BIOS hangs booting from opensuse 11.4 64bit-installation DVD

[Dominik Grafenhofer]

I think that I have spotted a BIOS problem on some HP Laptops (Elitebook 8530p -my machine, ProBook 4710, Elitebook 6930p): The machines hang booting up from an opensuse 11.4 64bit-installation DVD (BIOS hangs on start-up screen, caps-/num-lock are blinking). On other machines the respective DVD boots just fine. Other bootable DVDs/CDs boot without any problem on the affected machines.

What is the best way to report this problem to HP? Can I help getting it fixed?

opensuse bug report:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=679163

dvds available via http://software.opensuse.org

[Goran Koruga]

Hello.

Blinking LED-s indicate a kernel panic - can you boot in text mode to see what the kernel says?

If this is the case, you should chase the problem with OpenSuSE resources.

Regards,
Goran

[Dominik Grafenhofer]

It is the BIOS that hangs showing the BIOS startup screen and mentioned LEDs are blinking. Again, at the time the machine hangs neither the bootloader of the CD nor the kernel has already started. So this is either a problem of the DVD not having a proper "boot capability" or the BIOS not correctly recognizing it. I have strong indications for the second case as the DVD boots without problem on other machines. A hardware problem just on my machine can be ruled out as other people on other (similar) HP machines suffer from the same problem.

[Goran Koruga]

In that case try booting from CD with SBM Boot Manager.



Goran

[Dominik Grafenhofer]

Please read the bug report - I already have found a method to circumvent the problem.

All I am asking is for is whom to get in contact with at HP to sort out the issue with the BIOS, or if help to track down the problem would be appreciated anyways.

[Dominik Grafenhofer]

HP Compaq 6730s is also affected.

[Arjen de Korte]

The following workaround confirms that this is indeed a problem in the BIOS and not the DVD:

1) Put the DVD in the tray without closing it
2) Either use the F9 prompt or Multiboot Express to manually select the boot device
3) Close the tray when the prompt is displayed (not sooner!)
4) Select the DVD for booting

The essential step in the above workaround is that one needs to wait with closing the DVD tray until the boot prompt is displayed (ie, after the POST finished). If the DVD tray is closed during the POST, it consistently locks up the system.

The above was verified on a HP Compaq 6730s with the latest (F.13 BIOS) installed.

[Dominik Grafenhofer]

HP Compaq 6730s and HP Probook 5310m seem to suffer from the same problem.