HP PC DESKTOP - NO DISPLAY - Can I FIX it?

[@Jorkofvich]

Very fun to watch a non pc guy troubleshoot the issue like an electrical tech.

[@mickyparker3949]

Vince please don't feel bad on long vids, it is great to watch and the time you put in is great. Well done mate for gambling the problem and finding it.

[@DCOneFourSeven]

Finally Vince is fixing something I have knowledge of. Now I get to shout at my screen during the video. :)

[@ovalwingnut]

To resist commenting on things we aren't familiar with demonstrates a higher than normal IQ. Good on you!

[@SPEXWISE]

I bet you were all "it's the RAM"" at the start. Bet you never guessed dodgy bios chip! I didn't to begin with. He got there though. I'm well proud of Vince for this one.

[@tyronenelson9124]

did you notice that one of the white ram slot clips is out of line at the start of the video??

[@youtuberlottery8078]

Same!!!

[@SPEXWISE]

@@tyronenelson9124 yes

[@princekrystian]

Thank you for not giving up on the repair, even though it must have been quite frustrating. This video taught me not to give up.

[@jonathanmartin3375]

Your videos are always enjoyable! Long, short, no fix, easy fix, complex fix, old time toys, brand new unopened tech, cars, vacuums, etc. Your work is GREAT

[@mrcodez]

Agreed, I'm happy with any Vince video.

[@TampaTec]

You're a good friend to have, lifetime of tech support.

[@sethreign8103]

I'm liking this before I even watch it because I know personally how hard that can be. Thank you Vince for always uploading quality content.

[@pceefixer]

Always fascinating to watch your level of perseverance Vince and I'm glad you stuck with it! Fascinating to see your level of diagnostic skill has risen over time! I wish you the very best!

[@JasonPurkiss]

Wow as a guy that has watched every one of your videos and who is an IT engineer I loved it. I assume the low CMOS battery corrupted the bios chip. Some motherboards allow you to reflash a bios chip without a screen by copying the image to a usb stick and then putting the stick in a specific port and turning the computer on to re-flash. P.s. please use usb mouse and keyboard when you fix computers at the bios level and not Bluetooth. Keep up the great work I'm learning with every vid thanks to you

[@Hotpack7279]

The right side Ram wasnt seated properly. And the robbing around on Capet in Woolsocks makes even my Hair stand up. I bet he blew up the Northbridge.

[@AttilaTheHun333333]

@@Hotpack7279 There is no northbridge anymore, since over 10 years. lol The CPU is doing that stuff nowadays itself.

[@Hotpack7279]

​@@AttilaTheHun333333i know that

[@Titanic4]

The CMOS battery will affect CMOS memory, which stores settings. The BIOS won't be affected by that. Logitech Unifying keyboards and mice will behave like USB wired counterparts of these devices. The receiver needs to be paired, though.

[@trito79]

In general: The dvi ports on the motherboard will only work, if the installed cpu has graphics-support. If not, they won't. Normally with removed separate graphics-card (and installed speaker) and cpu without graphics, it will only beep several times.

[@dazzypops]

The power on, power off and power on cycle is usually ram training/testing. Nice fix! No idea if the original bios chips could have been flashed blindly, ie usb stick with the bios file on and plugged into a particular usb port when switching on. With it being a HP prebuilt, and particularly the age of it, probably not.Nice to see companies available that will flash bios chips for a very reasonable cost.

[@TheM0nkeyBomb]

Nice, now fix an McDonald's Ice Cream Machine!

[@VampyRagDoll]

He’s not a wizard.

[@Blue-Crits]

He kinda is though

[@pcsof33]

Great but where's the video?

[@309electronics5]

He would probably get lots of not so nice guys at gis door from Tailor who makes the machines and has a special contract so McDonald's only lets them fix the machines and no ody else

[@RockPaperRedshell]

😂 Would love to see that

[@102bahri]

you forgot to romouve the bios battery before desoldring the bios ship and you short the legs

[@marjon1703]

Wow I've never repaired a bad bios. Your deduction skills are excellent! If you didn't disconnect the backup battery, perhaps second bios died as legs were shorted when un soldering... Good to see a win!

