no bios ! Z600 workstation

[gersol]

This morning when i power on the server for some reason the only thing was doing was power on with full speed fan use and just an underscore flashing on the top left of the monitor. no bios loading..

we disconnected all the peripherals and the disk drives , we removed the second cpu and we only left the one cpu with one ram for compatibility troubleshooting with no luck. I use the jumper for the bootblock recovery mode to flash the bios using the latest bios rom file , at the first time it show the message  "The system bios image is corrupted" so i thought by flashing the with the new bios rom would fix the problem, the procedure complete succesfully though and i restart the server. But after the restart the same blinking underscore on the screen. I tried to flash again with an older bios image and i noticed that the same message appear " The system bios image is corrupted" again the flash procedure complete successfully but after the restart the same issue appear. I tried also with the very first bios rom and one more time the bios was show as corrupted. I also replaced the bios battery with a new one i repeat all the flash procedure , but no luck, i reset the bios with all the ways i repeat the flashing but no luck.

For some reason the bios image is not kept on the memory after the successful flashing  or it gets corrupted after the flashing. I use the bios roms that correspond on my part number WD059AV . Please Let us know for any possible solutions or workarounds available. Thanks in advance

[mdklassen · Accepted solution]

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@gersol wrote:

For some reason, the BIOS image is not kept on the memory after the successful flashing  or it gets corrupted after the flashing.

Please let us know for any possible solutions or workarounds available.

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I agree with your analysis, namely that the memory-chip on the motherboard is faulty.

You have unsuccessfully tried the workaround of trying to re-flash the memory.

How old is the computer?

That will determine whether the HP Warranty is still active.

If it is, HP will replace the motherboard, or replace the entire computer, at no cost to you.

If the warranty has expired, see http://PartSurfer.HP.com to see if you can purchase a replacement motherboard from HP, at your own expense.

Search on eBay, if that part is not available from HP.

Since it is your "server", you probably need some "immediate" replacement, i.e., purchasing another computer, rather than waiting for HP to ship a replacement motherboard.

[gersol]

Hello, thanks for your answer ! well yes the server is not on Warranty 10 years old... still its a nice setup so i will replace the motherboard and keep it hopefuly for 5 years.. and yes ebay is oneway..

[mdklassen]

> the server is ... 10 years old.

> i will replace the motherboard and keep it hopefully for 5 years.

Personally, if I had a "server", and it was using ten-year-old disk-drives, I would proactively replace the disk-drive.

Note that Microsoft will terminate all support for Windows 7 in January 2020 -- 17 months away -- which will force you to upgrade to Windows 10 to have a supported operating system.  So, today might be a good time to purchase a replacement computer - new motherboard & new disk-drive.