Z440 beeps 8 times on power-on

[hl108]

I received an Z440 Workstation from my company. It came with an empty 1TB SSD and no RAM. The processor is apparently an Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1650 v4 @ 3.60GHz.The workstation supposedly worked without issues until it was decomissioned.

I bought "4x16GB 64GB RAM DDR4 2400 MHz ECC REG f. HP Compaq Z440" on ebay and installed into the black DIMM slots. I also created a Windows 11 installation medium on a USB stick and stuck it into one of the USB slots. I connected a display.

On power-on the system simply beeps 8 times in a loop. There is no signal on the display. 

Can anyone explain what I did wrong?

Many thanks.

[SDH]

First, was your USB stick made using the latest Rufus? During the creation of the USB at the very end there is a window that opens before the process starts where you can check all the boxes to make it W11 compatible.

Second, what is the version of BIOS you have going? Is it the latest? You don't want to be running an old BIOS with a new processor. Did someone upgrade the processor. You can check the model number of that Z440 to see if it came with a v4 processor. If you have old BIOS that does not know about a new v4 processor you'd be stuck.

Third, you want to set BIOS to factory defaults.

Fourth, it would be very valuable to have you post a good pic of one of the sticks of memory, or better all 4 in a row so we can see what you got. It might be wrong despite best intentions. I've been working on Z440 memory recently and have some good tips to share depending on what you got.

Fifth, 8 beeps is never good to hear. BIOS may be corrupted. Below is from the 8GB technical and service manual for the 3 main Zx40 workstations, and this might be why that workstation was stripped and available for free. This is not impossible to overcome but is not for a novice. My guess is that you can't even get into BIOS at all:

8 beeps not welcome...

[hl108]

Thanks for the quick response. The W11 installation media was created with the MS tool. Not Rufus.

I don't know the version of the BIOS, as I just recieved the Z440 from my company and never had it booting.

The processor should be the same as originally installed. (Neither my company, or me, changed it). In fact I learned about the identiy of the processor by looking up the Z440 serial number, which is [personal info removed].

I don't know how I can set BIOS to factory defaults. Please explain.

Here is a picture of two of the modules. The other two are currently installed, but should be the same.

[SDH]

Interesting... that OS install should not work. That processor is not approved nor is the Zx40's security level approved by MS for official use with W11. However, Rufus boot drive builds using a MS iso download will... I agree with Paul T. and DGroves that is the easiest way to build a boot OS install USB. That is a good processor, and it is good to know that is what the workstation came with. I'll get back with more info on the memory. 2400 is the max the computer and that processor can run at, and it looks like memory that came from a server in a prior life. The HPE means "enterprise" and you don't see that sold with the workstation boxes, but it works just fine if correct. I need to do a bit more research on that.

Factory Defaults is best reached via getting into BIOS and setting it that way. More recent HP workstations have had a BIOS option to create a set of your own defaults and save those, and reload those as needed. Factory Defaults are different than that. They are the stable one-size-fits-all concept stored also in EEPROM. If you're in these more recent machine's BIOS you have an option to choose between the true HP factory defaults or your personal saved set of defaults. You'd choose factory, approve, and don't forget to save the changes on the way out of BIOS. Of interest rarely the "Factory Defaults" may change with a newer version of BIOS due to some change in hardware or OS software, or HP approving a new processor for that workstation.

If you can't get into BIOS you're not fully toast. There is a back door way to get back to true factory defaults, by doing a low level reset of CMOS. To do this you need to take away all electricity from the motherboard and drain all capacitors. It is more than just pushing the little yellow button there. You need to unplug from mains, remove the motherboard battery carefully (I use a BBQ bamboo skewer stick), remove all attached peripherals (a monitor can feed back power through its video cable), press and hold front power button 15 seconds, press and hold for 15 seconds the little yellow CMOS reset button on motherboard, bridge power supply's 3 prongs with your fingers to drain off more electrons, wait half an hour to redistribute leftover electrons, redo all that again, and again. The hope here is that when you then re-insert the motherboard battery all old electrons that were keeping the corrupted BIOS corrupted are gone and the motherboard resets itself (to factory defaults) and then when you reattach peripherals and mains and press for power-on you hope things just work. Seen that work now more than just a couple of times.

The next possible thing, worse, is having an issue with what BIOS is seeing as its programming. A way to think of this is that maybe factory defaults somehow got corrupted. The backup for that is the concept in my pic from the technical manual above. You'd need to learn all about that and how to do that. Not for novices, and let's say even that does not work...

Another option... buy a used Z440 motherboard off eBay. Lots of the Zx40 workstations are being parted out so price of parts has come way down. Odds are you'd get one "branded" for Windows and you could build up from there. I can transplant in a used eBay motherboard in about 1/2 hour having done that more than once. Budget an hour and you'll likely be very happy with the result. I've got two of those handy here and they are excellent workstations. I'm very much liking the Z Turbo Drive Dual Pro, turning on bifurcation for the PCIe Gen3 x8 electrical lanes slot, and loading up that card with a very fast primary M.2 SSD and having a larger fast secondary M.2 SSD as my documents drive. Can work on that later...

