Z440 turns off after power up not responding to any buttons, no errors on led or sound

[saabin440]

Hello, recently I got across a Z440 which turns on for a second, all the fans spin, no sound, led is white both in front and the back of the mb but after 1-2 seconds the fans turn off and both front and back power button will not respond to presses.

I have to mention that I tried reseting the cmos bios both by removing the batter for 10 minutes, but also by removing the batter and keeping the yellow button pressed for 1 minute, no luck.

Then I started removing components one by one, and still no luck.

Even with 1 original RAM slot and CPU only connected the workstation will behave the same.

Tried different power supplies cables and sockets, nothing, the led on the original 700w supply is green until it shuts down.

I have to mention that there's no boot sound.

I also have to stress that the power buttons will not work at all, and the 1 second of the fans spinning is when i plug in the power supply cables to the system.

I did read the manual and it looks like this case is not covered. Also I don't have a card to read if there's any error code shown during the brief moment the system is on.

Do you know what this behavior could be? I checked the mb in details and looks like all is fine there, no obvious things that are looking bad.

Thanks,

S

[SDH]

I'd say dead MB and it is beyond fixing. Been there. You've done all you can... nice effort.

Time for a new used motherboard. After all you've done this will be relatively easy. On the US eBay those are now going for about $40.00 including shipping. A few tips:

1. It is nice to buy one that had such an old slow processor that the seller does not even bother to take it off the socket. That means the pins beneath the processor will have been protected nicely.

2. There is no version 1 vs version 2 issue on the ZX40 workstations unlike with the ZX20 and ZX00 generations... they all can take any of the v3 or v4 processors that HP has approved. However, it is wise to fire them up with an old processor in place initially and do a BIOS upgrade to the lastest. I only upgrade BIOS from within BIOS and have posted here on how to do that, and how to harvest the latest BIOS .bin file from the latest HP SoftPaq. You don't want to use old BIOS on a new used v4 processor because old BIOS likely won't know what to do with that... and fail to boot.

3. You'll surely want a v4... prices for the motherboards, RAM and the processors have come way down. The fastest RAM for the ZX G4 works perfectly in these also... the memory controller will just slow the RAM down to the slower processor's speed. That way you could use that RAM later if you upgrade to a ZX G4 in the future.

4. There is the motherboard bar code label like in the past. The numbers on the left side are just what the workstation could be branded for... not what it is currently branded for. It very rare to find on used motherboards a little white square "Replace with Spares P/N xxxxxx-xxx" HP label.  There is a 2-alphanumeric at the bottom right of the barcode label that tells you what minor revision the MB is... I just assume later = tiny bit better. Z440 barcode label example from eBay:

MB Bar Code Label

The No DPK = Linux branded

The W8 Pro = Windows branded with TPM at 1.2... free upgrade to W10 Pro-64. Rufus 4.6 free upgrade to W11 24H2.

The WIN + TPM2.0 = Windows branded but with TPM firmware upgraded to 2.0 at the factory.

REV 0H = Just a later revision of the motherboard due to some small design or part upgrade. These are minor changes.

Again, those are just the possibilities, not what that MB is actually branded for. Rare to have a seller know what the branding is unless you also got a bare bones deal with a motherboard in its case and the case has the Windows decal on the rear.

In competition I could do a MB swap in 1/2 hour. Budget 1 hour for very start to true finish if you're handy and know all the tricks. Take some pics before/during. Tape up and out the cables so you can easily get the MB out/in. There is a black plastic green topped rotating motherboard tab you'll need to turn 90 degrees to give MB room to slide sideways before tilting up and out.

P.S. After all that effort you deserve a good added tip. Look into the Z Turbo Drive Dual Pro and my posts on that here. HP is selling off stock of their original, new, for very good prices. Under 30.00 if you search eBay well. These go into your Z440's x8 PCIe3 slot and you set that slot's bifurcation to x2x2 so the 8 lanes become x4 times two. The upper primary M.2 socket becomes your primary boot/apps NVMe drive and the lower secondary M.2 socket becomes your larger documents drive. You even can run PCIe4 NVMe SSDs in those two sockets for extra boost in speed even though they're running through a PCIe3 path. I'd at least use that trick for your boot M.2 drive. I like the Samsung 980 Pro for that, 500GB is fine.

[saabin440]

If it would be something wrong with the MB it will show an error, right? Both LEDs are white, the one in the back turns off when the system shuts down, but the one in the front is still white the whole time.

