840 G3 Brick after BIOS Update

[Tim_Lovegrove]

I received a delivery of 5 x 840 G3 laptops. 2 of them I have imaged. When I updated the BIOS in the OS from 1.04 to 1.05 I get no warnings and it does the usual shut down, but when it tries to restart, it gives out 2 long beeps and 2 short beeps (with accompanying caps lock and numlock LED flashing).

Because this has happened to 2 of them, I will no longer be updating the BIOS from the OS as I did in this case.

I have spoken to HP support, with no joy, and all they can do is replace it.

Has anyone else had this issue?

Any ideas on if/how I can fix it without sending it back to HP?

I have tried starting with the windows and B keys pressed.

I have tried creating a recovery USB flash drive and booting with windows and B held down.

I have removed the battery and tried both the above with just mains power.

I even removed the CMOS battery (clutching at straws!).

Nothing has worked.

There is no activity from the screen or the HDD (SSD).

Cheers, Tim

[Fox_Architect]

I just had exactly the same issue building an 820 G3 -  Updated the BIOS whilst troubleshooting another issue during an image build - Having done countless BIOS updates on other machines, I figured  nothing would go wrong so skipped the backup, recovery etc.  Like you, the BIOS looked like it worked and machine rebooted, but then got 2 long beeps and 2 short beeps.  I created a BIOS recovery boot disk and powered up with the windows and B key pressed down.  It did a lot of beep sequences and I thought it had failed, but I kept holding the keys down until the beeps stopped. Then released the keys and waited.   A DXE recovery screen eventually appeared and the machine booted up into Windows OK.   For me, I just wasn't waiting long enough for the recovery to actually take place:)

[Tim_Lovegrove]

Ah, thanks for that, I wasn't holding the keys down for ages, so I'll give that a try.

Cherers, Tim

[Matt_S_BBC]

I have this too, with both a ZBook 15 G3 and EliteBook 820 G3.

I flash the BIOS okay, no errors but then the device restarts and I get 2 long beeps followed by 2 short beeps for about 30 seconds, when the device then restarts, loads into a HP screen where it seems to be recovering itself and then boots back into Windows (after showing at the POST screen that it has actually updated to the correct version).

Anyone have any answers?

[JGalloway]

We received 30 EliteBook 840 G3 laptops and had a similar experience. During our deployment process I run the following command in Windows to update the bios: HPBIOSUPDREC.exe -s. On the first laptop I tried to update it went through the following series of beeps before I gave up and moved on to recover the BIOS:

- 2 long beeps, 2 short beeps x 5

- Reboot

- 1 long beep, 2 short beeps

I recovered the BIOS successfully using the following documentation: http://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c02693833#AbT1

Since I was able to successfully recover the BIOS and stumbled across this post I decided to try again but wait a bit longer. This was the result on the remaining 29 laptops:

- 2 long beeps, 2 short beeps x 5

- Reboot

- 1 long beep, 2 short beeps

- 2 long beeps, 2 short beeps x 4

- Reboot x 2

- DXE update notification

- Reboot

I didn't have to touch the machines during this process, I just waited for them to complete. Afterwards they were all on the latest BIOS (1.10) and functioning just fine. Anyhow, I find this highly questionable and will report back if I get any additional info from HP.

[Matt_S_BBC]

That is exactly the same process we are seeing here but with other models too. Perhaps that is the normal process but the last thing I would expect to get after a BIOS update is tonnes of beeping with a black screen, flashing lights and then messages about recovery! We have ours in an SCCM OSD Task Sequence, which doesn't require any input and does update the BIOS but I too find it questionable. The first time I did one, I really thought it had bricked.

[RavOcean]

Guys, I have a HP EliteBook 840 G3 (i5 6th Gen., 8GB, 256GB SSD).
It had been working just fine until yesterday. Two days ago I closed my laptop and was gone for a trip. Yesterday night I open it, press the power button, it starts but nothing happens. Then somehow I saw HP logo, then it kept restarting, and finally I saw the screen where you can see the time, date, with random nature backgrounds. But when I presset a button to enter my pin nothing happened. None of the keys would work. I waited a couple minutes, then forced it to shut down by pressing and holding power key. Later it showed BIOS update screen with saying "DXE update final step of BIOS". Then shut down.
I turn it on, the screen is black, CapsLock and NumLock are flashing and that's it. I did the BIOS recovery by downloading a file and using a USB flash drive, tried to do it but no results. I got the same "DXE update..." screen once, but it shuts down again.
Any suggestions?

[RavOcean]

Update:
When I press Win+V and turn on, I get the DXE Update screen. After that I see the HP logo, it restarts, then says something like "OS can't be found. Remove any external drives". I remove the USB drive, turn it on, it gets to the DXE Update screen, then HP logo, then "System is booting in Manufacturing Program Mode... : 0"

Please help!

https://imgur.com/a/KY925
https://imgur.com/a/UqiAV

[RavOcean]

Another update:
Windows started. The laptop keyboard and touch pad won't work(key backlight is fine).
I connected my USB wireless mouse. The icons on desktop are there, but the taskbar panel has no icons, the Windows(Start) button won't work. I opened HP Support Assistant, everything looks good, have a few minor updates. The BIOS is still the old version I had(so USB didn't update it). And now everything in background is all black. All I have is the HP Support Assistant window open and working.

Where did I go wrong with this mess?