Bad Bios Flash on Laptop

These are coming out of the woodwork.. DO NOT UPDATE THE BIOS ON THESE. We can change the BIOS chip for you.(Surface mounted to the board) Its the only solution at this point. There appears to be a bad image file or other on the update and we had 6 calls yesterday 3 the day before, regarding failed Flash attempts.5 out of the 6 were 4420's However Compaqs use the same BIOS chip and I'd reccomend not updating the BIOS on these as well. At least until the problem is straightened out. (Even though it should be a different bios altogether). CAll if you need help. Ken
www.ikenfixit.com

Fun stuff

Just for kicks? I downloaded and installed a bios Update to an HP 5000 series and guess what happened? Froze and sat there for 45 minutes until A hard power down and then no boot.. Changed the chip and brand new again.. There are more than the 4400 series notebooks having this issue, All of the Compaq and HP lap's use the 39SF040 BIOS chip.. (P-4's or mobiles/cely's at least).. And I dont think I'd trust any update for these at this time. I contacted them via live chat and they acted like I was some schoolgirl moron regarding this problem.. Oh well Guess that money in our pockets.. They HAVE to be aware of this but what will they do to rectify the proiblem? And how many people have to lose hard earned cash from them suggesting a BIOS update, Having it fail, And then saying they did somthing wrong.. Kind of cheap corporate bullshit in my opinion.. (Just my opion also).. Also thanx for sending the laptop I have 12 of the chips stocked and more coming as I think we'll see a few of these mistakes. We'll get it changed, running, and back to you ASAP Ryan, Ken
www.ikenfixit.com

@ikenfixit well it's nice to know someone is helping us out here buddie
It's all to common from some of these big boys (compaines) I've see this with the Vaio's on the Pent boards back in the dayz 3-4 years ago even now. Sony knew about these problems and all they did was to bring out a new looking rig. Yes they looked good but all this did was the new rig inherit the old problems. Even more so they had the cheek to ask many costumers to pay for a new mobo and if you know Sony these are not cheap..
Basicly as you said all their doing is to denie theres an issue with their product...


Keep up your fine work....
Wu!

On its way home

Ryan.. Laptops on its way back to you fully functional. (UPS Insured)..Thanx for the Biz and for any referrals in advance! (These are a bear to change as they are surface mount) We do them though! Talk soon, Ken

I take it that means its working then?? Not a problem and thanks for the update R!.. www.ikenfixit.com

Presario 2100 Notebook (AMD)

Ken,

Here is another one for you. I've also noticed HP/Compaqs lack of explanation in their download sections. I've managed to load what I now believe is an Intel BIOS into my AMD based Presario flash. Do you have the KA.M1.60 revision BIOS available on a flash chip, or may I send you the flash out of the system, (it was already in a socket), that currently has the KE.M1.73 revision on it, so it may be reflashed with the correct BIOS? Any help will be appreciated as the computer is now a beautful doorstop.

lol....if you have the wrong bios it shouldn't let you flash in the first place. I tried loading intel bios into my Amd model, and it said it was the wrong bios, so i downloaded the amd one, and it "worked" but after finishing i had a beautiful doorstop too. But i was still under warranty so they took care of it (since it was their tech that told me to flash in the first place)

The wrong BIOS

HP told me that the KA.M1.58 BIOS was the correct one, however by running the WINFLASH SP file it automatically came up with BIOS not for this laptop message. However when you run the WinFlash program after it has unloaded its contents into the SWSETUP folder, it doesn't give you this error message. Seeing as how I was in what I thought to be the correct download section on HP's website that listed 2 different BIOS revisions in 4 different download variations, "AND", the original issue I had concerned a Linksys WPC55AG rev 1.2 PCMCIA wireless card that isn't correctly recognized on reboot until you remove the card and push it back in, I thought I'd give the KE revision a chance. I thought about it for at 20 minutes before I said to myself, what's the worse it could do, "Kill the laptop". Which it promptly did after it finished loading the flash. I've sent a few emails back to HP tech support already, and they of course are helping as usual, (which means not at all). I have 3 Compaq Presario Intel boxes at work, which I could use to reflash the chip I managed to screw up, however Compaq/HP in its infinite wisdom decided to save money and solder on instead of put them in sockets the flash on these units, so I'm hoping Ken will be able to help with what ultimately is a problem I created by not listening to that inner voice saying don't click the YES button on this particular flash!

