HP DC7700 SFF BIOS

[whitewolfkiba]

I have a DC7700 sff desktop that was running Windows 10 with a small glitch. With every OS installed (LInux or Windows), I saw an intermittent 4 beep memory error. I reseated the memory, replaced the modules, and nothing seemed to help. The power supply appears to be good and I was able to use the machine with two additional hard drives attached for cloning another computer's hard drive.

In order to try to solve the issue, I attempted to upgrade to BIOS version 3.05 using the F10 setup menu update method. The system reached 70% and then failed update. Now it doesn't start. I've found a method online for reinstalling the BIOS, but all of the forums seem to have old non-working links to the BIOS updates. The description of the BIOS flash utility indicates that it is for changing the boot screen. Can someone please point me to the correct location for these .BIN files? Thank you!

[whitewolfkiba]

By the way, my original BIOS is a 786E1 V1.01.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

4 beeps is a power supply issue.  5 beeps is a memory issue.

The business support pages are missing a lot of drivers.  HP is aware of the issue, but I have no idea how long it is going to be to fix it.

Since your BIOS is v1.01 you need to follow the 1.xx progression.  3.05 was for vPro models which is why the BIOS flash probably didn't work.

I have zipped up and attached the files you need from an old thread I helped someone else with below.

These will bring your BIOS to v1.16, which was the final release.

[stevex84]

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your help, before I do anything, the current version of my bios is 786E1 v02.10, in the link you posted me there is the v1.16 which should be the last release.
Could you please confirm mew that it is the upgraded version?
Thanks again for your help

Regards

Stevex84

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome, @stevex84 .

Unfortunately, you won't be able to use that one.

You will have to wait until HP restores the driver files to the support pages and you will need to use the BIOS updates for the vPro configuration.

[whitewolfkiba]

Thank you for your help. The only remaining problem is how to get the system to load the binary file to the BIOS. I've tried the standard method of inserting the USB drive into the PC and powering up while holding the WIn+B keys, but so far it hasn't seemed to work. Are there any other trick for loading the BIOS from the flash drive?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Since HP has lost many of the drivers, the instructions for doing that are gone.

I've never had a need to do it before, so I am not sure how to proceed.

I went to the dc7800 support page, and that model has BIOS files.

I extracted this instruction from the file...I don't understand what I highlighted in read means though...

BootBlock Emergency Recovery Mode

In the event of a failed BIOS update (for example if power is lost while updating), the System BIOS may become corrupted.  BootBlock Emergency Recovery Mode detects this condition and will automatically search the root directory of a disk in the floppy drive and any USB media sources (hard drive, flash drive, etc) for a compatible binary image.  The binary (.bin) file in the DOS Flash folder should be copied to the root of the desired storage device, and the system powered on. Once the binary image is located, the BIOS recovery process will be attempted.  The automatic recovery will continue until the BIOS is successfully updated or restored. Sometimes there are restrictions on which BIOS versions are allowed to be installed on a platform. If the BIOS that was on the system had restrictions, then only allowable BIOS versions may be used for recovery.

Anyway I think this instructions is probably also applicable to the dc7700.

[whitewolfkiba]

This is most likely the right method because the keyboard doesn't even light up at this point, but the USB drive is obviously read. I tried to do this with the 1.16 versionI'm wondering if the latest BIOS is not working because it's not in the allowable list due to the age of my BIOS revision. Would anyone know where I might find an older version (perhaps even V1.1) that might be more likely to work on this machine?

[Paul_Tikkanen]

That is possible.

But until HP gets around to restoring the files, I wouldn't know where else you could get them.

I still don't understand that 'root of the desired storage device' thing. 

Why don't they just say copy the files to the storage device?

It almost sounds like you need to make the USB drive bootable, and have dos files on there.

If your PC was running normally, that BIOS update would have worked with no problem.

The question is...can you use an updated BIOS to repair with, or must you try and repair the existing one with the same file?

If you want to try the bootable flash drive and dos command files route, I have attached the tool to make a usb flash drive bootable and the basic set of DOS command files. below.

Run the tool first.  It will format the flash drive and make it bootable.

Then copy the dos command files to the drive.  Just the files, not the folder.

Then copy the BIOS files to the flash drive.  Just the files, not the folder.

Then when you turn on the PC, see what happens.

[whitewolfkiba]

Thanks for your help, everyone, I was able to get the BIOS reloaded. Apparently the BIOS didn't like the RAM because I had to remove all but one 2GB stick before it would display the BootBlock screen. I had to flash a couple of times because I kept getting errors on the 1.14 version that I downloaded from the HP FTP server. It has pretty much all of the files, but it isn't indexed, so it can be very painful to figure out which file you need. The 1.16 version, however, was able to be loaded.

The interresting thing was, I was able to reinstall all of the RAM sticks (6GB) and they haven't caused any startup issues since the BIOS was updated. I'm still getting a BIOS checksum error (9 beeps and LED flashes) on bootup sometimes, so I may need to reflash to get rid of the error. I suspect something didn't transfer correctly. This part is just a minor annoyance, but I'll probably risk it anyway.

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/