HP Envy 20 Boot to logo, no OS boot, no BIOS options.

[ThirdEyeOwl]

TLDR version:

Froze during a BIOS update. Left it overnight, still froze. Rebooted. Only boots to HP logo. Pressing [ESC] or an [F*] key brings up info screen with, "Press the ESC key for the Startup Menu" at the bottom. Only option is to power off.

For the rest of you:

This PC has the LarryBird-B motherboard with the N25Q064..3E BIOS chip.

I tried the simple things first:

• [Win]+[B] - does nothing, nothing at all. Recover from HD, nothing. ROM 8.15 or 8.16 on USB/DVD, nothing.
• [CTRL]+[Home] = see above. (Prolonged pressing of these keys will cause system to beep 8 times twice.)

So next came all the Arduino stuff.

Hooking it up was not the problem but the chip was never detected. I tried a Windows PC with Ubuntu in a VM. I tried a PC with Linux on it. I tried every suggestion out there that I ran across in these forums and even a few others.

"No EEPROM/flash device found.
Note: flashrom can never write if the flash chip isn't found automatically."

EVERY SINGLE TIME - so that didn't work.

Maybe it didn't work because the jumpers that no one talks about were not set correctly... so I did it all again trying every combination there was (tracked it with a spreadsheet).

Jumpers:

• JRTCLR1 (Clear CMOS) 1-2: Clear / 2-3: Default -- tried 1-2/2-3/nothing
• JHPDB2 (Clear Password) 1-2: Default / 2-3: Clear -- tried 1-2/2-3/nothing
• JSPISLT1 (SPI Select) 1-2: Internal / 2-3: External -- tried 1-2/2-3/nothing
• * JHPD83 (Boot Block Write Enable) 2 pins, Default Open -- tried Open/Closed
• * JHPD84 (Boot Block Record) 2 pins, Default Open -- tried Open/Closed

* Jumpers not covered in motherboard documentation or various recovery/Arduino discussions.

Still nothing.

I still hope the PC can be recovered. It powers on, the logo shows, it responds to key presses it just will not Boot, enter BIOS or run Diagnostics.

Is there anything left to try?

[Grzwacz]

Hi,

No POST equals a firmware issue which has probably happened due to a bad BIOS update.

Contact HP Support.

Regards

[ThirdEyeOwl]

Yes, no POST is a firmware issue encountered by many, many people who attempted to update the BIOS on a Touchsmart AIO under various conditions.

These machines seemed to fail to update if you so much as sneezed in the same room while the update was ongoing.

HP would love nothing more than to charge nearly as much as the cost of a midrange laptop to fix the issue they caused by not taking into account several short commings of the Touchsmart's BIOS and the update process for it.

I am not stating the above to be a jerk, consider the following:

• Many HP PCs will automatically recover from a failed BIOS update if the user simply powers on the PC while holding down the [Win]+[B] key combination. The Touchsmart does not respond to this process.
• Many HP PCs will automatically recover from a failed BIOS update if the user simply powers on the PC while holding down the [CTRL]+[Home] key combination. The Touchsmart does react to this keypress but appears to lack the necessary programming to process the request - it will only beep 8 times, twice and wait for nothing to happen for as long as you leave it on. This is whether you are trying this with a USB stick or relying on the recovery files which might exist on the internal HDD.
• Most HP BIOS updates (many of which have release dates preceding the release dates of Touchsmart BIOSes) have the option to create "portable" recovery media on USB sticks and other media. Touchsmart BIOS updates have no such feature.
• The HP web site will direct you to recover the BIOS on a Touchsmart by running the BIOS update on another PC and copying the pertinent files to removable media and booting the Touchsmart while pressing [Win]+[B]. As stated above, this combination does nothing on the Touchsmart. Also, when copying the files many questions come to mind after the process fails: Was the directory structure important? Some pages say that one file needs to be renamed but there are several names to try, which one is the correct one, is there a correct one and, again, does directory structure matter? And so on.

The simple solution would be for HP to state, simply, what the actual steps are - as they have done for countless other machines. Instead they decide to see how much money they could make off their own mistakes, and their documentation aims to make matters worse with misinformation, guidance and suggestions rather than clear steps and, added to that,  software that simply fails to provide even one of several solutions HP has produced to overcome this exact issue on other products.

No, I chose to contact the community because the last thing I expect HP to provide anyone experiencing a problem like this is a solution to the problem.

I contacted HP early on, when the problem first occurred and the only solution I was ultimately offered was to purchase a new Touchsmart at its current price to replace the one that HP refused to care about. I sincerely hope nobody fell for that crap. I didn't.

The community is smart and has, on many occasions, provided the solutions HP couldn't be bothered with. I am hoping for that kind of solution - the kind that works.