MtothaJ,

Thanks for the suggestions.

I created the bootable thumb drive with the bios files at the root. 

but no luck.  -- No boot.

Thanks again for taking a look at this.

Joe

[Skylarking]

Since PC's go through a POST sequence when booting, the easiest way to check if the firmware is doing it job correctly is to remove everythng from the motherboard. That is, have no peripherals connected, no PCI/PCIe cards installed, no DIMMs installed and (possibly) no CPU installed; basically a bare motherboard.

In that way you would expect to see/hear a POST error when powering ON. You can then selectively add components and again expect to see/hear the next POST error as POST process progresses further along it's sequence towards booting an OS.

The steps i take are :

a. bare mobi, get post error (three red blinks)

b. install CPU get different POST error (four red blinks)

c. install memory and get POST error (six red blinks)

d. install GPU and get boot error(no bootable media since no HDD with OS)

In most cases you will not have to remove the CPU as removing memory and GPU along with peripherals would be enough to check firmware is working. Sometimes where CPU chip includes IGPU function, i do remove the CPU chip. It depends on how confusing the problem i'm trying to resolve is.

Anyway, if POST doesn't occur as expected and you don't get POST errors, then you can be certain there is some system firmware corruption (i still call it BIOS though not correct). You need to explore firmware recovery techniques*.

If you do get various POST errors as you build up the motherboard, then the system firmware is likley OK and you have another issue. FYI, POST errors are described in "Chapetr 4 Diagnostic LED and audible (beep) codes" within "HP z420, z620 and z820 Workstation Maintenance and Service Guide".

Asuming it's not firmware, since it shouldn't have borked by you simply changing boot order, there are a couple things to consider 1st

1.

Check monitor is connected to the appropriate monitor port used by your PC. Also ensure the monitor is correctly switched to the appriopriate monitor input (if it needs to be done manually set to HDMI, DP, DVI, VGA, etc). Then when booting PC you may see a led on the monitor front change from standby (blue in my case) to on (green in my case). Hopefully you get some visual indication the monitor is getting some sync signal from the PC.

2.

Getting into BIOS can sometimes be a real PITA so try repeatedly press F10 on your HP USB keyboard as soon as you power up the PC. Hopefully that will allow you to get into BIOS but if not, remove the USB keyboard and try an older PS/2 keyboard (round purple plug), again repeatedly pressing F10 from power up. Hopefully this will work.

3*.

If you still can't get into BIOS and at power on the PC sits at a black screen, maybe a firmware boot block recovery needs to be forced. However, there is no method documented how one actually forces their workstation into boot block recovery mode. The nearest HP document is this doc but it is for HP PC's, not workstations. It describes the Win +B key combo when powering up but as there is timing issues, read the linked doc and try it again as it may still be helpfull.

Note that the boot block recovery process  is not dependant on any HDD partitions. It is a flash protected section of ROM that is executed when there are BIOS checksum or other ROM errors. It looks for USB thumb drive with firmware file within. From memory there are requirements on the USB thumb drive size, format and firmware file name. So use the smallest thumb drive you have and format it to FAT/FAT32 then place the extracted firmware file from the latest BIOS within the root of the thumd drive. Place the thumb drive into a front USB port and again try Win + B at power up.

The file to use for a boot block recovery process is the J61_0391.BIN file found within the DOS directory of sp78208.exe above. Since this exe file is a self extracting zip file of sorts, you can use 7-zip to peek inside and extract the desired file without running the softpack itself.

Good luck.

[MtothaJ]

---

@pipitone wrote:

MtothaJ,

Thanks for the suggestions.

I created the bootable thumb drive with the bios files at the root. 

but no luck.  -- No boot.

Thanks again for taking a look at this.

Joe

---

You can also try removing the CMOS battery on the board to clear the bios settings, but somehow I doubt that will work in your case.

Ultimately if nothing else works you may need to replace the bios chip or the board.

Best case scenario would be if you could program the bios chip using a chip clip and an external programmer since this is non invasive but at least from my attempts I found that the chip clip connection isn't stable enough for the duration of the programming and gives miswrites, while programming the chip when physically placed in the programmer nearly always works fine - at least on my cheap programmer.  

[Skylarking]

---

@Skylarking wrote:

:

The file to use for a boot block recovery process is the J61_0391.BIN file found within the DOS directory of sp78208.exe above. Since this exe file is a self extracting zip file of sorts, you can use 7-zip to peek inside and extract the desired file without running the softpack itself.

Good luck.

---

Ah, soory i should have been a little clearer.

If you know the version of the BIOS that was installed on your machine, i'd use that version and not the latest. This is due to the fact that BIOS updates must be staged in some cases. Trying to perform a crisis recovery on a very old BIOS may fail silently when using the latest BIOS (doubt it's a well documented and well tested process).

Have a look at my post in this thread and especially the links within for some details on the BIOS recovery process.

[Deskworker]

I have same problem with my z420. Could you solve the problem?