Solved Help needed to revert to earlier bios

Could this be a video driver issue?

In my personal experiences, most bios and firmware updates are “way” overrated, as you just proved. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

I don't think so. If you look back it happens regardless of what's installed - tried it with Linux, Windows 10, Windows 11. And it happens as soon as the machine is switched on even just in the bios menu without even windows booted up.

Ok so tried going back a version earlier again and it won't let me now. It says I'm going back to an older version that isn't compatible with my system. Funny because it was compatible with a much older version on when I got it!

Anyway, seems to be fairly stable now with the touchscreen disabled. It hasn't fixed the issue as I couldn't go back to the previous bios, but its better on this bios than the latest one.

Seeing how you were able to rollback two versions and still have the same problem makes me think that you might be correct about a hardware glitch happening at the same time you did the BIOS update.

I don't know. When it came it had very old bios on. And I couldn't get back as far as version .48 which it had before. I don't really use it. The original plan had been to sell it on, but I can't if it's faulty. So will probably just keep it as a test computer.

It does seem better than before though (providing the touchscreen is disabled).

Hazel123 said:

The original plan had been to sell it on, but I can't if it's faulty.

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It sounds like your like me. When I sell something (most of the times it has been vehicles) I always tell the potential buyer everything that I know is wrong. I try my best to be honest and let them make the decisions to buy or not.

Winuser said:

It sounds like your like me. When I sell something (most of the times it has been vehicles) I always tell the potential buyer everything that I know is wrong. I try my best to be honest and let them make the decisions to buy or not.

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Me too. I'd rather sleep at night than deceive someone on a sale.

Winuser said:

It sounds like your like me. When I sell something (most of the times it has been vehicles) I always tell the potential buyer everything that I know is wrong. I try my best to be honest and let them make the decisions to buy or not.

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Well I had sold it once when I thought I had solved it by disabling the touch screen - explained the issue as to why the touch screen needed disabling. Then the night I was going to post it, the screen started playing up again even with the touchscreen disabled (just that section on the right where the three blobs are). So I had to cancel the sale. Bunged the thing in a cupboard instead. I only got it out to install windows 10 on so I could get the ESU licence - and then decided to see if I could downgrade the bios. It may well start playing up again, even with the touchscreen disabled - but it's ok for now. Definitely couldn't sell it faulty.

Hazel123 said:

Definitely couldn't sell it faulty.

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I can understand that. You can always use it as an experimental laptop to try different things.

As a bit of an update - it has been time consuming for a machine I was about to throw in the bin! But I have learned some things. After setting it up with Windows 10 and finding the odd missing driver. The machine has both IMEI and AMT - which is a security hazard. So I installed the two firmware upgrades from 2017 from the HP site, as well as the necessary chipset and card reader drivers. The other two needed were in "optional updates" in Windows update (bluetooth and NFC). Googled a bit more about the AMT risk and it seems the solution is to "unconfigure" it in bios. Which disables it. Which I have done. Downloaded and ran the Intel assessment program for that security risk and it says it has the necessary firmware which has patched it and is unconfigured. So it is safe. Now back to the buggy bios update the caused all the issues. That was also from 2017 and was a critical bios update due to the CVE risk thing relating to AMT. It seems they rushed it out (IMO) regardless of whether it broke hardware! Hence I had found others having similar issues online at that time.

So I ran the whole scenario and Intel output via Chat GPT and it suggested (as I had already decided) that it was safe even without the critical bios update - ie pointless installing it if the machine becomes unusable. And it's already secured via the firmware and unconfiguring.

It is now running nicely on Windows 10 and will keep that as my machine to get the ESU upgrade (I have a particular program I want to keep on it, that won't run on Windows 11 24H2 - not at the moment anyway - maybe that will change).

The touchscreen remains disabled and the mouse pointer behaves 99% of the time, Very occasionally, and randomly, it will shoot over to the right and click on something. But hardly ever now. I also turned off a setting in mouse pointer settings that helped stabilise the mouse pointer. Control panel - mouse - pointer options - and unticked "enhance pointer precision".

And just to rule out some kind of rootkit malware or bios malware making the mouse and screen do things, ran a couple of bootable AV's and MWB rootkit scan. All clean. While nothing can remove bios viruses, one of the ones I ran can detect them and all came back clean.

So to me, it was definitely an extremely buggy bios update, meant for urgent security, regardless of whether it broke hardware! (Which is a kind of security! Just disable the machine itself lol). These machines are ex business machines and the bios update was probably to secure fleets of them. Where they'd just be abandoned if they stopped working. It was probably the same bios update for all three models - G1, G2 and G3 - mine is the G1 - maybe it worked ok on the two later models.

That bios update is still on the HP website and HP support assistant still downloads it for upgrade. It should come with a warning! But it seems the firmware upgrades and disabling AMT in bios are enough. So although resolved, it is annoying as previously it had a very nice, working, touch screen.

Chat GPT analysed it as the bios update making changes to power management which affected the way the touch screen worked - ot something like that.

Once you update the BIOS, its set.

Why would you want to revert?

NormanF said:

Once you update the BIOS, its set.

Why would you want to revert?

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Explained earlier in the thread And I did get it downgraded.

I always reset bios to optimized defaults then setup bios again like I want it after an update.
Sometimes values change but the other no longer valid values will stick around unless you reset.
Both AMD and Intel just had updated bios for denial of service related to the TPM.

KevTech said:

I always reset bios to optimized defaults then setup bios again like I want it after an update.
Sometimes values change but the other no longer valid values will stick around unless you reset.
Both AMD and Intel just had updated bios for denial of service related to the TPM.

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Thanks. The bios in this machine seem very complex and detailed, so I'm loathe to mess with anything else now I've got it working ok and secuirty patched! So what effect would it have setting to factory defaults? When I looked at that it came up with a warning that it shouldn't be necessary and may cause some things.