S.N. Problem and BIOS Problem

[denis114]

Hi,
I have an HP Pavilion 15-n251el laptop with the following details from the physical label:
• Serial number: 5CD4104HR0
• Product number: G1M30EA#ABZ
The technical issue is that the laptop turns on (LED + fan), but the screen remains completely black. Initially, the Caps Lock blinked twice, indicating a BIOS error. I tried the Win + B / Win + V BIOS Recovery procedure, but it was unsuccessful. Now it doesn't display anything at all.
When checking the serial number on the HP website, it appears associated with a different model (HP Fortis x360 11 G5, product number 9R397UT), which seems to have an active Care Pack, which does not match my physical laptop.
My questions are:
 - Is it possible that the serial number is incorrectly mapped in the HP database?
 - How can I verify which product is correctly associated with this serial number?
 - If the BIOS is completely corrupted, what is the recommended procedure (service / BIOS rewriting)?

Thank you in advance for any clarification.

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

Hi:

What happens in some circumstances is that the serial numbers are duplicated due to the way HP generates the serial number.

The 4th, 5th and 6th characters are the year and week of manufacture, 4th = year (0 -9), 5th and 6th = week (01 - 52).

So, a serial number could be duplicated for some PC's every 10 years.

Support for your notebook has been retired since it is more than 10 years old which is why the S/N for only the one model shows up on the support site.

If you were to enter your notebook's serial number in the search window at the link below, it would provide an option to select which PC you want information about.

HP PartSurfer

That won't help you get support for your PC of course, but now you know the reason why this happened.

But I can help you with getting a BIOS file for your PC:

Below are the info and exe file links to the latest BIOS update I could find for the 15-n2xx notebooks with AMD processors (F.20):

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp79501-80000/sp79552.html

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp79501-80000/sp79552.exe

Watch these videos for how to create and use a USB BIOS recovery flash drive with the BIOS update file I posted above.

How to make and use the BIOS recovery flash drive to recover or update the BIOS outside of Windows.

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