HP EliteDesk 705 G1 8 beeps bios recovery solution

[dleejuly83]

I saw alot of solutions online and wanted to let people know some more in depth information to help people who might have thought their motherboard was bricked forever.

I tried to update my Elitedesk 705 G1 to 00.02.31 Rev.A from the original bios and it bricked it in Windows. It seems this is a bad bios file that should be taken down as I typed in my serial number and HP said this was for my exact model of 705 G1 Small Form Factor. I thought it might have been for the tiny super small compact version of the 705 G1 but after looking at it again it is in fact suppose to be correct bios so this needs to be taken down or it is only safe to flash in a DOS or BIOS environment. Also this could have been an error on my part as I was upgrading from a 2015 release without first upgrading to 2016/2017 bios first and then to a 2018 release but I never had an issue doing this before on various platforms. I don't know what I did honestly to cause the initial brick.

I tried to use to USB flash drive solution while pressing the Windows and B key together and wasn't getting anywhere. This DOES work and the drive will eventually pull up the HP recovery but sometimes it can take 5-10 minutes(This is most likely if you switched hard drives and their isn't an HP_Tools partition on the new drive might be causing the time delay.  The flash drive doesn't have to be FAT16 as someone reported  FAT32 is fine and you don't have to hold down Windows and B together the entire time. I just held it down for the first 8 beeps. (The machine will sound like a tornado with CPU blowing at 100 percent but thats ok it will eventually kick into recovery bios mode and the fan speed will slow down. That is when you know it worked.

The key here is knowing that you can't just go back to your original bios. Some kind of security measure from HP that prevents you from downgrading UNLESS its the previous released BIOS. In this case it is 00.02.30 Rev.A which is the ONE before the faulty one and works if put on the flash drive and not the newest or oldest bios file available. My error is I tried to flash to the original released BIOS and the machine wasn't going to let me do it. I tried the bootable CD solution in Nero with just putting the bin file on the disc and that didn't work as someone recommended before I figured out the BIOS file i HAD to use in order for recovery to start flashing a bin file. The flash drive will detect on the front panel as it doesn't have to be plugged into the back. The key on this is that it can just take some time and CPU fan will be running 100 percent. I would only give up after 15 minutes of no signal to the monitor.  You should normally know within 7-10 minutes in my opinion if you did the key combo right. Use HPBIOSUPDREC from the BIOS download file to create the readable flash drive. It should create a folder called Hewlitt-Packard. It will put the bios in the current folder but you can try putting copies of the bios files in the other 2 folders as well just in case. I also wouldnt have any files from anything else non-related just in case so go ahead and quick format the drive before you run HPBIOSUPDREC. The main file needed on the drive is L06_0230.bin

i just wanted to make this post because I see this as an issue for years to come and the information on the correct fix is quite fragmented.  I would recommend only flashing from the BIOS itself and not Windows on this board. I flashed a bios file on  EliteDesk 800 G2 from Intel  in Windows and it seemed to almost brick the board as the screen went blank for a few too many minutes so these EliteDesks are not to be trusted in flashing through Windows. It seems too risky in my experience.