black screen wont boot bios failure

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mrbits2018

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Mar 15, 2018
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I have a Hp pavillion dv4-5113 notebook with a bios caps lock flash error code (2 times). It was very hard to boot it. I used a usb keyboard and after a lot of tries I got the advanced options menu as the machine had an upgrade from Win 7 to Win 10 free and tried to reset it, tried to access safemode, it failed. Tried automatic repair, got in a never ending loop . Also tried start up menu to roll back the bios but it failed.
The last time I got lucky and got desktop but Win system applications were malfuctioning like device manager. I got a bios update in a usb pen drive and tried to flash it . It looked that is was working but after that I got a restart loop that lasted for one a half hours. I was tired and mad and took out the battery because the notebook wont shutdown...mistake. Now I got a black screen , it wont boot and it wont turn off, it keeps turning on also the HDD led is amber and always on. I went to the support page and it looks that the 3d drive guard got activated but following all the procedures on the support page to disable it wont work. Finally now the caps lock flashes only one time showing a possible cpu malfuction. Is it the cpu, mother board or bios chip? Please help and sorry for my bad writing.

Good day.
 
Solution
I used very cheap heatgun from china : GJ-8018 it has LCD and some options for temperature. It was decent when i had to remove chips (bios chips, capacitors and resistors, not BGA chips) from the board, but make sure to buy multiple nozzles with decent sizes. It was about 30 euros. More professional reflow you need a station which is expensive.

mrbits2018

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Mar 15, 2018
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Hello,

I can't get to the bios or boot options with USB keyboard, there's power on it but it won't respond. When I boot it without USB or laptop keyboard, it give me options for startup but I can access them without a keyboard.

I tried to boot it from a USB and a WIN 7 ADK CD but I have to change the boot order but I can't.


I took out the drive and ran produkey on it, it doesn't work.

I used Diskpart and the partition is active.

I will try to use the Win Media Creation tool or the on my laptop to the HDD of this matter to see If I can get something runinng.
 

fagetti

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Mar 1, 2018
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Remove hard drive and laptop keyboard, add usb keyboard and try to get to bios. Does the keys work? Something might be shorting out or problem with kbc controller.

It might be many different problem, example usb keyboard is disabled in the bios options and you cant change it on options (never happened to me, this is unlikely), this means your laptop keyboard is broken from liquid damage.

In one of your pictures there is some crap near the keyboard connector. Can you take closeup pics of keyboard connector area there might be something shorting out in connector pins or near components.
 

fagetti

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Mar 1, 2018
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If you see corrosion or crap in there then buy isoprophyl alcohol (80% + ) or more is better, soft toothbrush with alcohol is best way to get it clean, dont use much force, just dip it into alcohol
 

mrbits2018

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Mar 15, 2018
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When I turn on the machine without its keyboard and without the usb keyboard it displays :

1. press esc - very fast ( start up options, bios )

2. No OS found , remove all drives without OS and press esc-alt-delete

I connect the USB keyboard and its functional, I press esc-alt-delete and it restarts but the screeen stays lit but black.

I will take pics of the keyboard connector tomorrow and will post them.

You are right, there was a lot of crap under the keyboard , hair , dust, and my friend told me that now and then a "couple" of rum drops got to the keyboard, maybe that shorted it.

do you think if I lightly clean the keyboard ribbon connector with alcohol it will function? I have done it with other keyboards and they come back from the dead, I forgot that detail.

thanx

This is not related to this issue but can you recommend a not too expensive heat gun for a GPU reflow? its for another laptop.
 

fagetti

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Mar 1, 2018
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You can use Air duster to first get all dirt off the board, its just canned air you can get it anywhere. Use the air duster while the bottle is not tilted since there can be liquid coming out if the bottle if its not straight.

Its important to use isoprophyl alcohol and 90% or more is best, since it evaporates fast and leaves no residue on the board, use very soft toothbrush only never use hard head.

Look all connectors for a short like usb ports also for bent pins. It should be functional normally with usb keyboard and defective laptop keyboard removed, its not normal that it restarts to black screen you should see HP start screen and option to go bios. So when usb keyboard is connected you CAN go to bios and change options?

About the gpu reflow this is not really a fix but it can work from week to months if your lucky, sometimes longer. Changing chip is very hard but it would fix the problem. What laptop are you reflowing? Are you sure its gpu issue? Never reflow if you are not absolutely sure
 

fagetti

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Mar 1, 2018
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710
I used very cheap heatgun from china : GJ-8018 it has LCD and some options for temperature. It was decent when i had to remove chips (bios chips, capacitors and resistors, not BGA chips) from the board, but make sure to buy multiple nozzles with decent sizes. It was about 30 euros. More professional reflow you need a station which is expensive.
 
Solution

mrbits2018

Great
Mar 15, 2018
43
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80
Ok,

I took the HDD into a caddy and used diskpart to activate the partion from my personal laptop with Win 8.1, then I installed back the HDD and now I get the Boot Mgr is missing error, took it out again and caddy it back to my laptop to fix the MBR. I tried the bootrec / fixmbr but the CMD give's me the " bootrec is not recognized as an internal or external command". I'm must be doing something wrong on the CMD or Win 8.1 doesn't allow me to use this command and I will have to use software to fix this, Ill research further.

I have some pics of the keyboard and you now what, I think I found a burn on the keyboards ribbon take a look.







thanx
 

fagetti

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Mar 1, 2018
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You dont need to get the hard drive working before we will see if the motherboard is functional so forget it for now. If you can get to bios with external usb keyboard and change options there then motherboard is fine and there is something wrong with internal keyboard or connector.

