EliteBook 8540w bios F.60 rendered my laptop unusable!!!

[RZSN]

Hello, I have tried to upgrade this pretty expensive EliteBook 8540W of mine with 2x8GB of RAM, but the laptop started with OK bios info (16384MB ram detected), yet my windows installation could not boot. After checking the bios version, I found out that I have a way old bios - so I decided to upgrade. Which was a complete disaster. The F.60 bios update package erased the system information and maybe something even deeper for the platform, as I am not able to see my SATA drive anymore. What a hell.. can anybody help me? I have tried the Win+B and press power button,  but that just results in a blinking caps-lock icon and no beeps and the laptop does not turn off by the 4sec hold of power button - I literally have to pull the battery out to shut it down!

I have managed to brick two more 8440p systems in past with bios updates. What the hell is going on with these HPs???

I made a last photo, from the updater.. after that nothing works. No SATA drive, no wifi, fingerprint login to bios is lost, and even the 2x8G does not work I was doing this for. Very much disappointed in the HP QA for bios releases.

What can I do now? Is RMA possible here? I could flash the SPI memory by my programmer.. but when tried that to recover the 8440p, i could bring the system alive and working with the drives.. yet it complained something about System not committed.

Please help me.

[ub6424]

Hello @RZSN 

Sorry to hear that you are having problems ... I would like to help you.

You used the wrong BIOS version. Please reflash your bios.

(1) Power off notebook

(2) Disconnect charger

(3) Press and hold <power> button for 30 seconds

(4) Connect charger

(5) Use (another Windows 10/11 computer) to create <USB flash drive>

HP Notebook System BIOS Update (ROM Family 68CVD)

F.0F

6.3 MB

Mar 9, 2011

Download

Use a FAT32-formatted small <USB flash drive> (Type USB 2.0)

Follow --->>> BIOS Recovery Reinstall with USB

(6) Repeat reflash procedures:

• windows + b <USB flash drive> not connected
• windows + v <USB flash drive> not connected
• windows + b <USB flash drive> connected
• windows + v <USB flash drive> connected 

Keep me updated

Kind regards

[RZSN]

Hello @Ub6424,

your generic process is pretty flawed and does not work at all - on my laptop.

Starting with your first instructions - disconnect charger and press/hold power for 30 sec - the laptop actually turns on.. if you meant to discharge something, then the section shall have - remove battery as well.

Making a recovery boot drive is possible in other windows, but my laptop will not boot from it - the boot menu (ESC,F9) is empty - the system does not see its internal SSD nor the USB flash.

The win+B and press power makes the laptop with slowly blinking CapsLock LED, and 35W consumption, Fan spins up after few seconds to cool it. No difference if there is a USB flash or not, after 10 minutes I had to pull out the battery from it, since the powerdown by holding the Power for 4 - 10sec is not working at this state.

Win+V does nothing, the system powers up and tells me there is missing system information.

And how did you figure out that the bios I have flashed is the wrong version?, when HP clearly provides this for download. And the updater did not complain at all, that its not compatible?

[ub6424]

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@RZSN wrote:

your generic process is pretty flawed and does not work at all - on my laptop.

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Hello @RZSN 

I have not yet received any feedback that this method of discharging the electronic components (not the battery) does not work. Well maybe you made a mistake or it really doesn't work with your model.

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@RZSN wrote:

Making a recovery boot drive is possible in other windows, but my laptop will not boot from it - the boot menu (ESC,F9) is empty - the system does not see its internal SSD nor the USB flash.

---

Please follow the youtube video, The notebook should not boot from usb.

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@RZSN wrote:

The win+B and press power makes the laptop with slowly blinking CapsLock LED, and 35W consumption, Fan spins up after few seconds to cool it. No difference if there is a USB flash or not, after 10 minutes I had to pull out the battery from it, since the powerdown by holding the Power for 4 - 10sec is not working at this state.

Win+V does nothing, the system powers up and tells me there is missing system information.

---

If Bios and Bios Startup chip are defective, unfortunately it will not work. V and B are the known keys for the key combinations. They may or may not work.

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@RZSN wrote:

And how did you figure out that the bios I have flashed is the wrong version?, when HP clearly provides this for download. And the updater did not complain at all, that its not compatible?

---

This can be seen in the major version and the bios history.

Kind regards

[RZSN]

I have read out the BIOS SPI flash and for first try i have replaced the last 3MB with the bios file that comes from the update. The laptop booted to a "non committed state" + "Product information is not valid"

On second try, I have composed the flash image, that only the BIOS code sections are written to the SPI flash, and something that looks like NVRAM and variables will be kept as before. This version does not complain about "committed state", yet the "Product information is not valid" remains.

On third attempt, I have found a bios dump from another machine (I can not use it, since there is some SSO set up and I can not enter the bios settings) - but there are several keys which I have modified in my second image - HP_MODEL, HP_CSN, HP_SKU, HP_UUID. Some of the information is written with checksum, or copied over where I did not discover the value checksum function, yet my laptop is still with "Product information is not valid".

With reading back the SPI flash, I can clearly see that the bios is *CLEARING* these settings on the boot.

Why it can not just do what I want? How to set the model/sn/sku and generate an uuid which will persist? And not go away with upgrade to F.60 bios??

Having the platform VPD in the region which is rewritten or corrupted by a bios update was a pretty stupid idea from HP.

[ub6424]

Hello @RZSN 

Please contact a professional BIOS flash service.

Kind regards

[ub6424]

Hello @RZSN 

Quote: "

This is a peer-to-peer forum, not HP support.

We do not work for or represent HP.

"