Exit BIOS recovery without a display

MasterR3C0RD · ‎08-25-2022

Hi there! I have a laptop, a HP Pavilion Gaming 15-ec2008ca, that I unintentionally broke the screen on, so I decided that I might as well repurpose it as a simple transcoding server for my media collection.

The problem is, I decided to throw away the screen and just leave the laptop as a "halftop", so there's no longer a screen installed. Because of this, I can't boot into Linux, Windows, Debian, or any other operating system. Since I wasn't sure why exactly it wasn't booting, I decided to create a BIOS recovery USB and boot it off of that. However, my system's now stuck in the BIOS recovery mode. After looking around on the recovery USB, I found a file named "HpBiosUpdate.log", and it's full of entries like the following:

2020-01-01 00:15:56 EFI HP BIOS Update 3.9.4.0 Started
2020-01-01 00:15:56 [L]> System ID: 88DD
2020-01-01 00:15:56 HP BIOS Image Interface Protocol 2 Version 2.0
2020-01-01 00:15:56 [L]> EFI_HP_BATTERY_CONTROL_PROTOCOL_2010 is present.
2020-01-01 00:15:56 Type 11 1 tables
2020-01-01 00:15:56 Type (000000000000000Bh), Len (0000000000000005h), Handle (0000000000000007h), String count (000000000000000Dh)
2020-01-01 00:15:56 HPBATDET: Environment Variable not found.
2020-01-01 00:15:56 BATDET: Date 1//23//2021 
2020-01-01 00:15:56 BATDET: 0
2020-01-01 00:15:56 [L]> BATDET: HP
2020-01-01 00:15:56 [L]> Found 1 Absolute Pointer Protocol(s)
2020-01-01 00:15:56 [E]> failed to SetBestGopMode, Not Found
2020-01-01 00:15:56 Failed Init of Graphics Library

Is there any way I can at least get an operating system running somehow without a display attached? I did try multiple methods to escape the BIOS recovery loop, including:

Pressing Win-V while turning on the device to clear the BIOS settings
Pressing Win-B again to try and force the BIOS update to run
Holding the power button for 10 seconds to reset the embedded controller
Unplugging and plugging back in the internal battery
Connecting a display to the HDMI port
Connecting a display to a USB-C dongle and connecting that to the laptop
Connecting a screen with a similar connector (HP Envy 13)

Although I'm aware this is an unsupported configuration, I hope I can at least find a solution so this doesn't have to go into the scrap heap. Thank you!

erico · ‎08-25-2022

Be aware that using the Windows key + B keystroke requires that you hold the keys down for quite some time, in some cases as long as a minute or two r=for the laptop to respond.

That is why many people have trouble with the BIOS recovery.

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MasterR3C0RD · ‎08-25-2022

I'm definitely certain that I've gotten the keypress correct, as the fans spun up to full speed and the log files were saved to the BIOS recovery folder.

erico · ‎08-26-2022

It is too bad that you tossed the screen.

The notebook still would have worked with an external display connected to the HDMI port if you had not done that.

I have done that experiment while troubleshooting display issues to verify that a display itself was the actual problem.

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MasterR3C0RD · ‎08-26-2022

Yeah, not my brightest moment haha.

erico · ‎08-28-2022

It happens to the best of us.

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