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    HP Pavilion DV3-4100SA Corrupt BIOS

    Discussion in 'HP' started by AJ12, Apr 23, 2012.

  1. AJ12

    AJ12 Newbie

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    Hello,

    I have a HP DV3-4100SA Laptop, running Windows 7 HP 64-bit. I noticed a BIOS update was available, so I downloaded it and proceeded to install it. The long and short of it is that it froze my machine, and a black screen is shown when I power the Laptop on – the caps lock key is ‘blinking’.
    I did a bit of looking around, and downloaded the system diagnostics UEFI from Software & Driver Downloads HP Pavilion dv3-4100sa Entertainment Notebook PC - HP technical support (United Kingdom - English) (
    sp52407.exe) / HP System Diagnostics UEFI HP Pavilion dv3-4100sa Entertainment Notebook PC - HP technical support (United Kingdom - English) softpaq I think it’s referred as?


    I formatted my USB Flash Drive to FAT 32 and re-named it HP_TOOLS, then ran the UEFI installer, and it installed to my USB Flash Drive, as the HP_TOOLS partition does not exist on my laptop’s HDD.

    Upon installing/extracting the UEFI program, c:\swsetup\sp48935 exists. In this folder, all there is is the .exe for the UFEI setup.

    Now, onto the HP_TOOLS (i.e my FAT 32-formatted USB Flash Drive. There is a Hewlett-Packard folder. Inside this, there are two folders: BIOS and BIOSUpdate.
    The BIOS folder contains three folders: Current, New and Previous. All three are empty.

    The BIOSUpdate folder contains the following files:

    CryptRSA.efi
    CryptRSA32.efi
    HpBiosUpdate.efi
    HpBiosUpdate.s09
    HpBiosUpdate.sig
    HpBiosUpdate32.efi
    HpBiosUpdate32.s09
    HpBiosUpdate32.sig

    I am not sure if there is meant to be one, but there is no SystemDiags folder.

    Likewise, I am not sure if these are meant to exist on a non-business Laptop, but, there are no .bin files, nor are there any .sig files.

    So, with that said, I plugged my Laptop in to charge, then, I inserted the HP_TOOLS USB Flash Drive into an available USB port. Then I pressed down on the win key, and then the b key (so both are pressed down together at the same time). With those two keys pressed down, I then turn on my Laptop via the power button, and wait. Nothing happens. The ‘old’ BIOS file is meant to be restored, I believe, but the screen just stays black with the Caps key ‘blinking’.

    It’s hard to count how many times the Caps key blinks to be honest – it looks to be a bright glow, then two blinks. From Troubleshooting LED Blink Codes or Beep Codes During Startup or Boot - HP Customer Care (United States - English), it does indeed look to be a BIOS corruption.

    I have tried to be as descriptive as possible – if anybody could possibly be of assistance, I would be beyond grateful.

    Have I missed a step? Or do I have to accept the fact I must send it off for repair to HP? Once again, I would be extremely grateful for any help anyone can provide.
     
    AJ12, Apr 23, 2012
    #1