HP Envy 700-074 - ACPI_BIOS_ERROR

Hi readers!

Over the past few weeks, it has come to my attention that there is a serious issue with the BIOS of this HP model - Software & driver downloads HP ENVY 700-074 Desktop PC | HP® Support 

I am not sure if I am the first to discover this or report it to HP in the debugging and/or analyst community, or in general. Nevertheless, since I started talking about it, supposedly complaints have been flooding into various websites where this model is being sold, to HP, etc.

Before we even get into it, if you've stumbled upon this post and you're having the dreaded *a5 bug check on your brand new HP 700-074, you'll want to either do the following two things:

1. Update the system to Windows 8.1.

2. Get a full refund if available and purchase a new model. I don't lightly put #2 because I am not for advising against businesses or products, but if this is an option, as a customer, you may want to take it to avoid headaches as this issue has no 'out of the box' fix in the foreseeable future.

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What's happening is there is a frequency of ACPI_BIOS_ERROR (a5) bug checks.

This bug check indicates that the Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) BIOS of the computer is not fully compliant with the ACPI specification.

BugCheck A5, {1000, 0, 80001000, 25}

The 1st parameter so far has always been 1000.

1000 = ACPI_BIOS_USING_OS_MEMORY.

ACPI had a fatal error when processing a memory operation region. The memory operation region tried to map memory that has been allocated for OS usage.

This bug check appears generally in these 2 scenarios:

1. BIOS bug / corrupt and needs to be solved with an update or return to manufacturer.

2. Rootkit (not very common).

In our case, it's #1. What exactly is going on? I cannot be entirely too sure, although this is clearly a widespread issue regarding that specific model's BIOS. I wonder if I should contact HP and let them know if they do not already? For reference, a BIOS update is not currently available for that specific model, so not entirely sure what the end user can do.

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Two threads where it's occurring, I will update if I see anymore:

1. Windows 8 crashes after entering sleep mode - Microsoft Community

2. Brand new computer running Windows 8 - 2 crashes in first day - Microsoft Community

Big discussion going on here started by me, contains various users talking about this problem - To all analysts: HP Envy 700-074 model BIOS corruption, bug, etc