I now have a floppy drive available, to use the KA.M1.60 revision, but the machine is a doorstop so I'm unable to load it.

Ive been pulling sockets off old junk boards and installing these on the surface mount style boards so if anyone has an issue down the road the chip can be pulled by the owner and sent in for reprograming. If you need help were here. The problem seems to be the BIOS chip itself and not a image issue. As long as people keep flashing these 39SF040's we'll be repairing them. If it AINT broke? Dont flash it?

if the problem is the bios chip itself, then shouldn't HP like...notify us or something? this is dirty

I can picture class action suit... all owners of bad bios chips ;-)

HP Didnt manufacture the chip.. SST did. Do you think they want to warn you? They change the systemboards (600.00) at your expense not the chips.. Thats why were here..

hehe...actually in my case, HP fixed it on their expense. They gave me overnight shipping there and back, and gave me a new bios chip or whatever they did to fix it (new mobo maybe?). Anyway, i sent it out and 3 days later, it was back, with the new bios version installed.

Here is an easy way to fix the bios on this notebook.

You may need to register with yahoo first, then

Get the service manual here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/hp-ze-...tebooks/files/

Down load the service manual.

Pages 125 and 126 tell you how to repair the bios without opening the notebook!

HP said to F-L-U-S-H THE BIOS OF DEATH....

Well, you can add this newbie to the list of people who followed HP's advice, from their website, and upgraded the bios on my new/used pavillion ze5270 (I've had less than a week)... which is now, yet another "beautiful blue doorstop" with lovely matching blue LEDs, the whisper of fans, and a vacant black screen, seemingly on vacation.

*sigh*

I did all the hardware troubleshooting that I could manage. Saved all the links to the pages & file I downloaded, have full specs on my system before, and you should see the copy of my chat with HP customer service. Oh yes... Saved that too. She wanted me to take it to an authorized HP dealer to "flush" the BIOS...

*errrr, uhhhhmmm. no comment there*

But I googled her advice and came up with this...
http://www.gepanet.com/motherboard_flush.gif

Their bios flash proggie had obviously already done the dirty deed.

So I saved all the info on this, but can/ken somebody out there please save my lil blue notebook?

First HP says there is no warranty end date, then that it's 2morrow?

Help! First their chat tech says my warranty has no end date, then, that it ends 2 morrow, then, she goes to talk to her supervisor and comes back saying that it ended a lonnnnng time ago, possibly b4 the laptop was even built?

All this just because I updated the bios, as per their site's recommendation.

I purchased the Pavillion ze5270 laptop 2nd hand, last week. It worked well, nice lil machine, but the young fellow who owned it had loaded up the hard drive with Mp3s and the drivers, etc. were never updated.

So, before transfer/removing any of his stuff (there was still about 11% free on the 40 gig HD ) I added my family as users (no files stored there yet), left his 2 user names there, got the laptop on our home wireless network, no prob, and then commenced to updating it.

Windows updates all went in, NP. Some grumpiness with IE browser, but he had it all set for Firefox, so I used the installed Mozilla browser instead. All went off without a hitch. Updated well everywhere, even at HP. Drivers etc... all recommended at their site. Like a breeze.

"The" problem developed upon download and install of their BIOS update to f 14. And *poof* went the notebook. *please see my last post*

I saved all communication with HP. Can I post the chat transcript here? Removing all names? It would make for interesting reading, to say the least. It's a real runaround.

So can somebody please help? Help me fix my lovely doorstop of a laptop?

Andi.. Let me know how it goes and glad to hear you have the socket style chip.. Reprogramming is generally needed as opposed to the boot block jumper solution.
Ken
www.ikenfixit.com