Laptop BIOS issue

Yesterday while I was in the process of reinstalling windows 8.1, I had an issue where my laptop restarted during the install and came back to a black screen with caps lock flashing twice every 5 seconds. After some checking I found this error code meant that my BIOS was corrupted. My question is, is there anyway to flash a new BIOS onto the laptop when there is nothing on the hard drive? Or is the laptop now a brick? I have tried holding the windows key and B when I press the power button to load up BIOS recovery. I have tried to load a new BIOS onto a flash drive and trying to load up BIOS recovery ( Granted this was just using the extracted BIOS file renamed since I can not use insyde flash from my desktop.) The laptop was working perfectly before the issue, it was just time to go through the refresh process.

HP Envy dv4t-5100 CTO
6 gigs ddr3 ram
Nvidia 630M Graphics card
All other info I dont remember off the top of my head since I can not boot to check device manager.

Sounds like you've got yourself and expensive brick, but I'm not entirely sure.


Sent from the Matrix using telepathic communication

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Originally Posted by AOD_lanius424

Sounds like you've got yourself and expensive brick, but I'm not entirely sure.


Sent from the Matrix using telepathic communication

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I'm gonna have to agree there. See if HP will help you, otherwise you have a really nice looking doorstop.

Most of the time if the bios gets corrupted it's almost impossible to fix.


Sent from the Matrix using telepathic communication

Thats what I was worried about. Would a replacement motherboard fix the issue? I found the OEM replacement for $75, but I dont want to order it for it not to work and then I am out an extra 75 ontop of the 1200 I spend on the laptop, the 100 for the HD when that failed, and the 45 for the fan when that failed. All in all I will never buy HP again. Had nothing but trouble with it, including all the overheating issues it has.

to be perfectly honest i'd take the $75 and just put it towards something else


Sent from the Matrix using telepathic communication

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Originally Posted by AOD_Greenmask20

Thats what I was worried about. Would a replacement motherboard fix the issue? I found the OEM replacement for $75, but I dont want to order it for it not to work and then I am out an extra 75 ontop of the 1200 I spend on the laptop, the 100 for the HD when that failed, and the 45 for the fan when that failed. All in all I will never buy HP again. Had nothing but trouble with it, including all the overheating issues it has.

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If you can fix it for $75 that would be worth it. That's less than 10% of the $1,200 you spent on it.

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Originally Posted by AOD_Cyrihs

If you can fix it for $75 that would be worth it. That's less than 10% of the $1,200 you spent on it.

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I'd agree with you, other than the fact that he has had constant issues with it, the time he (or others) have spent fixing it could have been spent gaming. It's probably going to be a personal call at this point.

Might be a bit more money unless you have the cd key for your operating system, from my understanding the key is usually encrypted in the BIOS, so unless you have that or another key you can use you might be up for more money.

First let me say I didn't lookup you particular laptop - but I deal with a few thousand at work and at home.

I doubt your BIOS is corrupted - it is actually pretty hard to corrupt them without knowing you are about to as they are usually in a read-only state unless that pin is triggered (could be logic low or high, don't remember.) Multiple warnings and blinking RED text before starting the process if run via HP's BIOS update utility. This sounds almost like a BGA or thermal issue. Remove the battery (primary battery) and see if you can reset the CMOS as well (or remove the battery for that - usually a 2 pin coin cell on a short 1CM wire)

Try starting it with NO RAM installed. Should beep if northbridge/GPU are working correctly - of course there is exceptions to this rule as well.

Check your CPU and/or GPU fan on the laptop, blow it out with compressed air after you get to the fan and verify you don't have any platoons of Dust bunnies in there. You may have to take the keyboard out or the entire back off - sorry, HP designed it, not I. Verify the fan spins when you start the laptop. It should spin up immediately and then slow down or stop after 2-3 seconds.

If that flash trick were to work - it may or may not - make sure you're using a ~4GB flash drive that is formatted FAT32. (Don't ask why but vendors aren't supporting other file systems yet) Make sure the files are extracted to the root, not in subfolders.

For a BGA issue - mainboard is your only choice unless you know someone that is willing to do a BGA rework locally. I HATE BGA and have reworked some stuff in the past. I happen to have an HP here for just such a repair - I'm going to be recommending they ditch it. If it happens once, it can potentially happen again.

Any chance you can upload a video to YT of what you get? Want to compare it to the dead one I got here. The one here the lights for power and around the keyboard on the side just keep blinking. No beeps - not even with RAM out - which isn't a good sign.

The one I'm working on is a G71.

Good luck, these problems suck!