HP DV5-1131en boot issue - boot order is all 0000!

[Dan81]

Just got this free DV5-1131en. Can see why.

On boot, it will get stuck on a black screen with no cursor or anything:



All data seems to be intact in BIOS:



(disregard the P8400, it replaces the T3200 it originally had)

Going into boot order, I am met with garbled characters:



Pressing F9 to load setup defaults will turn the text into a bunch of zeroes:




This occurs even if there is NO DVD or HDD attached.

Any ideas what can I do?

[Dan81]

Re: HP DV5-1131en boot issue - boot order is all 0000!

Great news, it's been fixed! I used the standard USB flash procedure (WinLogo+B for InsydeH2O), albeit a bit extreme - along with the battery, I also removed the HDD and the DVD-RW drive so it wouldn't search anything else besides the USB stick. Beeped to all hell as it was searching for the correct BIOS file (the pack I mentioned below has two BIOS images - one for board ID 3602 (which is probably the usual 9600M GT variant) and the other for my machine, board ID 3603 (w/ 9200M GS) ) and then it beeped every 2 seconds as it was flashing the BIOS. It shut off after a while, then booted into the newly flashed F21A.

As for the BIOS used, I used an modified F.21A BIOS that just removes the whitelist off the BIOS (so you can use any WLAN card on it, like other manufacturers (except Lenovo) allow) as that's what I had on hand (it was already unpacked by the people at bios-mods) so I wouldn't have to chase a original BIOS file.