[@Boogie_the_cat]

Repairing PCs used to be my bread and butter. I much prefer hardware to software but both can be frustrating, especially not having spare parts to swap around. I don't envy you this task 😅 .

[@Blue-Crits]

I swear, It feels like I watched the entire KZbin and was so bored. Then I saw the My Mate Vince notification 😃

[@danielwe2]

Wow (spoiler warning) .. ... .. , I would've never found that broken 0 Ohm resistor. For me it feels like you are the luckiest guy ever or you just got a really good intuition for finding broken components. I mean there are hundreds of parts on the board. And well the bios chip by itself is not doing much. It needs most of the other parts including cpu under ram and all the voltage stuff to show something. So from my point of view it could have been everything, so I was quite sure if it is not one of the main components that it quite impossible to fix even more so for someone with very little pc knowledge.

[@Mymatevince]

It was purely diode test that found it, it did take around 15 mins of probing before I found a different reading from the working board. If it wasn't for the other working one I would never have found it, no chance. Probably a bit of luck as well though😂👍👍👍

[@rickoneill4343]

Great job... You have a very interesting way of repairing this. I have several motherboard test cards and boxes. These will diagnose 80 percent of all issues. You can also get a cheap chip reader with pin clamps. This will allow you to read the data and check for corruption as well as try to write the chip.

[@geekjit215]

Great finding of the fault Vince. Nice to see you trying new things to fix. An advice - Get a BIOS programmer like the CH341A kit and you will be able to flash most if not all BIOS chips. Just make sure to do the 3.3V correction for the CH341A and you will be good to go. Cheers.

[@macklinbenjamin]

Yes, this generation of HP motherboards are notorious for a failed bios after a ram swap. Flashing the latest version of bios using ch341a usually fixes it.

[@dash8brj]

Great fix - This is the reason a lot of hobbyist/enthusiast motherboards have a bios flash back function. You drop a bios file onto a usb stick, push a special button on the motherboard or back panel, and it flashes the bios, and can be done even without a cpu or ram!

[@teknikal6969]

Had one of these just before Covid, and the power supply died during. Came as a shock to find out both it and the motherboard were proprietary. They didn't even keep it in stock to sell, supposedly due to Covid. Tried for ages to get a replacement but never did. That experience has definitely put me off buying prebuilt systems again.

[@JohanlastZa]

You can of course by one of those ATX to whatever proprietary connector. Then you can use normal ATX PSU...yay. But yeah, I dont buy any non ATX devices.

[@renatocardoso4387]

Shorting out pins of the bios chip with the 3V from the battery still around can only do harm. Oups... We can't see if you were using the soldering iron with battery on, but for sure you were probing with the battery on.

[@colinboneham7387]

Tip for you Vince during the boot sequence if you press F1 or del it will jump you into bios.

[@Jookia]

I'm surprised hot air wiped or killed the BIOS chips, generally I use hot air to pull chips off boards then solder them on to a chip programmer without any loss of data. Maybe both of them were marginal? But yes you can buy cheap re-programmers for these chips including ones that don't need de-soldering at all, they just clip on to the legs of the SOIC chip. It's nice to think that newer motherboards have USB flashing and dual BIOSes to try and avoid situations like this. It was super nice for the seller to flash them for you. Would I fix one of these in real life? It's hard to say, we've kind of peaked with computer processing speeds and we're at the point of e-wasting computers just because we have too many of them. I'd probably fix it. Thanks for another great video Vince, I really admire your dedication and effort in to making videos over a long time span instead of just dumping it up in parts on KZbin for series that shouldn't be parts. That said, no objections to another 100 part car series!

[@Mymatevince]

Thanks for the info and the nice comments Jookia 👍👍

[@marcellipovsky8222]

Hi Vince, the 0 ohm resistor (nice find) is often used either as a link or also as a fuse. It could have been blown when they tried to fix the computer. As for the corrupted BIOS/Flash, this is a relatively common thing. It could be as simple as a failed Bios update. Just be aware that there are 2 types of chips with different voltages. 1.8V and 3.3V You can get a programmer for few pounds. Look up CH41A. It is relatively simple to use. The chips them self don't necessarily have to be bad. Certainly NT by using hotair. Many boards do have a BIOS recovery option and I believe that this board does have it too, where you can recover the BIOS directly from a flash drive. Other than that.. you've essentially got and bough e-waste. But you can use it as a Linux Mint Office PC.

