HP Elitebook 8560p BIOS boot problem

[scott-1958]

When power button is pressed don’t hear any noise and does one or the other symptoms below.

1) Blank screen and Caps lock & num lock lights blinks 2 times then off for 2 seconds then repeats. Hold power button till computer turns off. Press power button then repeats above or does #2 below.

2) Blank screen caps lock blinks continuously for about 20 seconds then fan runs fast. Can’t turn off with power button.

2.1) Have to remove AC adapter and battery. Hold power button for 1 minute. Reconnect AC adapter only. Will not start only blue battery light lit on front panel. Have to disconnect AC adapter and hold power button for 1 minute then try to start up again. May take 5 to 10 minutes of doing this before computer will start.

After I can get computer to boot into windows shutdown and reinstalled battery without AC adapter. Not pressing power button the blue battery light on front panel is lit and will not start . Have to repeat step 2.1 several times above to get the battery light to go out to start computer.

How I fixed blue battery light coming on with battery installed first.

Went into BIOS and reset to factory defaults. Plugged in USB drive with Linux Kubuntu. After Kubuntu started plugged in battery. Battery light did not come on. Checked battery status and said 100%. shut down computer and removed DC power for a few minutes. When DC power was applied blue battery light did not come on.

Worked for a month after this with no blue lights blinking during startup. The problem started again after I did a hard drive backup. Forgot to turn off external USB hard drive with backup images when I turned on computer.

Things I have tried:

Tested internal hard drive using SMART long test.

Disconnected all devices connected to computer and removed hard drive.

Ran Memtest86+ overnight for both RAM modules. It did 6 passes with no errors.

Tried starting computer with only 1 RAM module then tried the other RAM module only.

Replaced BIOS battery and reset BIOS to factory defaults.

Used HP PC hardware diagnostics software. Passed all system tests and component tests including AC adapter and battery test.

Updated BIOS with Windows 10 Pro

1) Ran Windows 8.1 (64-bit)-HP UEFI support environment-sp62598. Saved files to internal hard drive

2) Ran BIOS system update-Windows 8.1(64bit)-F.67 Rev.A-sp85528

3) Computer restarted in BIOS to do the update. Ran the update and said completed successfully. Said “Upon restarting, the screen may be blank for a few minutes and various led lights may flash. Please do not attempt to interrupt or power down during this time ”

4) After computer rebooted got the cap & num lock blinking 2 times then off 2 seconds then repeating. Waited for a while then had to hold power button to turn off. Tried updating the BIOS 5 times with the same result.

5) Since it had no verify errors after updating BIOS and said BIOS updated successfully assume it worked. Don’t know if it is suppose to do anything else to update BIOS after reboots.

I went into BIOS and it says the BIOS version is 68SCF, F.67, 2/13/18 so I assume the BIOS updated successfully.

Chatted with someone on HP support website using live chat.

They said the cap lock blinking continuously could be either a BIOS failure or insufficient power. Used HP PC hardware diagnostics software and said the AC adapter and battery passed.

They suggested to try emergency BIOS recovery. With the computer off, press and hold the Windows key and the B key or v key at the same time then press power button for 2 to 3 seconds then wait for about 40 seconds to see something on screen. I tried for an hour but every time computer started got either caps lock blinking 2 times then off for 2 seconds and repeating or caps lock blinking continuously.

Don’t believe that would work anyway because original BIOS was F.22 from December 22, 2011. When i updated the BIOS to Windows 8.1 (64 bit) F.67 it said after you install this you can’t go back to an earlier version.

They said if that doesn’t work the motherboard is bad. Don’t believe that because it worked ok for a month till I forgot to turn off external hard drive in USB docking station before turning on computer after cloning hard drive. 

For now i just keep computer on all the time and suspend to RAM when going to bed. When I clone hard drive in about a month will need to shutdown and will probably have the same booting problem.