Solved: Re: Envy x360 AMD laptop unusable after updating to BIOS F.1... - HP Support Community

touyets · ‎12-14-2018

Hi,

I have had this HP ENVY x360 Convertible 15-bq1xx laptop since June and it always crashed once a day, usually after 10-15 minutes of using it. It was never a huge issue because it crashed only once a day and then was ok until the next day. Weird I know but it was just an inconvenience. I had all drivers up-to-date and everything and I just assumed it was the AMD card being just subpar.

Today, I was overjoyed to see the HP assistant tell me there was a BIOS update to version F.19 which was dealing with stability issue. I was excited to finally get rid of my once-a-day crash.

The once-a-day crash is now a every-5-minutes crash. If I try to play a video on youtube, it crashes. Or instead of crashing, it will slow down to a crawl, mouse will be unbearably laggy (with a mix of freeze thrown in there as well) and a windows notification will repeatadly pop-up saying Chrome.exe was blocked from accessing the graphics hardware. The message would dissapear and immediately pop back up until the sweet relief of the laptop crashing a minute or 2 later.

The incovenience I had before where the laptop crashed once but was still perfectly able to use for videos, software usage, programming via Visual Studio etc. has now made way to the horror of having a 6-months old laptop that is completely unusable.

I did a BIOS rollback using Win+B on startup but the rollback failed. The cmd command "wmic bios get smbiosbiosversion" shows it is still on F.19. And laptop is still crashing repeatedly.

I tried going back in time to a restore point to discover that my Windows 10, because it was upgraded more than 10 days ago (September if I remember correctly) cannot be sent back to a previous restore point. Kill me!

I need this fix yesterday. I am going on a trip to a different continent in 5 working days and this laptop MUST be fixed by then or the trip will because pointless.

I tried calling your phone support but apparently it closes at 6pm on a Friday and it was 5pm when I tried calling and the phone lines were already closed.

I need help in the worst way imagineable.

UPDATE: And yes, the laptop crashed 30 seconds after posting this. Apparently, even that was too much for it.

Simon

gridironking81 · ‎12-18-2018

Touyets,

Have no fear, I believe I have discovered the solution. Long post, but this doesn't take that long and I am ecstatic now that my Envy x360 is finally working again. I was having similar issues in that my computer would randomly crash when I tried doing too much and ALWAYS whenever I browsed the internet for than 15-20 secs. So here it is and I hope this helps! (I copied and pasted this from another thread I posted this in for a related issue).

Great news!!!! I believe I have discovered how to fix this issue! It took alot of research and I actually came upon the solution by happenstance. Just want to point out real quick that I believe this is the solution because before doing this I wasn't able to be on the internet but for 15 secs before it glitched out, froze up, and rebooted. Now, I've been surfing my butt off and haven't had an issue! 🙂 So I'll try to lay it out as simply as possible.

1) Type in "AMD Radeon Settings" in your windows search bar (lower left corner by start button) and select the app or press enter. Your Radeon Settings menu should open.

2) Click the tab in upper right that say "System". It will display basic information about your system. One of the boxes will be "Radeon Software Version". Mine said version 17.7 I believe (before updating). What's important here is if it says anything other than "18.12.2". If it doesn't say "18.12.2" then this seems to be the problem.

There seems to be a disconnect on HPs part on giving us the most up to date driver. They're giving us an outdated driver with the update which is apparently jacking everything up. Now on to how to get it updated. Just clicking "update driver" seems not to work. Here's how to get it updated (long instructions, sorry. Just want to lay it out Barney style so anybody can do it):

1) Go to AMD's website. Click "Drivers and Support". Go to the section on the page that says "or select product from the list" (don't auto detect or anything else). Select "Processors with graphics", then "AMD Ryzen Processors", then "AMD Ryzen 5 Desktop Processors with Radeon Vega Graphics" and lastly "AMD Ryzen 5 2400G". Now click submit (Yes, I realize my computer has 2500U and is not a desktop, but AMD doesn't have the option for 2500U and the the 2400G is the same driver anyways).

2) There will be a few options to download from the next page. Click "Download" on the one thats titled "Radeon Software" with the Revision Number "Adrenalin 2019 Edition 18.12.2". File size is 327 MB.

3) Select "Run" when the pop up appears.

4) Then select "Install". It will end up telling you it was succesfully installed. You're NOT done yet. It hasn't really installed yet. Don't restart your computer yet either.

5) Type "Device Manager" in your windows search bar and press enter. Expand the "Display Adapters". Double click the "AMD Radeon(TM) Vega 8 Graphics". Select the "Driver" tab. Then select the "Update Driver" option.

6) Select the "Browse my computer for driver software".

7) At the bottom of the next window there is an option to "Let me pick form a list of available drivers on my computer". Click it.

😎 On the next window, towards the bottom right, select the option that says "Have Disk..."

9) Pop window appears. Click the "Browse" button.

10) It wants you to now locate the file. In the drop down menu at the top, navigate to your (C:) disk. Then double click the "AMD" folder. Now there should be only one folder, but if there is multiple, the name of the folder should have the "18.12.2" in it. Double click that one. Then double click "Packages". Double click "Drivers". Double click "Display". Double click the next folder (should be a folder with some random letters; I believe it starts with a W). For me, there were now 3 options to choose from. DONT select the one that is a folder. the two others have filenames that start with "C" and the other starts with a "U". Double click the one that starts with the "C". That window you were in now disappears.

11) Now click "Ok" in the window thats open (the one you originally clicked "Browse" in).