1st picture: remove top case and open that small clip in the motherboard which holds keyboard connector in place, look closely if there is any dirt or sitcky stuff there and take few closeup pictures of that area.

2nd picture: i cant see the keyboard connector pins you need to take picture of the pins which connect to motherboard.
 

mrbits2018

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Mar 15, 2018
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Here are the pics. I didn't send them because the connector looked clean and the keyboard ribbon too.








After the bios flash the computer booted fine , the new issue happened after the reset to win 7.

I can't get to the bios or start up options with the USB keyboard but I'll keep trying.

I'm gong to look for a cheap replacement laptop keyboard on ebay to test it.
 

fagetti

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Mar 1, 2018
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Bios file you flashed matches your board so that should not be the problem i found the thread on bad caps forum. I cant well near keyboard connector because of the top cover, also sometimes liquid damage is inside the internal keyboard. Cleaning it inside takes alot of time and i bet there is connections broken and you cant do anything about it.

I would need to see high res photos of keyboard connector area and near components since i could see some dirt on your first pictures. You should be able to get to bios with usb keyboard without a problem if there is nothing wrong.
 

mrbits2018

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Mar 15, 2018
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Hello i'm back

I took out the digitizer and the keyboard connector was clean. The board had tiny bits of grains of cookies or dirt very micronized, almost nothing, I cleaned them with a board brush anti-static and placed back and installed the oem keyboard with the same old results:

1. caps lock flashes 2 times then pauses.
2. bios seems to pickup and press esc message runs.
3. oem keyboard is dead, cant access boot , startup or bios options.
4. I am unable to boot the machine with the usb keyboard, BlackSOD and usb keyboard lits but it seems unresponsive to esc key, f9,f10 or f11 ( the hp bios keys) . Is just that its BlackSOD.
5. If I boot it without the usb keyboard, it displays press esc and then the drive error, boot mgr is missing press ctrl alt esc to restart then, I plug the usb keyboard and it responds to ctrl alt del and the machine restarts to a BlkSOD again.
6. I have tried to boot it from an external usb flash drive and usb dvd drive, can't get them to boot from there with usb keyboard or with oem keyboard.
7. took out the hdd and place it on a sata to usb caddy adpter and tried to fix the mbr, I can't access the bootrec/fix mbr in my win 8.1 laptop, maybe with software but I'm able to see the partitions of the dv4 hdd.

To fix this I have to change the boot order or fix the mbr and I can't do it in the DV4. I think the only way is to fix the hdd OS or the mbr or an Ubuntu install in my laptop with the HDD drive caddy connected . The other way is to order a replacement oem keyboard and try to access the boot order in the dv4.

My conclusion is that the oem keyboard is shorted and outputs false and misleading caps lock error flashes.
The computer booted to Win 10 after the eeprom bios programming but some functions where odd and some errors of the win 10 recovery partition (out of space, or full) . I proceeded to reset the machine because I wanted Win 7 back and the reset was not completed or interrupted for some reason.

here are fresh pics of the board and keyboard connector.






well, thanx and sorry for my late reply's but Ill keep troubleshooting from time to time.



 

mrbits2018

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Mar 15, 2018
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Hello man!
I have been busy too.
After the bios flash with the eeprom programmer and the soic clip, I got desktop but the keyboard caps lock flash codes still there. I was unable to boot with the usb keyboard and the machine only booted without it and because of this, I was unable to access bios boot order to install Win 10 with the Win media creation tool usb or dvd.

I finally installed Win 10 externally with an hdd caddy using software but I had to erase all the drive content in order to do it. I got Win10 installed but in legacy mode and I made mistake and erased the hp oem tools partition.
The machine boots fine but I want uefi installed instead of only bios.
Precisely, today, I was going to try to do it. I have a software, I 'll post the name later, don't remember now, that its supposed to change the hdd to gpt but instead it dammaged the Win 10 install and had to install it back again in legacy., I think the software's name is Win 10 to usb.

A couple of day's ago I received the replacement keayboard and you know what... It works! The keyboard caps lock flashes was just a bios code, it was a defective keyboard! My god, that was it the whole time!

I learned from this experience that you have to start troubleshooting the basic stuff first before getting into more technical stuff.

Can you help me to get the ufei back and and to make a Win 10 gpt install? Now it will be easier with the oem keyboard working.

Thanks man for your grear help.☺

 

fagetti

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Mar 1, 2018
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Thats great news to hear. On these models its most likely almost always dying graphics card or northbridge but since your model dont have AMD gpu there was hope that it is fixable.
I had numerous Dv6 series laptops with 2 caps lock blink and its been like 75% gpu/northbridge dying and 25% corrupted bios. Never anything else. Atleast you now know how to fix corrupted bios /bad bios chip on almost any laptop since these all use 8 pin bios chips, even macbooks.

If you dont get any caps lock flashing after id say 10-20 boots then issue is gone and shorted keyboard was the problem all along. But when this problem, removing oem keyboard and using USB keyboard always worked for me. Maybe there was bios option or somehow your USB keyboard or usb port was defective also. Or it might only work in operating system, no idea.

Im really bad with these software and operating system issues, hardware stuff is my thing. Im sure you find someone who has the answer just make new thread here! Just write in this thread if problem resumes (2 caps lock blinks)



 

mrbits2018

Great
Mar 15, 2018
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80