hp lcd repair bios update utility?

I recently replaced an LCD panel in an HP Pavilion ze5270. It was badly cracked and unusable.

It took awhile to do, and is only supposed to be done by 'authorized hp repair blah blah', but I did it anyways. The repair went well and the new screen looks great. The guide that I followed (obtained from hp.com) told me I would need to update the BIOS so that the new LCD panel was recognized....

The problem I'm having is obtaining the utility that is supposed to do this for me. It works by booting from a floppy drive (the notebook has a floppy drive in it). The problem is that this utility is not available from the download location given by the repair manual.

The repair manual says to get it from http://www.partner.americas.hp.com. If you browse to this url you can see for yourself that there is nothing there but a blank page....

This new lcd panel will not function without this upgrade utility. Does anyone know where I might be able to get it? I've already looked on hp.com and they do not have a BIOS utility that works directly from a bootable floppy....just from within windows.

 

I've read mention of regular BIOS updates adding support for newer LCD panels but I've never heard of there being a separate update just for the panel. Older notebooks used to use DIP switches to set the panel type but that's been many years. If the latest HP BIOS for your notebook doesn't recognize your new panel you're probably out of luck.

Or you've misread the problem. Are you getting a distorted picture, no picture, very faint picture (no backlight), ? You could have a damaged LCD cable, burned out LCD inverter, all sorts of things.

 

When I turn on the computer, the screen is black, but seems to have a glow to it. And sometimes when I turn it on I see vertical multi-color stripes running across the screen (they are static, in place). If there are stripes on the screen and I leave it running, by the time windows boots up the lines go away.

Also if I hook up an external monitor to it, I can see the hp logo and get into the BIOS.

 

Sounds like you either need a different LCD cable, your screen is incompatible for reasons unknown, or the screen is bad. These things are a royal pain to troubleshoot. Near as I can tell a Samsung or Sharp screen of the right vintage ought to work. I doubt it's your cable. It's probably just an incompatible screen.

 

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareList?os=228&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&product=242234

there is the HP download site for your notebook, look under the BIOS section. I'm not familiar with the ROMpaq (I assume thats the floppy method) but the WinFlash is a utility that lets you flash from windows. if you can boot into windows you may want to give that a try.