[SDH]

Saabin440,

No... those LEDs just indicate that their motherboard subsection is getting power. Your time and talents are worth getting this over with, and motherboard replacement has proven itself to be reliable and effective with the symptoms you've had, especially after the steps you've taken.

You can go find my post here on the Crisis Recovery Jumpers... I've moved on from that to MB replacement years ago because that other approach rarely worked as HP wished and took way too much fiddling.

P.S. A cosmic ray can nuke a motherboard. Not kidding... look it up. It was not your fault. The cosmos did it to your MB.

[saabin440]

Thanks for you answer but this is not really helpful, I would like to know if there's any other way to debug this or anyone else that encountered the same issue

[SDH]

I admire your perseverance. The link to the HP workstation crisis recovery jumper is HERE . It may be provide the solution you're looking for.

Note that the post title mentions the ZX20 family of workstations but in that first post the details on this issue related to the ZX40 next generation of workstations is presented also. Good luck on your project.  

[saabin440]

Thanks for the link, i've tried the crisis recovery jumper and flashed an USB stick with the latest BIOS, but to no avail.

I've tried with both the back usb ports, first with the top 2 that are not USB3.0 and then with the rest, the system will just shut down after 1 second, but the fans will operate normally during this time.

Is it really needed that the usb stick be of low capacity? Is there any convention for the naming of the usb stick? I just placed the .bin file to the top level of the storage device

[SDH]

Here's some added perspective:

Over the years from that original 2018 post I've realized the best way to think about this is that crisis recovery is a method that may save a workstation from minor damage (such as bad BIOS being flashed onto good hardware, or good BIOS being flashed improperly). As you've probably seen, HP links from 2018 generally don't work... and I'm disappointed that HP has not cleaned this up. I promise tomorrow I'll post the info I saved out on the ZX40 bad BIOS version issue and the official communication that HP released as a result about exactly what to do with the ZX40 generation to trigger a crisis recovery.

My perspective, from experience, is that the crisis recovery method generally will not work, and that is because most crisis situations with these workstation's motherboards are fatal, not recoverable. The recoverable issues are a small minority... and result in a "near dead" situation. The large majority are a "truly dead" motherboard situation. The crisis recovery methods won't work to fix that. Hence, my glib advice on getting a new used motherboard... because that fixes both the near dead and the truly dead issues with a small investment of time and funds.

On your questions... I generally put the USB into a rear USB2 port. The rear ones are hard-wired onto the motherboard vs the front USB ports are cable-dependent (with slightly greater chance of poor signals). Also, crisis recovery before the ZX40 generation depended on a BIOS that could only work from its own level with USB2... the ZX40 BIOS is more sophisticated and can work directly from within BIOS with USB3 ports, front and rear. I still use just USB2 rear ports with those (and later HP workstation generations) too for crisis recovery and for updating BIOS from within BIOS. The most recent workstations don't have any USB2 ports front or rear.

Size and naming of the thumb drive... The small size recommendation is more for the older BIOS and workstations which could not recognize the big increase in GB thumb drives started to come out with. For your Z440 I'd go 8 or 16 GB or less. Regarding USB naming for crisis recovery read the info from the old HP ZX40 information I'll post tomorrow. I don't recall that to be an issue. However, for updating BIOS from within BIOS the naming is critical and the .bin file is to be nested down three levels in three different specifically named directories in the ZX40 generation (and beyond). For the ZX20 and back it is not an issue... the .bin file just sits at the top level of the thumb drive.

[DGroves]

a bit of info on USB sizes with older systems and why smaller usb keys are recommended for them

usb keys from 512k to 2GB will stay within a early systems bios limitations of 2gb or less for bootable devices although most 4GB keys  will also work on early bioses

usb drives up to 32GB use the original filesystem access method,

while 64gb or larger usb drives are treated more like a removable Hard Disk by the usb keys controller chip which can confuse some early computer  bioses into thinking they are accessed as non removable hard disks

last, different brand usb keys will use different firmware on the usb keys controller chip and this can result in compatibility  issues with some systems which is why it's recommended to try another usb brand if having boot issues with one brands usb key on a system

[SDH]

Attached below are two PDFs... one is the official document from 2016 on how to use the crisis recovery jumper in the ZX40 workstation, and the other from 2019 has some added HowTo tips.