[@DavidTollerton741]

Hi Vince take out the graphics card. Then connect a monitor to the graphics card that is built into the motherboard. If that don't work my next move would be to try it with each stick of ram separately. Love your content. Keep it up

[@valiblaj]

He did that and it didn't work.

[@henrymca]

This doesn't always work as some cpu's don't have onboard graphics

[@ekens6344]

Great fix. If you happen to come across a corrupted BIOS in future it is often possible to flash the bios with a usb stick on many new-ish PCs - even if the PC won't boot - I guess the flashing function is built into some other chip on the board. I have successfully done it on an old MSI motherboard even without a CPU installed. I did look on the HP website and this one seems slightly too old to support it or at least it isn't documented, but they do seem to support it on later models. I would never have found that open resistor!

[@Mymatevince]

Thanks for the tips ekens 😎

[@309electronics5]

Only newer boards that are mostly non oem or in a specific pc but for all purposes have it. It actually uses a second microocntroller chip on the motherboard which often has "BIOS" or "BIOS FLASHBACK" labled on it

[@jasonrichardson1999]

Some motherboards have the ability to flash bios without the CPU but it's not as common as the ones without a q flash function, although alot of the newer ones do

[@nightbirdds]

Well done, Vince. Good deduction on BIOSes. One thing to be aware of, if you tackle another desktop is that symptom of the PC turning on, then off, then on again. When turning on for the first time, this is normal. The PC is doing checks, training memory, settings, then once it finds settings it can use, resets and boots.

[@TheRepeatloader]

why it worked twice randomly.. I would say that temperature had very much to do with it. the temperature may have hit in a zone that brought some components to life, but drop when the temp is not perfect. Great video! :)

[@snafu2350]

Well done for getting as far as you did (even with the mistakes!) :) For future PC-fixing reference, here's a few tips: * If comparing stuff, always use the same input/output method(s) (preferably wired, not wireless). Try to compare like with like rather than introducing further potential differences (complexities, not voltages) between the devices * HDMI can use a lot more GFX processing power than VGA/DVI, as its GFX output is processed by the GPU to save CPU cycles, so the startup current spike is critical. Use the 'lowest common denominator' method (both DVI in this case) to eliminate that potential difference/fault * Check 'no display' faults with all available inputs before moving on to another area: this one could have been as simple as a minor PSU component falling below its 'trigger level' for required startup current (more common with higher-end GFX processors than this 'office' machine, but still..). This would prolly require a 'scope trace (& correct interpretation) of the PSU while powering up, ofc * The onboard cell is there simply to provide activation current to the UEFI ('BIOS') chip so it can retain its settings during power-off conditions. A lower voltage is perfectly good (& expected in such an old machine); the only time to be concerned would be if the cct or cell shows signs of corrosion or dmg: the (uncorrupted) BIOS will still work when powered up, but won't retain (eg) time/date or settings manually altered from its defaults (so should still display the same error screen). This cell cct should have no connection to any other power if the m/c is on mains, as it's not rechargeable* * The original board was for an I5; the comparator was for an I3. There may have been subtle (sometimes undocumented) board revisions between the two which could have resulted in a similar failure mode if the CPUs were swapped, as the comparator may have needed some BIOS tweaks to help it recognise the newer, more powerful I5 - you lucked out there! :) *I'd look around that 0-ohm resistor to see if there was any chance of the local tracks/components leading to the 'battery backup' cell being shorted: an unexpected voltage surge could have spiked thru that area via induction, leading to BIOS corruption/wipe & potentially damaging the cell: high frequencies (MHz/GHz), even in low voltage areas, can have surprising reach if spiked outside their nominal operating range - hence the careful track designs in such crowded areas as a computer mobo. See RF 'magic' for more details :) Once again, 'grats on getting as far as you did! :)

