# black screen after bad bios update on HP DV2000t



## brenyoka (Apr 2, 2007)

I'm afraid I did something stupid. Accidentally, I updated a one-version-older bios from HP website over the already-installed newest one, since that caused problem after the first reboot. Then it worked fine, but I thought it's better to start everything over...bad idea!
Now after reboot, I have a black screen the system seems (?!) to boot, disk is spinning, but after a few sec I don't get ahead. Not even to the bios menu !!! Scary...I hope I did not screw my motherboard!!! 
So far I tried only one thing: unplug the powercord, take out the battery, and after a few minutes I put everything back, boot, but the same: no screen! 
What sould I do now?
my sytem: HP DV2000t laptop, Vistax32, T2050 CPU, 1gig ram, intel945pm chipset, geforce 7200 GPU


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## kiwiguy (Aug 17, 2003)

Sad to say but you possibly have converted the laptop motherboard to a doorstop.

Check with HP to see if the BIOS chip is removeable, but if it's soldered in (and they often are on laptops) then its a new motherboard.

Unless you have to, never flash a BIOS. The percentage of failure is real.


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## brenyoka (Apr 2, 2007)

oh...no...
what about replacing the cmos battery - if that's possible - would that help? I'll call HP tomorrow, now it's 2am here. thanks for the quick response, thogh!


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## striker0204 (Nov 12, 2006)

kiwiguy said:


> Sad to say but you possibly have converted the laptop motherboard to a doorstop.


God that must suck. i would die if that happened. Good luck with HP man.


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## striker0204 (Nov 12, 2006)

take out all the ram and valuable parts


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## kiwiguy (Aug 17, 2003)

brenyoka said:


> oh...no...
> what about replacing the cmos battery - if that's possible - would that help? I'll call HP tomorrow, now it's 2am here. thanks for the quick response, thogh!


The CMOS battery only clears the "user defaults" but flashing replaces the "permanent code" in the BIOS. That code has no reliance on the battery whatsoever.

On some HP units, even getting to the CMOS battery requires complete disassebmbly, including the motherboard.

Talk to HP. Learn from the experience. Do not Flash.


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## brenyoka (Apr 2, 2007)

Ok, I understand and will...


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## striker0204 (Nov 12, 2006)

you might just have to have them sauter in a new bios chip.. if they do that, and the chip should be approx. 60 bucks. then labor... maybe 200 bucks? If its under warranty, just tell them it just broke. dont tell them you did anything


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## kiwiguy (Aug 17, 2003)

striker0204 said:


> you might just have to have them sauter in a new bios chip.. if they do that, and the chip should be approx. 60 bucks. then labor... maybe 200 bucks? If its under warranty, just tell them it just broke. dont tell them you did anything


"Sauter"? Not heard of that process.
Perhaps you mean Solder?
But if the chip is soldered in, then it will be a fine pitch SMD chip, and almost impossible to replace (unsolder, resolder), economically and physically.


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## striker0204 (Nov 12, 2006)

yah. solder... that flaming fire thing used to bind chips together.. i had to do that with my other laptop, a compaq. i was stupid and accidentally left it running in my backpack in the back of my car in mid day, it overheated and caused the wires to melt. they had to solder in a new chip.


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## brenyoka (Apr 2, 2007)

I'm not going to solder anything...enough trouble I had already.
Already contacted hp, was easy: did not asked questions, I'll get a box + shipping materials delivered to my address tomorrow, I'll ship it to hp, and they will send the unit back...
Since I have warranty, everything is free, I specifically asked. At least that ...!
Thanks for the replies!


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## gurutech (Apr 23, 2004)

Does your laptop have a floppy drive? Check HP's website, or give them a call and have them walk you through a "BIOS recovery". When something like this happens, the BIOS can sometimes be recovered by following the process indicated by the pattern of the keyboard lights (numlock, scrolllock and capslock). The pattern that these lights are in will tell the HP tech what step you have to do.

the first step would most likely be to insert a bootable disk (floppy or CD-ROM) that has a valid BIOS on it, followed by hitting a certain key on the keyboard (spacebar or ENTER).


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## brenyoka (Apr 2, 2007)

Hi kiwiguy,
I really don't want to seem ungrateful, however, next time you might want to mention the *USB floppy bios recovery* method that REALLY worked for me and for some others before adding to my already-sad mood.

Check my post:
http://www.theeldergeek.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=21209&hl=bios+recovery

Best regards

ps. I have to mention that HP was very correct: I already had a scheduled full-free reapir pickup tomorrow, with full status check send to my email... They did not even ask many questions.


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## striker0204 (Nov 12, 2006)

brenyoka said:


> ps. I have to mention that HP was very correct: I already had a scheduled full-free reapir pickup tomorrow, with full status check send to my email... They did not even ask many questions.


Thats good, usually big companies are stingy. it took me forever to get them to fix mine.


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## c0mand3r (Jan 25, 2008)

i actually have the same issue but with my desktop HP, I was having troubles installing my new Nvidia Graphics card with vista, I keep getting the error 43. So I talked to the Nvidia people the suggested updating my bios which I did, and when i rebooted my screen was black no bios screen. So after frustration I contacted HP, and all i got no offense to anyone was the Indian telemarketers that was hard to understand, and was so convinced my monitor was not plugged in, instead of there being an issue with the bios which i told him when he asked me what my problem was. So the HP support was no help for me, I then got my friend over who knows somewhat more about computers than me, he couldn't figure out the issue ether, so i took my computer to best buy so they can run a full dionostics on it. Which is where it continues to sit because of the geek squad being slow and hasn't even got around to my computer yet. So if anyone has any sure solutions of how to fix this or would like to help me fix this so i can go get my damn computer back from best buy, Email me at [email protected]


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