HP Envy 700-074 ACPI BSOD BIOS update released + story!

*CLICK HERE FOR BIOS UPDATE*

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Way back in January I made this blog post (here), which also made me realize truly how fast times flies by, because it's already almost May!

In that post, I mentioned I wasn't sure whether or not I was the only person who had reported the issue in-depth, and that it was a model widespread bug, and not just a system-specific issue. Well, it appears that I was, because for a few weeks I was in contact with various 'higher-ups' within HP. Supposedly they really had no idea the bug even existed as I can only assume what was happening was owners of the 700-074 model were contacting HP's basic customer support, and ultimately getting either refunds or the same model replaced, which would eventually have the exact same problem. I imagine it didn't appear 'alarming' enough yet for HP's customer/replacement support to bring the attention to the higher-ups within HP, but I digress.

First off, I wasn't sure at all where to go to actually report this as a somewhat serious issue. I looked all over and all I could find regarding contact was basic technical and/or customer support. I myself did not own an HP device, so I couldn't contact either of those because unless you have a service tag, you are charged. I didn't want to risk being charged money I didn't have to possibly either be hung up on, or not get anywhere. So, with that said, I wandered over to the HP Support forums, created a thread, and hoped I would get something. I checked the thread a few hours later, and it received a response notifying me that there is no official HP presence on the forums, but the person was nice enough to go ahead and escalate my issue so that it could possibly get the attention I was hoping.

Sure enough, around 24 hours later I received an email from someone in HP's Executive Customer Relations. I was asked for any info about the problem I was trying to bring to attention, at which time I then explained thoroughly what was going on with the Envy 700-074. I made sure I stressed that I'm just a young guy that isn't doing this for any reason other than to help HP possibly push a solution to this problem faster, so their customers didn't have to constantly return the same model 5+ times until they said screw it and got a full refund. I then shortly after my reply received a reply back stating that I would be updated in at least 24/48 hours with additional information on their findings. I never ended up receiving a reply back. At this point, I wasn't really sure what to do. I didn't want to email again and be annoying, so I let that go.

About a week or so later, thanks to a good friend of mine (MS MVP - John Griffith/Jcgriff2), I got into contact with an HP Social Media Ambassador, who was very kind. We exchanged emails back-and-forth for a few weeks, but I eventually stopped receiving responses from them as well. At the last time we spoke, I was told that the information had successfully reached HP's Escalation Engineer team (very cool). I can only imagine someone in HP said 'stop contacting this person' or something related, because I'm just a regular 20 year old guy interested in computers trying to help fix something any way I can, and they're a major business. I suppose it could have been considered sensitive information once it reached a certain point. I do appreciate both people I was in contact with, though.

Fast forward to almost three months later (now), and I receive an email notification that my thread on the HP forums received a reply. I figured it was just another Envy 700-074 customer saying they are having this problem, etc, however, it was a person notifying me a BIOS update had been released very few days ago, and it addressed this problem. Sure enough, I checked HP's website for the Envy 700-074, and a BIOS update was posted on 4/22!

Rejoice, another bug solved that I had a little to do with! :o)

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