HP Envy 20 Black Screen On Startup

[Chris_Gillian]

Hello Matt,

Please refer to the following picture of the pin configuration shown on one of the metal plates of the HP ENVY 23 AIO PCs (try to find this metal plate on your HP ENVY 23 AIO PC).

Best regards,
Chris
"Be Vegan, Make Peace. World Vegan, World Peace. Be Kind to Nature, All Animals and All Beings" - Supreme Master Ching Hai (http://www.suprememastertv.com/)

[Chris_Gillian]

Hello Earnold,

The WDF error is the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) problem caused by driver incompatibility and the black screen problem is due to BIOS incompatibility. Precisely, you need to do a fresh Windows installation. Please remove the hard-disk drive (HDD) and use another computer to install Windows 7/8/8.1 on it then install the HDD back on your HP ENVY 23 AIO PC. Once booted up, please update the BIOS right away. If Windows 8.1 does not work, you may wish to install a 30-day trial version of Windows 7 Home Basic just for updating the BIOS to eliminate the black screen problem; you can download Windows 7 installation ISO from http://getintopc.com/softwares/operating-systems/windows-7-home-basic-free-download-iso-32-bit-64-bi... and create either a Windows 7 installation optical disc or bootable Windows 7 installation USB drive.

Subsequently, you can install the operating system (OS) of your choice and please ensure all the drivers are updated and compatible with the OS. Please take note the original mini PCIe wifi card might not work due to incompatible driver; I could not find a compatible driver for this mini PCIe wifi card. If you encounter this problem, perhaps you may wish to replace it with a Broadcom or TP-Link mini PCIe wifi card or a USB wifi module.

I suspect the BSOD problem is caused by the mini PCIe wifi card as a result of driver incompatibility. Hence, if you consistently encounter the BSOD problem while trying to reinstall the OS to update the BIOS, you may wish to remove the mini PCIe wifi card. After you have updated all drivers, you may wish to reinstall the original mini PCIe wifi card and see if you can find a compatible driver for your OS.

Best of luck!

Chris

"Be Vegan, Make Peace. World Vegan, World Peace. Be Kind to Nature, All Animals and All Beings" - Supreme Master Ching Hai (http://www.suprememastertv.com/)

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World Vegan World Peace - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-HWEWwERng

Supreme Master Television Constructive Programming for a Peaceful World - http://suprememastertv.com/

Global Warming: MEAT THE TRUTH documentary - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uTJsZrX2wI

Why Vegan? Lessons From An Animal Scientist - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZYQnt-67vs

Loving Hut Restaurants USA - Vegan Cuisine - http://lovinghut.us

Veggie Grill: Fast-Growing Vegan Restaurant Chain (http://veggiegrill.com/) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qN2jE-qKy0

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[Durstee235]

Hey Chris,

 I found the chart on my computer.  It was on the metal plate that I had actually removed.  I also realized you could take out a section on that metal plate to get to the area I needed which mean I didn't really have to remove it.  Huh.. Who knew.

I have moved the jumper from 4-6 to 2-4, let it sit with it plugged in (also tried once with the pc not plugged in), moved it back to 4-6 and the screen is still black.  One time the computer started and then it shut down and started back up and I thought it was going to work, but I let it sit for about 10 minutes and still nothing on the screen.   I guess I'll just keep trying.

Pin Configuration:

2-4-6

1-3-5

[Chris_Gillian]

Hey Matt,

Some people did this more than 50 times and some 10 times to get the display to work again; I was fortunate to get the display to work on the first attempt when I was troubleshooting this problem but I did not have the password to login to Windows 10 and subsequently had to repeat the procedure countless times to diagnose and fix that computer.

Please follow the procedure very carefully and please do not pull the power connector from the back of the computer because this causes power surge that stresses the computer which can cause problems to the computer.

Key an eye on the HDD LED indicator and the screen. If the CMOS content is successfully restored, the HDD LED indicator will lit up for a few seconds and a message will be display on the screen asking you to press F1 to boot up the computer. As this can be a boring task and disheartening, please take it easy but with a high and positive spirit. If you have enough of it, please do have a break.

The charge retention capacitors can retent charge for a considerably long time and this may interfere with the CLR_CMOS process. Hence, at times you may wish to unplug the computer from the wall socket for a day or two to drain off the charges. When you return to work on it again, you might succeed in reviving the display on the first attempt or subsequent few attempts.

