HP Envy won´t boot

[SirJacobus]

Hi,

to describe the issue in all its complexity, I need to include the overall context so sorry for the long post.

I´ve been trying to repair / recover data from the Envy, after it suddenly went to recovery / booting loop. At fist we thought it was because of the Optane SSD failed so I booted Hirens recovery and tried to get data back etc.

While doing the initial troubleshooting and data recovery, I immediatelly noticed something isn´t right with the initial booting sequence itself but I blamed the SSD which was in the entire time. It took very long to load the system (SSD or recovery USB). The screen was black, only the power button was lit and sometimes I needed to do a hard reset (disconnect the adapter, hold the button, then reconnect) but even after that, it was stuck sometimes. I found out though that while the screen was black and the PW button lit, when I pressed the button a few times (not for long), it suddenly booted up and acted like nothing was wrong,

Anyway, we decided to replace the SSD, I took a regular Samsung 970 EVO Plus, 500 GB instead. And when booting for the first time to install Windows, it was black again... so I pretty much repeated the steps by kinda "randomly" pressing / holding the PW button until it finally started loading properly.

The Windows installation went fine - except for the initial booting issues as described above. By this point I knew that the problem wasn´t, most likely, caused by the original SSD at all... (even though the data weren´t recoverable because what was done with the drive in the meantime). So when I finally logged into Windows, I wanted to do all available system updates etc. but after the first reboot from the newly installed OS, the real problems have started:

Again, I needed to do the hard reset, button pressing etc. to even make it into the OS logon screen but while trying to log in, the system has frozen completely. And it kept happening like this until I reinstalled the OS completely again. Then, after the 1st boot, it worked without issues for a while but after another first post-installation reboot, the freezing started again.

Important note - This particular freezing was happening even with the old Optane SSD, when I was in the Win Recovery (that was still accessible on the old drive) - after a while in the recovery mode, it has simply frozen. However, booting from the USB was ok - the laptop was on for hours, without any issues, which is why I blamed the old SSD at the beginning.

Then I thought it might be a corrupted BIOS or something related to the NVMe or chipset driver so I decided to update everything, one by one. First of all, I launched the BIOS update - as usual from the OS, before any reboot so it was still working and not freezing. (it was ineed severely outdated but I can´t remember the version number right now).

At first, the BIOS update went fine, loaded data, rebooted (without black screen) into the HP BIOS update environment and started processing and veryfing the package - all went well. Then, it rebooted again and started flashing (the white bar in small blue window) - it went from the start to finish once, then appeared again but has stuck at approx. 90+%. Fan was blowing all the time but it hasn´t moved for tens of minutes at least. In the end I decided to shut it down and try to recover the BIOS via USB but it hasn´t turned on since. Tried to disconnect the battery, holding PW, reconnecting again but nothing. Connecting the power cord does also nothing - the charging indicator wont turn on so it seems I eventually bricked it but who knows what was causing the booting issues at the beginning.

Basically, I wanted to ask if there´s anything I can do at this point or just bring it for repair...? This Envy doesn´t have accessible CMOS battery anymore, at least I couldn´t find it. Also - I used USB-C charging all the time, I do not have the rounded charging cable with me so maybe it will respond, if the cable is connected...?

Thank you for any ideas.

[Rainbow23]

Hi @SirJacobus,

Welcome to HP Support Community. 
 

This could be a hardware issue with the unit and may need repair. 

I suggest that you contact HP Service Center in your location from this weblink: https://support.hp.com/us-en/help/service-center 
Note: Select your country from the dropdown,  enter the city or postal code, select the product, change the radius, and click on search to locate the nearest HP Service center near your location.

Hope this helps.
Take care and have a good day.

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