No booting, corrupt BIOS, laptop model retired from USB recovery flash drive tool

[TytoAlba]

Hi there!

When turning on my laptop, I get a black screen and caps lock blinking. The code is 2 long + 2 short, which I found is a corrupted BIOS. I tried both "ctrl + b" and "ctrl + v" booting but unfortunately none worked. I moved on to creating a USB flash drive to fix the BIOS, but the model of my laptop is stated as retired.

I found a post with someone having exactly the same issue, and an HP support agent offered guidance via private message, so I could not see the solution to fix the error.

I would be really grateful if anyone could help me.

TIA

Model name: Pavilion 15-p037cl
OS: Win10 64-bit
No previous issues/errors/updates were seen before

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

HP has retired support for the model series since it is more than 10 years old, which is why you can't find any info for your notebook on the HP support site.

This is the latest BIOS update I could find for your notebook:  F.46

Info link:

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp87001-87500/sp87479.html

Exe link:

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp87001-87500/sp87479.exe 

Watch these two videos at the links below for how to make and use the BIOS recovery flash drive to recover or update the BIOS outside of Windows.

How to create a BIOS recovery drive with the above BIOS file.

Creating a BIOS Recovery Flash Drive for HP Notebooks | HP Notebooks | HP Support

How to recover/update your notebook's BIOS with the USB recovery drive:

Restore the BIOS with a Recovery Flash Drive on HP Notebooks | HP Notebooks | HP Support

[TytoAlba]

Paul, thank you so much for your help!

I followed the steps, but the HP Bios update and recovery tool seems to close before ending the process. It reaches the following point and after that the program window all of a sudden disappears 😞  I ran the exe several times and this happened every time. Is there any advice you could give me?

This is the last window I see for less than a second before it disappers:

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Unfortunately, I have never come across that problem before so I don't know what you can do if the BIOS update won't complete.

Try the previous BIOS update (F.45) which would be the only suggestion I can offer.

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp79501-80000/sp79605.html

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp79501-80000/sp79605.exe 

[TytoAlba]

Thanks again Paul!

Unfortunately the same happened with this other version. I'll try to get this done in another computer, I feel it can be something about this particular laptop. Will let you know if I can do it somewhere else.

Thanks again!

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome. 

Good luck!

[TytoAlba]

Hi Paul!

I managed to create the recovery flash drive and it worked like a charm! Thank you so much for your help, I'm so grateful! 🙏

Is there anything else I should do now or is it fully fixed? Was this just a random error or was it something that could have been avoided? I'm asking in order to understand an learn!

[Paul_Tikkanen]

You're very welcome.

Glad you were able to recover the BIOS and have your notebook in working order again.

It should be fully fixed and there are no newer BIOS updates available that may cause a problem again.

[LordDement]

ve you tried accessing the command prompt to repair the files if it wont load power on then when the HP logo appears hold the power the after this has been done 3 times itsould allow you to access boot menus go to advanced option load command prompt type diskpart this  will open the disc management tool then select listdisk to view  to bring up a list of all physical drives and discs connected to the PC then type u can then select disk will allow u to focus on a spesific number  clean disk erases all information including partitions on disc create partition and format partitions the clean function will help restore the drives to normal

[TytoAlba]

Great! Thank you very much, Paul!

Kind regards.