Z440 beeps 8 times on power-on

[hl108]

OK, tried this once more, but it did not work. Now I am waiting for my replacement board to arrive. I'll let you know how the swap went.

[SDH]

I'm happy to help if you need any added input in this next step.

I've attached a PDF below explaining how to do the safe process of updating BIOS from within BIOS.

[hl108]

Hi again. I managed to swap the MB. The eight beeps are gone! I also managed to start Windows setup from my installation medium, which was created by the Windows Media Creation too.  But this didn't get very far as it said it was missing a driver.

So, I guess, here is where Rufus comes in. So now I am downloading the ISO image again and will try with Rufus.

Meanwhile, I noticed that on the new MB the green jumper next to the BBR jumper was sitting in a different place.

This pictures shows its position on the old board:

On the new board it is not properly set, Just sitting on one pin:

Do you know what impact this has? Should I change it to the position of the old board?

[SDH]

Welcome back with your good news!

Let's start with your jumper/header question first. Use the link HERE to get to a list of resources for your workstation. In that list you'll see a link to an 8.6GB Maintenance and Service Guide with direct link HERE . That is v3, has good info, and on page 100 there is a quote that is incorrect: "The password header is E49. The password jumper is blue so it can be easily identiƭed." Blue should instead state "lime green". This mistake is in a bunch of manuals. The two top 2-pin headers there are E49 on the left and E14 on the right. Your first image from your original motherboard has the jumper in correct default position but the picture is upside down. At bottom of this post is the corrected orientation. On your new motherboard your lime green jumper was actually hanging down off the far-right (front of case) pin 2 of the E14 header (in a "storage" position, doing nothing). It is fine to hang that there but you're supposed to put it back to default. Someone did that while doing a password reset or delete, maybe even your seller. It is supposed to be put back bridging pins 1-2 on E49 when done. Remember that the little triangle printed on the motherboard indicates pin 1 on all the headers.

You can read more on the E49 password header and how to use that if you need in your manual. Many of us don't set BIOS passwords and ignore all that. You can set passwords if you wish from within BIOS... I personally just always leave the lime green jumper bridging pins 1-2 at E49 (which is the "lock" position) even though I have not set a password in BIOS. I found one of our Z640 workstations had E49 unlocked exactly like yours was for a few years without any issues. I set it back to locked to just be cautious and keep all our workstations configured alike.

Regarding the missing driver... it probably has to do with you having TPM1.2 instead of TPM2.0. The W11 installer does not like missing drivers. I got that too in the past. I don't know if Rufus will make that go away if you check all the 10 boxes or so in the Rufus window that appears after you click on "Start" in Rufus. However, I also had disabled TPM in BIOS even before that when I hit the same roadblock as you had early on. That is done via the security section of BIOS, and from prior experience when you do that it is as if the excluded device does not exist at all both to the OS and to BIOS. Hence Device Manager and the W11 installer would not even see a missing driver if TMP was turned off in BIOS.

Note: BIOS Factory Default settings now have TPM turned on. Thus, if you ever reset back to Factory Defaults TPM will be turned back on. It used to be that HP BIOS had that set to off in Factory Defaults but that changed a couple of years ago. When I turned TPM off in BIOS my W11 install could proceed (I then was using a different method than Rufus). I'd recommend you just turn it off in BIOS for now to get things up and running and I believe you can turn it on later if you wish. I'll check here and let you know. In the Zx40 workstations you can firmware update TPM 1.2 to 2.0 but ignore that for now or forever.

Re your original motherboard... nice try, and here it is Christmas Day so your son at least knows you're hard at it! You're close...

Corrected Image...

[SDH]

Update to show you the BIOS method to get TPM 1.2 turned off from within BIOS so Device Manager does not throw an absent-driver error and halt your W11 upgrade.

My BIOS is updated to the latest (2.61) and tomorrow I'll capture my replicated setup BIOS settings so you can duplicate those if you wish.  Replicated setup is handy... it allows us to clone the BIOS settings to another workstation and we also clone the OS install using same accessories so it is easy to make duplicated from one master build. Replicated setup literally generates a small .txt file that BIOS can use to duplicate BIOS settings from one same-type workstation to another. To turn off TPM 1.2 here is the navigation:

Cold boot the system, once you see the first BIOS activity on the display start pressing ESC at 1/second, and this gets you into BIOS Startup Menu/ go over to BIOS Setup/ then to Security tab/ there go to Administrator Tools/ in there select TPM Embedded Security (mine shows TPM 1.2)/ at TPM Device set that to Hidden/ shift over to Main tab/ down to save changes and exit/ Yes.

This BIOS is much more complex than what past HP workstations used. It is the base for later HP workstation BIOS too. Was a bit painful to learn, but necessary. It makes more sense now with a few years under my belt.

[SDH]

Here's the update on that question about W11 and TPM 1.2:

From a functioning W11 clean install (gotten to by turning off TPM the way I described above) I can go back into BIOS and turn on TPM 1.2, restart, and not have the W11 OS install fail. It simply kept working but Device Manager showed a device missing "exclamation" next to the TPM branch which was not shown before. You can leave W11 running that way, or you can choose to turn TPM back off in BIOS and W11 will still keep running but Device Manager then won't show the TPM branch.  That is what I'm going to do here for now.

[DGroves]

as previously mentioned HP has restore images for win 10 which include all necessary drivers

the z440 ships with TPM 1.2, and unlike the z420, the z440 can be updated to TPM 2.0 via the HP tpm updater 

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c05381064

however the z440 uses xeon v3/4 cpu's and as such is not win 11 compatible as  win 11 requires v8 or newer cpu's for core cpu 's and v7 for some specific  xeons , and all v8 or newer xeons

as such unless you need tpm 2.0 features on win 10/11 i recommend leaving at 1.2 and using rufus patch the installer to skip the tpm/cpu checks for installing win 11 on unsupported hardware 

https://rufus.ie/en/

[hl108]

Many thanks for all your helpful comments. I created another W11 installation medium with the latest version of Rufus and keeping the default options that Rufus offered me (skip tpm/cpu checks and allow local account creation without MS account).

I got W11 installed -- no issues. Thanks a million!

That said, I still had to use my MS account to create a user account. I thought I could avoid this, but never mind.

Frankly speaking, I don't know what TPM does for me and whether I need it. Also I don't see the need for any BIOS update right now as everything appears to work (though I have not tested extensively yet). My next problem is to find the right graphics card for my son's vidio editing, but this is an entirely different story.

[DGroves]

to skip creating a online MS account and get the "Local Account" option during the OS install, simply leave the network cable/wifi disabled or turned off when installing the OS doing this will show the create a local account option during setup

once the logon screen shows enable the internet and activate windows using a windows 10/11 serial (or just reboot if the motherboard has a digital license)

MS will generate a windows 10/11 activation (digital license) based on your created MS-windows account if you have one, however as i have/use a digital license tied to the motherboard  i also never use my ms account to activate windows preferring a local machine based account