Bricked HP Z800 with compute option for PCIe and PCI

[Cho64093]

I have the same problem with my Z640 Workstation, tried every slot, several new and ancient video cards, bios recovery, spent hours trying to find screenshots of the bios so I could try to blindly change it back. Computer has been bricked for 4 to 5 months. Tried just about everything. Unless someone can help, I am going to buy another Z640 just to pull up the bios to get the right keystrokes. I have tax information stored on that computer that I am going to need soon.

[HPZ]

Hello,
I can give blind handling for a Z600 probably tomorrow I do not know if it will match, it's worth it to test.

[mdklassen]

>  I have tax information stored on that computer that I am going to need soon.

Until you can fix your computer ...

If you physically remove the disk-drive, and connect it as a "secondary" disk-drive in some other desktop computer, you will be able to access all your Personal Files.

Or, there inexpensively exists external "SATA-to-USB" adapters -- connect the disk-drive to the adapter, and connect the adapter to a USB port on a laptop/desktop, to get access to your files.

[DGroves]

simple fix for the z800 (this should have been posted in the workstation forum!!)

enabling the compute option tells the system to use the installed card as a computing only device and to disable the video portion, if you did this on all slots then there is no working PCI-e video device and this setting is retained even if you reset cmos

the fix?....simple remove your PCI-e video card, install a PCI video card, boot enter the bios change all pci-e slots back to normal setting (disable compute) then power off, remove PCI card and reinstall PCI-E video card and power back on

Lesson learned,.......don't play with bios settings you don't understand!!!

research a bios setting using google to understand what changing it will do before blindly flipping settings

[Cho64093]

I have a Z600. It is not the same BIOS. Thanks anyway.

[DGroves]

using a PCI card to recover from setting all pci-e slots works on "ANY" HP workstation (as long as the system has a pci slot)

[HPZ]

But if you apply "compute" to all the slot, including PCI ?

[Ro808]

2 Possible solutions:

Bricked-HP-Z800-with-compute-option-for-PCIe-and-PCI

Major-mistake-changed-settings-bios

[HPZ]

Perfect ! Thank you 🙂

[DGroves]

unlike the pci-e slots, the PCI slot does not have a compute option

this is why a video card inserted into the pci slot will still display