BIOS completely corrupted and stuck in a non-responding recovery loop

[emoriebar]

Hello,

I have been using my Victus 15L Desktop since Nov. 2022 and it worked fine until I wanted to add an extra HDD storage, which worked fine for the time being with Windows 11. But after running into annoying file access restrictions for selectively deleting files on it I wanted to boot up live-image linux.

So I tried to Shift (and CTRL) + Restart to get to the UEFI/BIOS Screen without having to press the buttons at startup and failing to do it in time and having to redo the thing until I get to the BIOS.

The computer did shut down, but only on the Windows side, it did not actually power off the system hardware and stayed in this blackscreen doing nothing stasis. 

So I had to forcibly shut it down and tried to do it the manual way by pressing the buttons on startup, but it never got to the BIOS, it always started into Windows or showed an empty black screen, but windows and the drives and per se 

worked fine, so I tried to edit the registry to force it into this startup menu, where you can choose the partition to boot from, but it did never show up.

I noticed that when I got to the black screen when trying to get into the BIOS from the startup, I was able to shut the computer down instantly (the typical BIOS behavior regarding that) by using the power button. So there was no delay like when windows or other Software is loaded, so I got to the conclusion that something regarding the BIOS was not right and I would have to reinstall it, so I got myself the (most recent) BIOS Firmware (from the official HP-website) onto my USB-Stick and first tried pressing Windows + B (BIOS recovery mode) which resulted in nothing except some beeps.

After that failed, I tried it with my USB-Stick inserted which resulted into the BIOS being newly written (and verified).

But after that the computer got, besides 8 beeps, a blue message with the message stating (summarized): BIOS corruption detected; The BIOS will be repaired automatically (when the computer is restarted [?]); Do not shut the computer down;

But after that the BIOS did - in fact - not repair but only automatically restart endlessly and stating the exact same message and  beeps. So after some time I stopped it, because it was going nowhere and removed the USB.

After that the BIOS was again automatically written again and when that was finished, it just got in the endless message loop.

The BIOS  is not being written again without an USB and none of the drivers worked, which is the current state of being.

So the question is, if there is something left I could try to fix it via firmware or similar methods?

And if it can't be repaired Firmware-wise, must the motherboard be replaced (my guess) or is the BIOS-Part something that can be repaired without replacing the whole motherboard (I don't own an SPI-Programmer).

Now that it is broken, it came to my mind, that after the last BIOS update, the Logo at startup always failed to show, without any changes in the settings, but I never had to use the BIOS since then.

I've reached a point where I'm not confident about what steps to take next, so any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[Garp_senchau]

@emoriebar, Welcome to HP Support Community,

Thank you for posting your query; I’m here to help by guiding you through steps to resolve this issue

It sounds like you're dealing with a complex issue involving BIOS corruption and a failed recovery loop. Here's a breakdown of your problem and some troubleshooting steps to consider:

I suggest you refer to this guide to recover the BIOS: HP Notebook PCs - Recovering the BIOS (Basic Input Output System) | HP® Support

Reinstalling the OS or Reflashing Windows (Last Resort)

In extreme cases, if you can get the system to recognize a USB stick again or if it eventually allows you to access boot options, you can try booting from a Windows USB recovery disk to reinstall the OS or repair startup files.

You may refer to this guide: HP PCs - Software recovery options (Windows 11 and Windows 10) | HP® Support

I hope this helps.

Please feel free to reply here if you have any questions or if you need further clarification on any of the steps. 

Take care and have a good day. 

Did we resolve the issue? If yes, please consider marking this post as "Accepted Solution" and click "Yes" to give us a helpful vote - your feedback keeps us going!

Regards,

[emoriebar]

Hello,

thank you for your response.

I have already tried all of the steps mentioned in the article you provided.

The BIOS appears to be corrupted in such a way that the system cancels the startup process before it reaches the boot device selection. It still detects whether RAM and other components are present, which suggests the corruption happens after the initial POST phase but before the boot sequence.

So I cannot reflash Windows/wipe it. In fact, The NVMe and other drives are currently removed to prevent possible data loss while troubleshooting.

The only inputs the system reacts to are Windows + G and Windows + V, but neither of these triggers a recovery, reflash, or repair. The hidden HP recovery partition also appears to be damaged or inaccessible — this issue was already present before I attempted any manual BIOS recovery (WINDOWS + G did/does not reflash/repair/change the BIOS).

To me, it seems like the latest update to the BIOS did damage it in some way, as it, as mention before, suddenly did not show the HP Logo or rather anything at startup before windows loaded (I just thought it was a design choice). 

Also the ACPI interface did not work properly, as windows was not able to restart consistently (especially restarting into the UEFI did not work at all).

This was why I tried to repair it, as mentioned above, but it worked fine when I last hat to interact with the UEFI/BIOS, but that was a while ago and in that time, the bios got updates. The updates themselves were under normal circumstances, not stopped, not affected by power outages, ... and did not throw any errors when installing.

I hope we can find a solution,

emoriebar