HP Probook 640 G2 came back to life. Just one power issue.

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#1 | HP Probook 640 G2 came back to life. Just one power issue. datum

Sat Jun 08, 2019 1:48 am (Last edited: Sat Jun 08, 2019 1:58 am)

A month ago my sister laptop stopped working. She brought the laptop to some person of her town for a fix. A few days later, this person told her the chipset was damaged, and the laptop could not be fixed.

After that, my sister send me the laptop. I opened it and noticed that the bios chip has been removed and putted back on. I also noticed the 3.3V rail circuit had solder marks. Here is what I think it happened:

This person of her town tried to fix the laptop flashing a dumb in the bios chip with a programmer. After no success, he noticed the 3.3V rail was not working, and fixed it. Then, as I learned on this wonderful forum, the laptop would not boot because the bios chip was flashed with someone else initialized ME.

So, I follow this guide, and magically, the laptop came back to life!!! (I own you guys for that; I can�t thank you enough.) Everything worked perfectly!!! Well, almost everything: The laptop worked perfectly after I flash the bios with my EEPROM programmer but, after I turned it off, I was not able to turn it on again using the power button. The only way I have to make it work again is to drain all the power, including the RTC battery, and let it rest for a minute to clear the CMOS. But this is obviously not possible once I close the laptop back on. I followed the guide using two different dumbs with similar results. The only two remarkable things in the process were:

1. I used an EEPROM programmer to flash the bios chip.
2. When I was building the image on the Flash Image Tool, it asked me this 2 questions:
"Boot Guard Profile Configuration" is set to "Boot Guard Profile 0 - No_FVME". The Boot Guard feature will be disabled on the platform. Do you want to continue? I answered yes.

Are you sure, you want to set "Intel(R) PTT Supported [FPF]" to "No"? This will cause Intel (R) PTT to be disabled permanently in HW. Also answered yes.

Does anyone have any idea how I can make the laptop turn on again without having to clear the CMOS every time I turn it off???? Is this an EC firmware related issue?
Thank you guys for this wonderful forum.

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#2 | RE: HP Probook 640 G2 came back to life. Just one power issue. datum

Sat Jun 08, 2019 11:58 pm (Last edited: Sat Jun 08, 2019 11:59 pm)

You're welcome ICH7_ and thank you for the detailed explanation. It doesn't sound like a CSME firmware issue, especially since you've cleaned it. It could be BIOS or EC as you said. Or maybe even something wrong at the hardware/traces. Since you have a programmer, I suggest you take the CSME-cleaned SPI image you've already created and see if replacing the BIOS region with the stock from HP fixes the issue by any chance. Don't forget to reset NVRAM/CMOS. If the problem persists, we can rule out BIOS at least. For EC I've no idea what firmware it needs (maybe within the BIOS region?) but re-flash it if you can to be sure.

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#3 | RE: HP Probook 640 G2 came back to life. Just one power issue. datum

Mon Jun 10, 2019 3:27 am (Last edited: Mon Jun 10, 2019 3:27 am)

Thank you for the reply, plutomaniac. I'll try that and let you know.

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ME Firmware N/A after reflash �

Please enter a reason for warning.