[@kevingreen1311]

Vince love the way you went around finding the fault. Vince who is the singer at the end. Cheers kevin

[@johnperalta9415]

Definitely helpful and informative. I had a lot of motherboards with the same issue back when i was running an internet shop here in the Philippines. And i always bought surplus motherboards when i had the same issue😅

[@mrjsv4935]

Very nice fix, interesting to see a desktop PC being fixed for a change. Talking about HP desktop PC's, recently tested my 2001 HP Brio PC with my FullHD flat screen display the first time ever. So far I've always used it with it's original CRT monitor. It worked and the HP's Windows 98SE wanted to install new plug & play device driver for the Asus FullHD display. This HP started and gave display signal normally even when the cmos battery died, it just complained about BIOS checksum error at the start, and time and date were wrong (Jan-1-2000). Original cmos battery lasted about 20 years which is pretty amazing.

[@mariusmotea]

Did you removed the bios batteries before playing with bios chips?

[@MichaelBritt23]

Good job, mate! You didn't like the video but I enjoyed it as always. Switch/PC killer no more!

[@BillboBaggins-j5w]

Well done Vince, my money was on the power unit as I've recently had a similar problem with an HP do strange things on boot, no booting or rebooting continually. You could do what I'm doing with mine - Turn it into a media server.

[@nikitaoake123]

Love all your videos. Keep up the amazing work. 🇨🇦🇨🇦

[@ozzieosborne7990]

My mate VINCE brilliant I've watched all your videos great knowledge keep it going

[@Retroguyuk75]

I really enjoyed this video, reminded me when I was trying to get an old PCI-E card running on my old PC I bought of ebay.. found it the power supply was too low and I needed to put extra power directly into the card. "Wasn't like that in my day HA!" in fact back in the day I couldn't afford the card to that was why I was trying to relive the 2009 magic I never had 🤣🤣

[@renatoscutube]

Vince, most motherboards (if not all) have a jumper that we can use to reset the bios. I’m not aware that bios chips are so sensitive to heat, technicians de-solder, re-flash and re-solder them normally. What some chips are very sensitive to is electrostatic electricity. When testing a computer, give preference (if possible) to use the DVI port. HDMI is set as secondary port in some video cards and are only activated after you install the driver. One of my cards is like that. Anyway, you got it.

[@djdime2002]

That PC is outdated as can be. It could hardly handle windows 10. I'd not spend the time, or money fixing it. But the video was well worth the watch. Great job.

[@solistheonegod]

Got to love a Vince video

[@AidenK48]

i have been waiting for a pc fix, this is stuff i am way more equip to do, so i cant wait to watch n see how u do it

[@309electronics5]

Great fix Vinc! I did think you might have damaged/corrupted the flash chip of the working one by extensive heat. Memory chips like the common 25xxxx series from winbond or macronix (MX) are pretty common but i managed to damage the firmware of my router when i took the chip off and on again. Memory chips and some other more Sensitive chips dont like heat and it can cause the data stored in them (the bios/UEFI FIRMWARE in your case or firmware in the case of an embedded device like my router) to start corrupting due to how the data is stored in it by storing electrical charges and randomly changing those charged states. Newer motherboards have a external microcontroller chip on them that allows reflashing the bios using just a usb stick, pretty handy and a quality of life feature but tis obvious that these older systems lack that. I hope you have learned a bit about these chips cause these are generic 25 series SPI flash chips that are used in a lot of devices to store firmware or bootcode and i bet you will meet them again in the future so i would actually advise getting a cheap ch341 of amazon which allows reading and writing those chips and also allows copying data from a working chip to a chip that has corrupted data on it or to a new blank chip from aliexpress or some site. Also these can have a handy soic8 clip that allows you to keep the chip on the board and to read it while its in circuit, but this does not always work and you have the risk of sending power into other components or powering up some chip that tries to read from it while you are reading the chip, but they come with a 1.8volt adapter that would hopefully prevent that. Also that the pc turns off and on again sometimes actually is normal! Its just the bios performing something called "dram training" where it decides what the max speed of the ram is and sort of configures it, kind of like the handshake old modems make to negotiate speeds and to configure!

