Pavilion Elite HPE-495uk BIOS

[TT0]

My HP Pavilion Elite ( HPE-495uk ) does not boot from alternate drives anymore, like optical drive or live USB stick.

During boot I can select the boot options and see all drives listed straight away; the USB stick even shows up by name. When I then pick one, the screen instantly freeze and the keyboard locks up. The mouse stays on, but is - as normal- unusable.

I used to boot this way to live USB and DVDs before without problem.

The HP website does not have my bios ready for download and neither do American Megatrends Inc and the motherboard manufacturers.

Where do I turn to obtain my bios so I can flash it and hopefully fix this problem?

Thank you for your time and help.

PS: Please let me know if you need more system information.

[erico]

Are the USB ports still operating as expected when you plug in a USB flash drive that has files on it?

How about the optical drive?  Can you still use the drive?

Have you checked in the Device Manager to see if both devices are present and have drivers installed?

The HP Pavilion p6360sc desktop PC  also has the MS-7613 (Iona-Gl8E)  motherboard that yours does. 

You can use the BIOS  for Windows 7 (64-bit) that is found at the following HP web document.

http://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/HP-Pavilion-p6000-Desktop-PC-series/4079858/model/41...

@TT0

"Where do I turn to obtain my bios so I can flash it and hopefully fix this problem?"  

A direct link to the update is below

MS-7613 motherboard  BIOS Update

http://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/swdetails/HP-Pavilion-p6000-Desktop-PC-series/407985...

[TT0]

Thank you Erico.

I will go and work through your answers and come back later today.

TT.

PS: I did go into the bios and reset to factory defaults; this did however not change the problem.

PPS. Without checking, I can say right away that when I boot to my single hard drive containing Win 7 Home Premium, I can access drives plugged into the USB ports, both USB sticks as well as external hard disks.

[erico]

When you plug in a bootable USB flash drive and press the F9 key, is the flash drive not seen as an option?

The same applies to bootable DVD media.

[TT0]

Hi Enrico, thank you.

I'll start answering your questions from the top.

Yes, my USB ports still work and I can excess files on USB sticks, same for my optical drive.

Device manager reports the optical drive is working properly, image below.

With regards to the motherboard, Piriform Speccy reports the following:

And control panel:

(Control panels says Experience Index needs to be refreshed, but I haven't done so since I added 8 Gb extra memory ( 8 to 16) quite a while ago; these boot problems I started this thread for appeared only several days ago.) 

My bios is American Megatrends Inc, version 6.12, dated 12/07/2010.

(Before I flash my bios, I'd like to be sure that the bioses you mentioned are compatible, otherwise I might not be able to boot possibly even to my hard drive.)

Regarding your question USB stick and F9; do you mean during boot sequence? Pressing F9 with a bootable USB stick does not do a thing, otherwise.

 I'll stop editing for now.

Thanks so far.

TT

[erico]

When you click on the BIOS link to download it you will see that it is for the very same motherboard your desktop has, That means that it is compatible.

Updating a BIOS always comes with risks that you must accept if your warranty is no longer valid. 

Before you do anything else, consider using the disk management and command-line diskpart utilities that are part of Windows to see if the optical disk and flash drive are indeed bootable.

 Both utilities will show you if disks are bootable. See the following image. Simply open a command line window and enter the diskpart command as seen in the image. Type in list volume to get information on the disks that are connected to your PC. 

[TT0]

Thanks Erico,

I will get back later today.

I appreciate the time and effort you put into helping me.

TT.

[TT0]

Hello Enrico,

Thanks for the comments about the bios flash.

I have discovered that the two USB memory sticks I have been testing with, both caused the bios to crash when selecting the drive to boot from under boot options. (ESC during boot-up, not in the full bios setup). The boot options screen froze and that was it.

I dug up a live usb stick with Puppy Linux I'd setup in 2010 or so, and attempted to boot with that, which worked!

Also, I suspect the reason I could not boot from optical drive (resulting in the same crash described above) was because one of the two - unexptedly unbootable- USB sticks were still plugged in at that same time.

I have now successfully booted from that old Linux Puppy Live USB and an external hard drive.

To be honest, I currently am reluctant to try and reproduce the boot problems to weed out the "ifs and buts", but will try to boot from DVD and newy created live usb environments and report back on that tomorrow.

Thanks Enrico!

TT.

[erico]

The image you posted with the diskpart shows that your desktop hard disk and OS is MBR, not GPT. 

That is important to know when creating bootable flash drives. 

Your USB flash drive (UUI) is MBR and is not bootable.

That is why you couldn't boot to it.  

Diskpart is a valuable utility. I am glad that Microsoft has included it in Windows.

If you would like to say thanks then click on the thumb in posts that helped you.

[TT0]

Hello Erico,

Sorry I called you a different name a few times.

I managed to boot from live USB and DVD (Redo live backup environment).

I will look at your latest comments regarding MBR, GPT and bootability.

Lots to learn.

Thanks again.

TT0

PS I did click on the thumbs-up button to say thanks.