[geeks] recover from HP Pavilion failed BIOS update

[Dan Duncan]

Short story:   The HP Pavilion I just got booted to Vista (home
premium, as shipped) to install a BIOS update HP lists as CRITICAL and
croaked during the BIOS update.  Now the system will not boot or show
any display and just sounds 3 long beeps.

I suspect the BIOS is corrupted (I did try the jumpers to clear CMOS
with no luck) and from past experience the most expedient method would
seem to be putting in a pre-flashed bios chip if I can find one.  HP
wants me to ship it for repair (minimum of 9 business days if they'll
even do it for a refurb) and I could just return it but it was the
last one and I got a smokin deal.

Does anyone have experience replacing the BIOS chip on HP Pavilions or
even a way to write BIOS to one?  I don't have access to another
system like this, but the old BIOS was 5.18 and the new one would have
been 5.21.  (I'd accept either on a flash chip)

I'm willing to pay shipping, materials and your valuable time!

Longer boring version:  HP Pavilion p6102f (AMD Phenom II X4 2.8GHz,
8GB ram, 750GB HD, DVD+-RW, $315) refurb purchased for HTPC.  Came
with Vista (WHAT A STEAMING PILE!) which would hammer the hard drive
continuously and not accept any keyboard/mouse input for an hour after
login.  Once the hard drive light went out it ran with whatever glory
Vista could be said to muster.  It would boot seemingly fine into Safe
Mode without the long delay.  I turned off a number of services in an
attempt to get Vista functional just to verify it was Vista and not
the hardware that was having a problem because I have 90 days to
return it.  Since it booted safe mode normally I went ahead and tried
Ubuntu (through wubi) and it seemed flawless so I installed Mint 8 KDE
x86-64 which is also flawless and got HDMI audio working (updated ATI
driver) and got xbmc and hulu desktop working at full 1920x1080 res
only to find Adobe apparently doesn't let Flash work with HDMI audio
in linux so no biggie, I switched to external speakers (TV won't
accept an analog audio input in parallel with an HDMI video input as
far as I can tell)  also no biggie.  The system ran flawlessly and
fast as greased lightning and I've already tracked down a licensed
copy of XP for a VM to add netflix streaming and itunes to the mix.  I
was ready to discontinue satellite service TONIGHT when I decided to
troubleshoot a lingering issue where the system comes up out of
suspend or hibernate with a blank screen which won't come up.  It
turns out this is a known issue fixed by an HP BIOS update listed as
CRITICAL on their website so I booted Vista to install it when things
went bad.

Does anyone have experience replacing the BIOS chip on HP Pavilions or
even a way to write BIOS to one?  I don't have access to another
system like this, but the old BIOS was 5.18 and the new one would have
been 5.21.  (I'd accept either on a flash chip)

I'm willing to pay shipping, materials and your valuable time!

-- 
Dan Duncan