Sucker-Free way to update the BIOS in your HP thin clients

[WANg]

WANg submitted a new resource:

Sucker-Free way to update your HP thin clients - I did something really, really dumb so you won't have to...

Testing, testing, 1-2-3...
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[MiniKnight]

Good info

 

[helmist]

Hrmmm. Not working, although I'm trying to update an older one, from v1.09. I'ts been running proxmox as a cluster member, but I recently converted to dual 10g SFP+s and wanted to get them all upgraded. I've tried on 2/4 without luck...

trying with a t740, Bios M42 00.01.21 Rev.A, sp161541.exe

Tricky little bugger.

 

[Greg_E]

I sent you a pm about maybe extending this guide with the two other ways that I've done upgrades and unlocking. Thinking a single comprehensive guide would be good.

 

[Greg_E]

Hrmmm. Not working, although I'm trying to update an older one, from v1.09. I'ts been running proxmox as a cluster member, but I recently converted to dual 10g SFP+s and wanted to get them all upgraded. I've tried on 2/4 without luck...

trying with a t740, Bios M42 00.01.21 Rev.A, sp161541.exe

Tricky little bugger.

Hopefully you get an alert. You can download hbcd win10 version, add a couple drivers, and run the windows utility to update. I just did a new to me t740 from 1.09 up to 1.21 with no issues. Note that the newer hbcd win11 version did not work, told me to get the correct softpak which I could not find.

 

[WANg]

Hrmmm. Not working, although I'm trying to update an older one, from v1.09. I'ts been running proxmox as a cluster member, but I recently converted to dual 10g SFP+s and wanted to get them all upgraded. I've tried on 2/4 without luck...

trying with a t740, Bios M42 00.01.21 Rev.A, sp161541.exe

Tricky little bugger.

How is it failing, though? The drive refuses to be read by the BIOS utility? Or the machine won't even go to the BIOS screen?
The USB thumb drive to be used should be below the SDHC limit of 16GB (optimally 4-8GB or less) and be formatted to FAT32 and not exfat, apfs or ntfs. Usually with this method the drive is either readable, or not. If it's not readable it'll fail to initialize. When in doubt, try another thumbdrive formatted to FAT32.

 

[Lorsen]

Thanks for the info!
I use an old laptop like a thin client, so this should help me a lot.

 

[WANg]

Thanks for the info!
I use an old laptop like a thin client, so this should help me a lot.

the instructions are only meant to be used for upgradng the BIOS on HP thin clients and certain HP Elitebook models as it's leveraging an HP BIOSPhere commercial BIOS feature.

 

[Greg_E]

This procedure may work on Prodesk, Elitedesk, etc. desktops too. If you have a Windows computer, you can usually run the utility and tell it to make a recovery USB for uefi or bios utility upgrade or repair. It works, I've used it on a few HP desktops in the past.

Note that this will not unlock a bios, or at least would not unlock my T740's when they arrived. I have a thread here that links to a thread on badcaps that covers the fix I used. Need to register an account to see the pictures.

 

[WANg]

This procedure may work on Prodesk, Elitedesk, etc. desktops too. If you have a Windows computer, you can usually run the utility and tell it to make a recovery USB for uefi or bios utility upgrade or repair. It works, I've used it on a few HP desktops in the past.

Note that this will not unlock a bios, or at least would not unlock my T740's when they arrived. I have a thread here that links to a thread on badcaps that covers the fix I used. Need to register an account to see the pictures.

Yeah, I kinda wish that Lenovo or Dell TMMs have an update-from-USB drive feature like the HP commercial BIOS machines...but alas, it's one of their "enterprise" features (granted, I only have an m725q Gen 2 somewhere, and the newest Dell that I have is a Latitude 7490, so maybe they do exist)

 

[Greg_E]

I would guess that hbcd with a few drivers would get most of these upgraded. Even my old dl360 gen8 servers got handled this way.

 

[WANg]

I would guess that hbcd with a few drivers would get most of these upgraded. Even my old dl360 gen8 servers got handled this way.

Holy crap. I thought Hiren's boot CD is long dead...it still lives? I swear, next to partedMagic it's about the most useful thing you can keep on a bootable USB drive...provided that you are on x86/x64. If you run ARM or Risc-V, sorry kid, you're on your own.

 

[Greg_E]

You might want the old 2021 version which is win 10, the latest Win 11 isn't working with some of the HP tools. Internet archive has the win10 version.