HP Pavilion P6-2326s BIOS update outside of windows

[connie98102]

My sister asked for my help with her HP Pavilion P6-2326s. She had upgraded it to Windows 10 and used it a bit, I think, but it kept acting more and more broken until it mostly wouldn't even boot. At the point I got involved, we tried some different monitor cables and connections (seeming help there was probably only coincidental), and got it to the point where it tried unsuccessfully to load windows. I also tried pressing escape and got to a more extensive menu than I've seen since. I gave up for the night, powered it off, and was back to nothing on the monitor the next day.

Then I found this thread. A big "thank you!" to the contributors there. I've had a bit of success following Emma's and Edward's methods and am hoping someone with the knowledge I lack will stop me from squandering any more opportunities to get further. After many attempts (usually can't even get a signal to the monitor), I got it to post. Have managed that several times over many, many tries. One of those, I was able to boot a live Linux DVD and copy her files to an external usb drive. I haven't tried terribly hard to boot windows, but I'm not optimistic about getting it going well enough for sp70376.exe, so I would like to update the bios via usb stick without booting windows, if I can. Possibly, sp70376.exe offers the option of doing it that way, but opening it on a working computer just to find out what the "on screen instructions" say seems dangerous. I found and created the 3-in-one key (SP78883, version 3.7.0.0 - Dec 2016) and extracted JOS_820.ROM from sp70376.exe (3-in-one doesn't support this model without modification), but I need more explicit instruction to understand what to do with them. Help with either of these ideas or any different means of accomplishing the task, as well as any other advice would be much appreciated.

[WAWood]

@connie98102

Hello;

Allow me to welcome you to the HP forums!

The softpaqs that HP uses to install BIOS updates are not actually executables in and of themselves; instead, they are self-extracting archive files.  The components inside STILL need Windows to execute, even if you were to extract them all.

Sorry, but you need Windows in order to do the HP BIOS updates, you can't do that with Linux.

[connie98102]

Thank you for your reply. I wasn't even hoping for a way to apply the update using Linux (though that would have been a happy surprise!). I just found it encouraging that I could still boot and use an OS without issue. Since it's so difficult to get to where I can try something else or even further investigate my options and what still works, I'd like to be well-prepared to get the update applied by the most direct route possible. Bootable usb seems an option with at least some HP computers. I'm not certain that all I've seen is completely current, nothing I've seen includes this model specifically, and I'm not smart enough to figure out whether it could be adapted to this model, but I saw enough to give me hope.

If the fix that will make Windows work can only be applied from within Windows, that's a bit of a catch-22, but if that's truly the case, I guess the next thing I'll try is booting Windows from an external medium. Maybe I can repair the existing installation well enough for it to load and accomplish the update.

[WAWood]

@connie98102

Another approach that MIGHT work is booting from WinPE.  This is a limited form of Windows and might be able to run the HP softpaqs -- I don't know, as I have not tried it.

There are lots of ways to make such a bootable USB -- you can do it from Windows install media and a working PC.

Just Google for it ... and good luck.

[connie98102]

Thank you VERY much for continuing to try to help me! I will investigate that.  I haven't meanwhile got it to boot again, but it's already taught me that what didn't  work the last 100 times I tried it, really might on the 101st attempt, and I think my right hand can google while my left presses the power button and escape key.....