Windows 10 says it cannot update as BIOS is too old. HP site doesn't show any BIOS to download

[bcraigie]

One of my support customers has this problem.  This is already a Windows 10 PC, and the latest windows 10 update says it cannot install because the BIOS is too old.  I looked on the HP support site and there is no BIOS listed for download at all for this model - probably a mistake on the website. I find it hard to believe that since this machine was produced, there has never been a BIOS update released for it.

The HP Support Assistant on the PC says the BIOS is up to date.

According to my checks, the current BIOS is 80.20 AMI with a BIOS release of HPQOEM - 1072009

Is this the end of the road for this PC?

Thanks

Brian

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi, Brian:

The product specs for your PC indicate that it originally came with W8.1 from HP.

HP Pavilion 500-250ea Desktop PC Product Specifications | HP® Customer Support

There are two BIOS updates for your PC under the W8.1 section of the driver page.

HP Pavilion 500-250ea Desktop PC Software and Driver Downloads | HP® Customer Support

They are for different BIOS ROM families.

If your PC has BIOS ROM family SSID 2AF7, there is a version 80.23.

If your PC has a BIOS ROM Family SSD 2AFE, there is a version 80.18.

I assume since you have version 80.20 installed, that your PC''s BIOS has the 2AF7 ROM family, but double check it.

Now there is one problem...

Since you are running W10 and the BIOS updates were written to run on W8.1, I do not recommend you update the BIOS in W10 because there is no telling what may happen if you do.

It may work fine, or it may completely wreck your PC.

So, you may want to reinstall W8.1, update the BIOS, and then update back to W10.

[bcraigie]

Aha!  Great, thank you.  I'll give that a go and feed back the results.  I heed your warning, but think it is unlikely there will be a problem as the BIOS is blind to the O/S so it is just the BIOS installer that could run into problems.

😁

Thanks

Brian

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

I suppose you can always run the exe file in W8.1 compatibility mode if you want for extra safety.

[bcraigie]

Thanks!  So, here's what happened.  I downloaded the BIOS executable and it ran and extracted the files into :

c:\SWSETUP\SP76898

But nothing else happened that I could see.

I went into that folder and ran SETUP.EXE (by double-clicking it) and it appeared to run, but do nothing, but then windows said it might not have run correctly and gave me the option to run it in compatibility mode.  I did, but it again did nothing.

Then I right-clicked on FLASH.BAT and ran it as administrator.  It started up the script and prompted me to press a key to continue, which I did, and it then updated the BIOS ok and rebooted. It is now up to 80.23.  Yay!

However that didn't fix the windows update error, which it turns out is a red herring and nothing to do with the BIOS being too old.  Apparently, Microsoft told my customer that after they ran out of ideas.  In fact the BIOS isn't the problem at all.

Thanks for the help and at least the customer has the latest BIOS now.  I hope that helps others who need to update their BIOS on this PC. 😁

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime.

Glad to have been of assistance.

Did you make a bootable USB flash drive with the media creation tool and plug it into the PC and run the setup exe file from the Windows desktop?  Sometimes that works when nothing else does.

And as a last resort, you can always ask your customer if they would want to try a clean install of W10 with the latest build of 21H1.

You can use the free Macrium Reflect utility, and make a system image of the current installation onto a portable hard drive.

Download the file on the left side under the Backup at Home section.

Macrium Software | Reflect Free Edition

The software will have you make a bootable rescue DVD or USB flash drive which you use to boot from to access the system image.

That way if the PC still won't clean install v21H1 either, you can go back to the current state very easily.