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I've almost finished rebuilding an HP dv9702ea. The windows/software part went fine.

However after that I thought I would update the BIOS with the latest as found on HP's website. It appeared to work fine, saw the program saying blocks being successfully erased then written. Then saw the message about it having succeeded and to hard boot the laptop if it hung.

It didn't hang and rebooted. However when it did, it appeared to start up normal but it keeps rebooting before clearing POST.

Unfortunately neither the caps lock or num lock LED's light up which may have shed some light on the issue.

I've tried as HP suggested and unplugging everything, hold the power button for 15 secs, then plugging just the PSU, same story.

Unfortnately the laptop is out of warranty. HP want £17 to extend support, but I have a strong feeling I would just be paying £17 to be told to purchase a new motherboard.

If anyone knows any way of me saving this without purchasing a new motherboard, that would make me very happy indeed!

fixer1234
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Robin Gill
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5 Answers5

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Fixed it in the end using wincrisis.

If you can find a copy (apparently versions prior to 10.0.0.4 do not support USB drives), then download the BIOS from HP, run it and note the folder you save the files to.

Ignore the warning about the flash failing on an unsupported system and go to the folder the files were saved in. In there there should be one or two files with a WPH extension.

Copy either of these to the folder wincrisis.exe is in, and rename it to BIOS.WPH (may be case sensitive) then run wincrisis.exe and let it format the drive and copy relevant files.

Then plug this into the laptop and hold Windows+b and turn it on. When you see the USB drive activity LED start blinking you can let go off the keyboard. The LED should solidly blink away for a few minutes. Then it stopped and the fans started running loudly for a few minutes, then it powered itself off.

If it doesn't work, try another USB drive. Apparently 512Mb is optimal but I used a 4Gb. Also wincrisis.exe doesn't seem to work on my 7x64 pc but ran fine on an XPx86 box.

Turned it on and job done.

Robin Gill
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HP says to unplug everything. What does "everything" mean to you? To me, it means the battery, hard drive, optical drive, mini pci cards, any USB devices... even Ram the first time. Why? Without Ram it should produce a no-ram POST beep error code. If you get that, then insert one stick of Ram and try again.

The point here is to remove everything possible to eliminate and isolate the components from the issue. Due to the age of the unit, it could be coincidence that the problem happened after the BIOS update. No way of knowing until you are reduced to a working display, a motherboard with processor, working Ram, and power.

Bon Gart
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1) Turn off the laptop

2) Remove Battery and disconnected power cord.

3) Waited for about 5 - 10 minutes

4) Plug the power cord back in, DO NOT reinsert the battery, yet...

5) Holding down the Insert/Scroll button, hold the power button down for 20-30 seconds. Release the power button still holding the Insert/Scroll button.

If windows comes up normally, restart the computer and go into the bios to setup the time and what not, this SHOULD hopefully clear out the CMOS and fix your problem.

C-dizzle
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I am not quite clear on what does "rebuilding" mean, nor what kind of support is offered for £17.
Do you mean reinstalling Windows, or have you heavily modified the hardware ?

In the case that you haven't modified the hardware enough to void your warranty, I would suggest to take the £17 offer to extend the support, but only on condition that it extends the warranty for the hardware.

If the £17 are only for hotline support, don't bother : The problem sounds much too serious for it. I would invest these in paying for a repair-shop, which will be able to tell you if the problem is with the motherboard or not. You can ask for an estimate before doing the repair, which might even get you the problem analyzed by a professional for free.

harrymc
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Can't help much with this problem; but if it was a desktop I'd try to disconnect power, and remove the CMOS battery for a while to clear any saved BIOS settings etc. There should be a CMOS battery in laptops too I'm sure, maybe try to remove it and see if having to reinitialize all the BIOS values helps solve the issue?

Alok
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