My hope is that your reset to factory defaults will clear a corrupted current BIOS situation. I'll get back on that memory.

[SDH]

Yes, that is exactly the correct memory if you want 16GB sticks. A bit later the price of even faster memory became cheaper for HP to source and they shipped that instead of the 2400T memory. It runs no faster due to the memory controller being on the processor and the motherboard and v4 processors max out at 2400. I think your problem is truly a BIOS corruption issue.

By the way there is a safe way to harvest and use the bios .bin file to update or recover with so if you end up needing to do that we can help. At 40.00 for a new used eBay Z440 motherboard I've found lately it is better to just go the motherboard transplant route. The "recover path" is not well lit...

Here's that exact same memory for a workstation, AKA T9V40AA from the latest Z440 QuickSpecs I have a copy of. There's also Micron, SKHynix versions of the same thing that HP sold under these part numbers:

[hl108]

Thanks a lot for your helpful comments. I really appreciate it. The Z440 is meant as a Christmas gift for my son, so I am getting a bit nervous as I am running out of time ....

So I will try to drain all power to force a BIOS reset. When you write "bridge power supply's 3 prongs with your fingers" you mean stuffing in some tin foil or the like to keep the prongs shorted, correct? Would it not be better to disconnect the power supply from the motherboard and somehow shorten the power supply terminals on the motherboard? Of course, after having removed the battery.

Another question about the fallback involving the motherboard swap: I'd be afraid that the new motherboard will not match my processor (i.e. will come with the wrong version of the BIOS). Or is this not a concern? Or do you mean swapping motherboard and processor at the same time?

[hl108]

I tried the power drain procedure, but it did not work. I had the internal battery removed for about 3 hours and repeatedly pressed the buttons, as you described. Maybe it wasn't long enough. I took the battery back out and will repeat, this time for a longer period.

[SDH]

Sorry for the lack of clarity. The first method is what I'd try first over all else, and you're doing that. The bridging of the 3 power supply prongs from the rear is just with my fingers in an attempt to drain all possible residual current from the capacitors with the battery out. I'm afraid your first attempt was enough to know that you're going to need to go on to the next level but it won't hurt to try again. I've posted on the "crisis recovery" method for the earlier HP workstations and the motherboard jumpers involved. I've not needed to do that with the Zx40 generation so I don't know much about the FailSafe Boot Block BIOS recovery details. You'll need to use Google to see if you can find clear instructions. Moving one or more jumper from the default position to a temporary position may be how you trigger that but HP has not done a good job of explaining this and it may be a mistake to even be mentioned in that manual.

The motherboard replacement is where I'd go next if you don't find instructions. Sorry for this untimely news.

Some good news... HP and MS work closely and the current Rufus-generated boot USB installer using the current W11 23H2 iso works fine on getting the Z440 up and running with a clean install. Second, HP has released a Z Turbo Drive Dual Pro v2 and had a bunch of brand new ZTD DP v1 to get rid of. Some of their good resellers got that load and are selling these new in packaging for amazingly good prices on eBay. I'd grab one for the future. I've got both types. The v1 is excellent, with no flaws.

[SDH]

Regarding motherboard/processor/BIOS. That is a good point. If the eBay motherboard has way old BIOS it may not be able to run with a v4 processor yet (these all can use those with the later BIOS versions). That is unlikely but possible. Some of those are being sold with their original processor in place. That means they at least have a BIOS version that will run that, plus the processor protects the very delicate pins in the base of the processor socket.

The motherboards are "branded" for either Win OS or not. Most are for Windows so your odds are good. Most sellers won't be able to tell you if a motherboard is for Windows or Linux. They all can run both but if yours is already a Win motherboard you don't need to buy a Win license. HP has a cloud recovery system that will let you download an older W10Pro64 install if your product id from the case matches their records for the box having a motherboard being Windows branded. So, that is another way to get a true HP W10 OS, and then upgrade it to W11 via Rufus. However, that download will run freely only on a motherboard that itself is Win branded. This turned out to be a bit more complicated than you hoped...

[hl108]

Thanks again for your continued support, though it is not so good news for me. I started research on this FailSafe Boot method. First of all, I have say, that I do not have a CDROM drive installed; so any update would have to be via USB. I found this post: https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Boot-and-Lockup/Z440-BootBlock-Recovery/td-p/8644117

It seems to suggest to me that if I put the file M60_0259.bin top level on a FAT16 formatted USB-stick, it could work. Is my understanding correct? Is M60_0259.bin really the correct file for me? Do I need to do something special when formatting the USB-stick? The post says nothing about modifying any jumpers on the board. Do I need to do that?

I located the M60_0259.bin file in this archive: https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp96001-96500/sp96292.tgz

Shall I go ahead with the steps I described above?