[@johnpaulbacon8320]

Wonderful job. Keep up the great work.

[@thecoolcar-d4j]

great video as Always and i love computers 😁🖥💻

[@totolastico]

Thank you for your video, i have a similar desktop one at home that i left for dead and i think it's also bios related. I'm gonna check if i can find a replacement chip, nice !

[@alexanderherget6303]

I had the exact same symptom with exactly the same model. Mine also had a graphics card in it. I also had no display. Simply unplugging the card does not necessarily solve it if the bios still expects the card and has turned off the internal graphics. Also removing the battery does not necessarily reset the bios. There is a bios reset jumper on the board. I used that and it worked again. No electrical tech work required ;)

[@DonTsolovvv]

Nice video... Thank u for sticking around...

[@GadgetUK164]

Wonderful =D Worth getting yourself an EPROM programmer at some point Vince! You could have dumped the working one first, and tried to re-flash both chips when neither worked! Or flashed the original chip with a BIOS from the net.

[@brett9000]

Great fix and when the system starts and then turns off and then shows it is doing basic system checks and memory training it is a completely normal thing for a PC to do. The better of the 2 PCs is probably not worth much more than the one you got from ebay as it is a 3rd gen chip that came out in 2012.

[@TheCod3r]

Damn Vince, you're earning too much from KZbin. I still buy instant coffee. Not even the good stuff, Aldi special 😂

[@moosesugar]

It's like the nand on a Nintendo switch if that goes wrong game over glad you found someone who helped you with the bios chips I enjoyed the video I hate KZbin though I have followed you for years now since the earlier days and KZbin do not send me notifications all my mates watch you and some of them work in repair shops thanks to you don't put yourself down mate you are a credit to KZbin at least right to repair is winning

[@dodgydruid]

Hey Vince, I got a spare working Seiko H601 missing a pusher and a needing cell change, sans bracelet be more than happy to send to yourself to add to your collection prob could do with a service but it was working lovely up til the cell gave up and its a bit involved changing it, I rebuilt another I bought initially for spares for the other but the second one turned out in a almost pristine condition so the offer is there for me to send to your PO box oh and the GPO multimeter is surplus to requirements since I got my grail multimeter a Soviet 4341. I have a 15v cell for it now but never went any further with it so quite happy to send that along to your PO box (it was the one I emailed you a few weeks back about) :D

[@josephnealescratchcards]

ouch, a crappy prebuild pc but will watch the video

[@CasualSpud]

Good enough for emulation and web browsing I suppose.

[@leatherles]

Vince pal. You're so determined to Fix. Well done indeed. Hope your pal is giving you the cost of the fix? Including the £450 labour charges😂😂😂

[@g.h.190]

Zero ohm resistor os frequently used to jump traces. A wire need to be manually placed, but zero ohm resistors are automatically placed by same machines as all the other resistors.

[@wesleymoore857]

please do more videos on motherboards thank you vince

[@DEmma1972]

awesome fix

[@BCProgramming]

Just based on the description so far, I actually had a PC that had a no-POST issue I got from the thrift store- looked like somebody's custom gaming build- and all it was was an extra standoff in the case.

[@frankurmom8741]

My eyes rolled so hard at that ad intro, i could see my own brain

[@Blacksheepmylegacy]

You are correct, so painful 😢😅

[@UnCoolDad]

Where do you get your low melt solder from?

[@SimonNemeth]

Right at the start, one of the first things you should always do is to check for loose connections. One of those RAM sticks wasn't correctly seated.

[@bonno666]

When they mount a factory videocard they block the VGA and DVI onboard connector, but chances are you can enable it to get video without a videocard. Just change it in the bios to onboard video if they did not disable it. For example if the CPU does not have a GPU .built in. Sometimes they used a separate chip. A Pc should give you a boot screen even without a harddisk. Just for your information. Every brand has it's own way of implementing onboard video. Better, Never touch the cpu socket pins. even a brush can damage them.

[@andy70d35]

The, eject on the drive will work regardless, even if it wasn't in the pc, it just needs a power connection, to power the eject motor.