Hope that your HP ENVY 23 TouchSmart AIO PC will be revived soon. Best of luck!

Best wishes,
Chris
"Be Vegan, Make Peace. World Vegan, World Peace. Be Kind to Nature, All Animals and All Beings" - Supreme Master Ching Hai (http://www.suprememastertv.com/)

[earnold]

I did all of these steps which seemed to work except once I got the display back, I was getting the same message I got before the screen went black in the first place:  "WDF_critical violation."  It then went into a continous loop of saying it was searching for the problem and would show progress of 100% then back to searching.  I was able to get out of this loop by doing a windws restore, otherwise, windows never did boot.  After the restore, I got the message that the computer was going to restart to finish the restore.  It automatically shut down and when it came back on, I had the black screen again.  I was never able to do the BIOS update because I did not get the chance before the PC shut down.  Now I have gone back through the process many times of removing the battery, moving the CMOS jumper, etc. and I have been unable to get my display back.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.  

[PhoenixForce]

I recently helped a friend of mine repair their 23-c210xt with this issue.  Machine would power on, CD rom would read, you could hear the fan, but nothing would appear on-screen.  She mentioned this seemed to coincide with updating to Windows 10.  I tried several suggested fixes including:

-Removing the CMOS/BIOS battery for extended periods of time

-Changing CMOS/BIOS jumpers to clear settings

-Downloading, extracting the latest bios and putting it on a USB and then using Windows Key +B and Ctrl + Home key to do a Bios recovery

None of these worked.  What did work was re-flashing the bios using the SPI header on the motherboard.  Self corrupting BIOS seems to be a feature of these HP machines after a few years.  Below is the method I used to write the bios via the SPI header...

Hardware/Software Required:

Arduino Uno R3

Ubuntu Linux latest 

8 Pin Header (just butchered a front panel Audio hookup from an extra case I had laying around).

The latest BIOS for your device downloaded and extracted so you can see the .rom file.

The following guide basically details the rest of the process to install the needed libraries in linux, connect the arduino to the motherboard and flash the chip.  http://tomvanveen.eu/flashing-bios-chip-arduino/

One specific thing to keep in mind for this model, is that HP de-standardized the SPI header so I could not use the standard SPI header layout.  I used the one shown in this image to wire up the Arduino to the header.

It does take about 10-15 minutes to flash the bios via this method.

Some learnings I have taken away that I would do differently...

-backup the existing rom if it can be read from the motherboard.

-Once the bios is restored and if you can boot into Windows, get a tool to figure out what the product key is...

After restoring the bios, I wiped out all the partitions on the hard drive and reinstalled Windows 10 without thinking about the product key because they are normally stored in BIOS these days...it seems either the original corruption wiped out the key in the BIOS, or some part of this process wipes it out.  Either way I cannot activate the fresh install of Windows 10... so sort of kicking myself for not retrieving it prior to fresh install and for not backing up the original bios.

I'll likely have to come up with a new product key to activate seeing as I expect HP to be about as helpful / forthcoming with providing me the original as they are in providing documentation and access to the tools they use to fix this when you send it in for service.

[Jeremyhill421]

Did you get a response on how to fix hp envy 20, I have the same problem... My keyboard won't connect but my iPad will charge on it and the fan is working on it also... I cannot reset the bios.

[Remi_K]

Thank you to Chris_Gillian for the step-by-step instructions.

Took me 7-8 hours over the past 2 days, but I've finally gone from a blank screen (due to a failed Windows 10 reset) back to a functioning HP Envy 23-D034.

I learned a lot but above all, one thing stands out - please don't make the same mistake I did:

ONCE YOUR SCREEN IS FUNCTIONING, UPDATE YOUR BIOS

I thought rolling back to Windows 8 via recovery partition would fix the problem. I was DEAD wrong and subsequently had to go through this twice.

The first time I went through the CMOS clearing procedure, it took me roughly 10 attempts to get a functioning screen.

The second time? 52. 47 times yesterday - 5 today. Leaving the computer unplugged overnight sans CMOS battery worked for me. I ordered an Arduino and some jumper leads as per OXiDE's post thinking it was a lost cause, but I'm stubborn and for once it paid off.

Again - thank you Chris_Gillian. All credit to you. 

[Wisest1]

Please reconnect the broken links in your very helpful replies.  HP has redone the Website and the addressing if off.

Thanks

[TomLaf]

This process just prevented me from throwing my PC out the window!  It works, thank god!