Hey.
I just want to share my experience with bios update on my hp 8710w laptop and talking to HP support. I updated from F.0E to F.20 and after that fan has gone wild. Under windows 7 it works fine every 2 out of 3 boots, or so. Every other time fan spins fast no matter what the temperature and system load are. This makes the laptop noisy.
I normally use linux, and there fan just doesn't slow down after spinning up to cool the system. This is really something you won't want to have, because it turns an excellent and quiet machine into a loud vacuum cleaner.
I have enough evidence to assume that the issue was caused by bios update. First it started exactly after bios update when nothing else was changed. Second, some 5 years ago I had a very similar laptop (8710p) and when I updated bios to F.0F, the same thing happened, but I happily downgraded the bios and everything was back to normal. Plus there are reports of others on the internet and these discussion boards in particular.
Now with update to F.20.... There is no way to downgrade. It is embarassing: HP released an update that breaks functionality... and there is no way back (except replacing the system board indeed, which is expensive for laptops out of warranty).
I was chatting and then talking over the phone with HP support. They aren't really any close to being professionals. First they said that my windows 7 is not officially supported and I should install xp or vista. I got xp installed just for them, and that consumed quite a lot of time. Of course nothing changed. And they actually have all the drivers published for windows 7...
The best advice of hp support was to try to install all the previous versions of bios. I reported failure on all of them, only then they found in the description of version F.20 that it could not be downgraded... After reading forums here for 15 minutes I knew much more than technical support about my laptop and the issue, lol.
After talking with me for a very long time (like 3 or 4 hours) and suggesting that I try rebooting my machine, or start it with winkey+b, etc, they said that my laptop is out of warranty, and there's nothing they can help me with.
I admit that the laptop is out of warranty... but is suffers purely from the official firmware update that cannot be downgraded. Yes, I know I am supposed to buy a whole new replacement HP laptop. But... This... looks wrong.
Now I am going to get a replacement bios chip, programmed with previous version of bios, and solder it to the motherboard...
Hello to HP support guys. They are nice people who try to be helpful, they just don't know anything about their products :-)
Hello to HP bios programmers... Please... please be better, please learn that bugs can be corrected.