I have the Elitedesk 800 G2 TWR, with the BS Sure Start feature that is designed to prevent us from fixing BIOS problems that HP doesn’t want to solve for their users. I’m just wondering if this is still uncrackable, or if someone figured out how to bypass it. Is it not possible to simply mod the BIOS and install it like an official HP bios?
My original hope was to add Kaby Lake support to this Sky Lake motherboard. 800 G3 supports Kaby Lake and is very much similar in all other respects, so if there are modules that need to be inserted, the G3 BIOS could provide a useful guide. Unfortunately HP doesn’t allow cross-flashing BIOS. Total shit policy that deprives users of the full features supported by hardware, when all they have to do is migrate some code from one BIOS to another.
Anyone knows what to make of this situation? Should I just declare this case hopeless?.. Thanks
HP EliteDesk 800 G2 Tower PC
Latest bios version is 02.51 Rev.A dated Nov 6, 2020
Fyi,there are firmware updated available in support.for example;
Intel Management Engine Firmware 11.8.82.3838 Rev.A Jan 4, 2021
What do you mean?..
when you are done with your updates,read these guides thoroughly;
[GUIDE] Coffee Lake CPUs on Skylake and Kaby Lake motherboards
[GUIDE] Fixing HT for Coffee Lake CPUs on Skylake and Kaby Lake motherboards (Z170, Z270)
I appreciate the help and good intentions, but i don’t think that G2 TWR BIOS supports Kaby Lake at all. In the BIOS revision notes, it mentions kaby lake microcode updates but when I checked it with MCExtractor it only has the CPUID for Skylake, and is identical to G2 Mini BIOS micro codes, the revision notes of which do not contain any mention of Kaby Lake CPUs.
The most damning problem if I understand correctly, is HP’s Sure Start, which prevents BIOS modding at all. Maybe @Lost_N_BIOS can shed some light on that…
Update to the latest present then dump your bios,then add any cpu’s microcodes all you want (customize yours in short).
Or find a dump from G3
But in the end,you need those guides as a guideline
Ok. I still think the main challenge is getting past Sure Start since people have claimed that it is unbeatable…
Check out this wiki entry: https://doc.coreboot.org/mainboard/hp/hp_sure_start.html
I’m reading the whitepaper linked to it that describes the Evil Sure Start gen2 implemented on my Elitedesk (more like RetardedDesk) 800 G2. Looks like there’s a secondary flash “Sure Start Embedded Controller” storing a backup copy of the HP BIOS boot block and then in the main “System Flash” there are two copies of the BIOS. Would it be the case then that we just need to mod the BIOS and its copy in the BIOS flash and leave the boot block alone?
@Lost_N_BIOS Help needed!!
@Lost_N_BIOS I don’t have a reason to think that Sure Start can’t be hacked. I’ve already removed the MS recovery partition b/c it might contain an additional copy of the HP BIOS for Sure Start to recover from, no sweat. The white paper describes the Sure Start design in great detail and it seems that the only other BIOS backup is stored in the main BIOS flash - on the same chip that the main BIOS lives. The secondary chip only contains the BIOS firmware which I assume doesn’t matter for CPU microcode/modules? Not sure how much editing would be needed from a flash programmer, which may or may not involve editing BIOS/BIOS backup code start locations on the system flash. Either way, I think we can hack this piece of shit. What are your feelings on this?.. Thanks
@simoutekd @dsanke Another shot at this Sure Start BS?
My ME engine ver. is 11.0.0
Uploading the BIOS for Elitedesk 800 G2 TWR (2.30 - the version that works best on my system), and the corresponding BIOS for Elitedesk 800 G3 TWR (2.19 - the version that has Kaby Lake microcode/modules but should be otherwise nearly identical).
https://filebin.net/aj56sri6sxpa5vi3