[@jonathaningram4672]

The graphics card looked rubbish from the start, the fact you hear the fan drop revs, cpu works. Some pc's when the bios battery drops too low they will fail to do anything. They are fun to faff on with but like you said you've no parts to swap. Built mine from scraps. Some motherboards DON'T have onboard graphics, I sus the graphics card failure. Heaven forbid chipset!

[@tyronenelson9124]

If you don't correct or update the bios settings, the pc will keep power cycling a few times before it displays anything.

[@youtuberlottery8078]

A little tip with PCs... Hirens BootCD is your friend x

[@snafu2350]

Ho yuss! Also, Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) has a few more, different tools

[@VOLTRONDEFENDER4440]

Hey Vince I have built my PC before and have watched a youtube channel Adamant IT which was a IT youtuber thats very knowlegable, my custom pc's bios has a flashback port so if corrupted can Be reflashed easly

[@jonshadow4052]

Adamant IT runs a repair shop and sells PC's .

[@VOLTRONDEFENDER4440]

@ yes that’s also true and he actually does make viewers learn

[@TwilightHourglass]

Unlikely you'll need it but most HP computers have a way to recover the bios if it gets corrupted. You download the bios from hp and running it on another computer gives you the option to make a USB recovery flash drive.

[@dexdex1635]

Hi Vince! Have you link to buy low melt solder? Thx

[@lukedavis436]

I had one of these machines at work for Graphics card testing, unfortunately i scrapped it, but i did keep the CPU fan which is the same one as yours

[@ScottEvil]

When modern PCs come on then turn off then turn on again repeatedly after the CMOS is cleared (removing the battery), it is memory training the BIOS to run the RAM at its maximum speed.

[@moosesugar]

Vince mate the bios chips need a reader to copy the info off the old ic to the new one hopefully the new ics will work

[@sethreign8103]

You can program bios chips with a ch341a programmer. They're usually less than or around 10 usd.

[@WillsWorkshop]

Just about to watch, why do computer repair videos fill me with dread before watching 😅

[@WillsWorkshop]

"This must be painful to those who know about desktops" Yes! - why do I watch these Vince 😂

[@WillsWorkshop]

Well done Vince, usually BIOS chip replacement is not something us PC repairers will do, it's just a pain. Easier to replace the motherboard with an upgrade. If you have PC/ Laptop questions in future ping over a message I'll be happy to assist

[@Dutch-linux]

it was painful to watch but to answer your question... yes you can reprogram the bios chip and you can even update it with newer bios from the hp site ... plus the 0 ohm resistor may hav blown because there was a short in the bios chip... also a bios chip can handle the heat of hot air soldering just not for long... there are also cases that a bios had chip rot.. and just reprogramming would fix that... also sometimes just taking out the battery to reset the bios is not enough there is also a clear cmos jumper that you have to set after removing the battery just do not forget to remove that jumper when you re-install the battery.... another tip is to get a cheap post test card.. then you can see if the pc is trying to post... and on the code it shows or hangs you can determine the fault example if it shows nothing it be the cpu or the pch... if it is the pch it over and done... when it hangs at a D code then it is mostly the ram if it hangs at a C or E then it is a graphics card problem when it reaches F or 0 then it should be posted and you got picture.

[@snozking]

Good fix

[@jonathaningram4672]

0 ohm resistor is a poor mans fuse

[@JohanlastZa]

Remember the olden days..lol....when we had socketed BIOS chips. Much easier to test.

[@tangothecat237]

Welcome to memory of repair of retro machines. Keep these machines aliv😢.

[@TheDefpom]

@38:00 my guess is the bad BIOS chip is blowing the 0 Ohm resistor, I bet it blew again, and has probably blown the one on the other machine too.

[@simonmpoulton]

With modern Intel systems you cannot just swap the BIOS chips over and expect it to work. They have what is called a ME area part of the programming which is specific to the board itself and this needs to be cleared with a generic ME area or it won't work on another board. The new chips will have been pre programmed with a clean BIOS and clean ME area so they work with any board. Once the board boots up the first time however this area is then updated and becomes tied to the board.