12) Now you're in the window where you originally clicked "Have Disk..." There is a Model scroll menu with a BUNCH of different options to select. Scroll through the list until you find the one that says "AMD Radeon(TM) Vega 8 Graphics" (mine was bout 3/4 of the way down the list). There will be two of them. I selected the bottom one (don't know if it makes a difference). Select it and then select "Next" at the bottom of the window.

It will now begin to officially install. Once complete, or maybe before it starts (can't remember) it'll give you some warning about the possibility of the driver not being compatible with your system or OS or whatever. Ignore it. Click "Ok" or "Next" or "Proceed" or whatever option gets you past that pop up. Another pop up appears once the install is complete that says you need to restart your computer for the change to take effect. Restart the computer.

After it starts back up, type in "AMD Radeon Settings" again in your windows search bar and press enter. Click "System", and verify the new 18.12.2 version is now installed. Now try browse the internet and do things on your computer again. Should work like a charm now! Haven't had it crash at all and I've been typing this for awhile.

I don't know why HP or windows is not showing this update in their updater tools considering this is causing all kinds of headaches for people. Maybe they'll figure it out. Let me know if this works for you please! I'm anxious to know if it works for others and not just myself! Good luck!

View solution in original post

Huffer · ‎12-14-2018

This is a Community Forum and the best we can do here is to offer suggestions for self-help. We can also send up a flag to the HP Moderators to see if they can intervene but with 5 days somehow if this is to be fixed it will have to be done remotely. I know whomever may try to support you it will be necessary to rule out a hardware issue so you should boot to the diagnostic app and run a full hardware test particularly on the memory and hard drive to rule out any issue with them and isolate it to the BIOS. If the problem got worse after the BIOS upgrade it is natural to blame it and you may be right to do so, but just because something happens after something else does not mean the earlier thing necessarily caused the latter.

Diagnostics is accessed by tapping esc then F2 as you power up.

rick-s · ‎12-14-2018

@touyets

I have brought your issue to the attention of an appropriate team within HP. They will likely request information from you in order to look up your case details or product serial number. Please look for a private message from an identified HP contact. Additionally, keep in mind not to publicly post personal information (serial numbers and case details).

If you are unfamiliar with how the Forum's private message capability works, you can learn about that here.

Thank you for visiting the HP Support Community.

I work on behalf of HP.

MikeAlani · ‎12-14-2018

I posted two post about my issue and no one asnwer!!!!!!! you guys need to check your customers. I have same issue with SSD it slow and pcie 3 x4 changed to 1 x4 with bios update. Please need to roll back the bios as it always fail.

touyets · ‎12-14-2018

Thanks Huffer. Yeah I've been doing all that for the last 5 hours. I ran 2 extended system tests. Tried to rollback the BIOS using Win+B at startup and I have just finished resetting the PC. BIOS F.19 is still here and the issue is still the same.

I have uninstalled a lot of stuff that could have been an issue. Made sure Chrome is at the latest version, also checked flash was at the latest version. I have done everything I could think about to see if it was something else than the BIOS.

Seems like since the phone support is only during weekdays, I am all out of luck until monday.

touyets · ‎12-14-2018

Thanks Rick. I'll keep an eye out for the PM.

Sara1H · ‎12-15-2018

Me and my brother both have the same device and are experiencing the same issue after the new BIOs update, kind of reassuring to know we're not the only ones however its become extremely frustrating and has practically rendered the laptops useless. Unable to contact customer support till monday, if you get any info or updates on how to solve this before then it would be very much appreciated.

Thanks, Sara

Spoiler

Angry_Engineer · ‎12-15-2018

Hi Simon,

I've had my Envy for 30 days. I've been pleased with it until the other day when the F.19 BIOS update crippled it. The F.19 BIOS UPDATE IS VERY BAD FOR SOME OF US, but if your crashes are mostly happening within a browser, then here's a workaround-fix which might buy you some time and stability until HP can issue a proper solution: Disable hardware acceleration within your browser. For Chrome, quickly go to settings, type "acceleration" in the search box, then click on the slider to disable. Relaunch Chrome and see if that helps. I'm typing this response on my machine which is just like yours now that I've done that. You have to do it quickly the first time or, as you know, you'll have another crash. (Also... don't forget to turn on your hardware acceleration someday when HP fixes the problem.)

I'll add that there is a growing chorus of distressed Envy users speaking up. My HP Support Assistant software also recommended the F.19 BIOS update and I dutifully installed it. Unfortunately, upon the first restart I was immediately greeted with a) the need to reset my Windows pin and b) severe instability like yours. Since the F.19 update my Envy has now exhibited everything from scary white-screen-or-garbled-screen-lockups to random restarts, boots, inability to watch YouTube videos, Windows error messages, etc.

It's unfortunate that HP released this BIOS update without providing a rollback option.

We should all expect HP to make this right.

touyets · ‎12-15-2018

Thanks. Removing the hardware acceleration in Chrome definitely helped. To be clear, I used Chrome as an example. The laptop freezes and crashes using pretty much anything. A video, it crashes; a word doc, it crashes, I sneeze, it crashes... you get the idea, Obviously, it is still random as to when it crashes within teh process but it does invariably crash in teh end.

I will be calling HP support (how in the world is there not a 24/7 option?!) on monday and I will post the result here.

Andrea55 · ‎12-15-2018

Same here, with F17 no problem after updating to F19 every gpu workload makes the system crash, this bios is bugged.

Hp let us rollback or fix the update, please

Envy x360 AMD laptop unusable after updating to BIOS F.19

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