HP Laptop Screen Snow and Boot Loop

[Amoeba42]

Hi there, I have a laptop that is around 3 years old now, but it hasn't been used in a while so it seemed to be in good condition. When I went to boot it up the other day it started doing something strange and once it got past the HP logo screen it gives screen snow, almost like when a TV station has no signal (as seen in the image below). The strange thing is, is that when booting up the computer I am able to hit the various FN keys to launch the various boot menus such as the UEFI Diagnostic menu, the BIOS menu and the Windows 10 recovery menu just fine without getting the static. The other issue that I started to face, was that I was told that I should update the BIOS itself, and so I created a BIOS USB to update the system with and it was all fine until after the BIOS update, the computer started to boot loop, where it would just start up on the HP logo screen, load for a few seconds and then restart itself forever. I was able to rollback to the older BIOS but when I do I am back to the trouble with the static.

Any help would be much appreciated!

[Amoeba42]

The image seems to have broken upon upload so here is a link to it.

https://imgur.com/a/mjnKCcO

[iomare]

Hi,

When you perform the test (fast system test) do you get any hardware errors?

Try performing diagnostics at boot. You can perform a fast system test.

Turn off the PC by holding the power button until complete shutdown.

Turn on the PC and repeatedly press ESC until the startup menu appears.

Press F2 to enter diagnostics.

Try performing the system test and see if there are any failure ids.

You could also create a bootable USB drive with Windows 10 on it (on a different computer) and then use this drive to reinstall the OS on the machine (if the Hard Drive is good).

Download Windows 10

Let me know,

David

[Amoeba42]

Hi David,

I have run through the ENTIRE list of system tests and when running them I got no error's and everything seemed to pass the tests. I ran the extensive test, it took about 4 hours and said there was no problem. I will try to use the USB boot to see if that changes anything with the laptop and will let you know if anything happens.

[Amoeba42]

I ran another system test while creating a Boot USB, and it passed all the system tests and said there were no errors. When I used the USB to boot Windows 10 I get 2 different results. It either boots up fine and then shows the fuzzy screen again, or it just gets stuck at the HP logo screen.

Do you think that using the windows recovery screen and either restoring a previous version or resetting windows altogether from there would have any better effect than what I am currently trying to do?

[iomare]

Hi,

Yes, I think you will need to find an older version of Windows to try out, so try recovery if you can reach that screen.

If you look at the latest BIOS update it says under fixes "- Provides support for Windows 10 v20h2"

https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/selfservice/swdetails/hp-15-db0000-laptop-pc/20395843/model/221...

so if you create a USB drive with the latest version it will most likely not install, Do not know if it should take you to a fuzzy screen.

I do not know what BIOS you have at the moment. If very early you could try doing the updates in a couple of steps. You can download the older ones in version history in the link above (personally I do not really like updating BIOS when I can not even boot into the OS).

Some other things I would try is to attach an external screen and see if the image is the same. Find an older version of Windows. Remove the Hard Drive and start the installation to see if it still takes to a fuzzy screen.

Boot into a live Linux USB drive and see what happens

https://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

Let me know,

David

[kylejmather]

Hey,

I'm experiencing the same identical issue on my friends "HP 15-bw096AW", I can replicate everything as you stated...

Did you get any further since your last post?