[@michaelpearce8371]

If you can get your friend to boot up with it bios chip again you can try and do a bios update it might be a corrupt bios firmware

[@martinrwolfe]

My gues is that the 0 ohm resistor was acting as a puldown on program enable and when it blew the signal went high so when the CPU tried to read the BIOS the BIOS got scrambled and the CPU got garbage. The BIOS chip itself might have been still good before you started and just needed re-programing.

[@jasonpoletta1797]

Been a long time since I've messed with desktops. Do they not beep anymore when there are hardware errors?

[@snafu2350]

IME most modern boards have the UEFI (ie BIOS) default to not beep on error :( No idea why :((

[@dodgydruid]

HP and Dell PC's are a devils brew to work with as they tend to do their own things and do so weirdly too like that power conditioning setup with the big resistors when most makers would stick in some sort of downvolting using other means. I have two HP's in my collection one a HP Compaq Elitebook laptop which is slow but still viable and that had a couple of foibles that took ages to chase down, the other is a HP Compaq USDT 8300 very small PC designed to hang off the back of a monitor using the VESA screwholes and that is downright weird having a mini PCIe and a mSata set of connectors, iGPU on the CPU and a MXM GPU upgrade connector, laptop ram and desktop CPU and is despite its tiny size quite a capable workstation and ultra easy to take apart... I did rig it up to run a RX560 gpu using mini PCIe and a GPU riser but the CPU was a major bottleneck despite upgrading the i5 to the i7 with the iGPU and lots of faster ram, it ran no better with the RX560 so dismantled the riser and set it back to iGPU and I use it for my watches work having a USB microscope on an angle arm attached and 20 gigs of watch tech sheets and stuff on there, makes it easier to work on a workbench. This week I am setting it up with a SSHD as I found a SSD expensive but SSHD's are at the mo cheap as chips in the 500 gig bracket, not as fast as a SSD but a ton faster than a HDD, my Elitebook went from staggering slowcoach on Win 11 to passable work unit with a SSHD, I imagine with a SSD it would really roar but no need, does what its expected to do swiftly enough.

[@Zirpelzwijn]

After the bios chip swap you should start the system in bios and set up the bios correctly for the components that are installed inbth system

[@arsayu]

The chips are ok. Just needs to be programmed. Initially the issue was corrupted bios and after fail it tries to recover from backup. That’s why it started when you went for thermal cam. After reboot he gets corrupted again and eventually it will again take from recovery and so on…

[@KAPTKipper]

CMOS batteries should be 3V or more. The on-off cycling looks like RAM training.

[@MichaelBowker-1970]

With computer shops Time is money that's why it is cheaper replace the mother board then replace chips

[@TBL_stevennelson]

I think you sould learn how to program those chips Its not so hard. I bet you might have found the issue faster by popping the chip off to test it but good on you for have a go at it

[@RandyDarkshade2]

Easiest way to find out if it's the motherboard or graphics card is to remove the gpu, if it still fails to output it's the mobo with the fault.

[@gower1973]

I reckon that first PC had a failed firmware update that corrupted the Bios, Rather than get it fixed they just binned it. Classic Vince, cant fault find it, buys another one, immediately breaks the second one 😂

[@ukasztyraa8448]

I have one like that with that difference it has 2nd gen i5. It had no output issue. I reflowed the chipset and that worked for me. Unfortunately it's useless motherboard because you must use non uefi graphics card in order to work so it just gathering dust right now.

[@EricBrettJones]

What is the model of the little Logitech keyboard please?

[@Hotpack7279]

At first sight the right side Ram wasn't seated properly. Robbing around on Carpet with Woolsocks grabbing unearthed Computer Components .. . I bet a ESD Shock through the Ramslot killed the Northbridge. I know these Days there is no more dedicated single Chip called Northbridge but internal there is a Northgate connecting the Rams. I am a Modder since the first Days when PC's was still White Stamped Steel Boxes on 80mm Fans.

[@jonathaningram4672]

I've hot aired winbond bios chips numerous times, guess the bios chip in those is more vulnerable to heat damage.

[@jasonrichardson1999]

Vince,what is the specs to your PC