Press F10 while it's booting and showing this message on screen "press Fx to
enter Setup Utility", or something to that effect.
I think it's F10 you need to press, but if not - try F1.
Also you might easily MISS that short period of time duriung which system is
booting up & awaiting for check whether user pressed F10/F1, so you may need
to try several times if you've no experience.
As opf BIOS, goto
www.hp.com-->Support-> and go thru menus to get to your
machine#/model#, you should find a Drivers matrix or some sort of download
page at HP wenbsite for your PARTICULAR machine. Even though normally,
attempting to install wrong BIOS on a wrong machine will be automatically
aborted, do make sure you're downloading exactly correct BIOS, else if
installation does get thru, you'll be kill your machine to point where you'd
need to ship it to manufacturer to replace BIOS chip/chipset.
Also I advise you to install battery while running BIOS update - AC power
failure would leave your BIOS in undefined state, and again damage your
machine badly.
I am using HP dv-series laptop whose BIOS is updatable in Windows.
Back in the day it was only posible outside of Windows shell, but these days
I think it's almost guaranteed you can download HP BIOS version designed to
run under Windows.
Do NOT power off or touch anything while BIOS update runs, it's the most
critical piece of software.
It is properly called "firmware" as opposed to soft, hard or middleware.
Goto HP website, last time I did my BIOS update it went like hot knife thru
butter - smoothly, quickly, and now my machien takes longer time to boot,
grrrrz!!!!!!
But you know what'sx great about HP?
I used to only deal with IBM Thinkpads, until IBM sold that division to
Lenovo of China. They posted current BIOS and NO WAY to roll back!
However HP posts current and also a few older BIOS releases, so you can roll
back if you don't like newer BIOS.
BIOS updates are usually doen to improve compatibility with new OS, or
sometimes to fix bugs, but usually for a new OS.
Often it's not too necessary. I was fine with older BIOS, HP sire claimed
new BIOS was better optimized for Vista so I got it, now I guess they should
have something to optimize for WIndows7....