Key Lesson Leaned: Don't buy anything from HP Inc. No mini PC's, laptops, or printers. Don't spend a dime with them. Don't reward bad behavior. Every vendor using bogus "security" arguments needs to go on the Do Not Buy list.
HP laptops, 3 dead in 3 years, were already on my no-go list, now the rest of HP just got added. Their BS with their printers. They've really gone down the drain.
Let's be honest. I have owned a few HP printers and know a lot of peoploe that used to own them. Nobody was happy with those printers. Amazingly whenever someone switched to Brother printers, they stopped complayning... I did a switch as well (about 12 years ago) and my printer just works, so boring... ;)
I agree it’s ridiculous. I tried to upgrade my Wi-Fi card to a better Wi-Fi card and the bios auto disabled it for security reasons and I’m like what the f&$k and to be clear this was an HP ProBook from 2012
@@daveweinstein5044 if the password isn't disclosed in auction details, then the item is not as described and ebay will let you return it regardless of the seller's policy.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Because the only customer that matters to HP is the one who buys it brand new. HP has no economic incentive to care about any downstream market. The only way to put pressure on HP is if we can convince it's bad for the first owner, e.g. it increases the TCO for the first-hand owner if people are paying less for second-hand units.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo There's no BIOS password cracker? I ran into this on a used Dell laptop that I got from eBay. Entering the computer's info into a website calculated the unlock code and I was able to de-protect the BIOS.
Dirty little secret about HP ... all you have to do is call HP corp main number and ask for Office of Environment Affairs (or something like that) and complain that without help from HP, this will become e-waste and (this is the thing) ... point out that is completely inconsistent with the most recent "Sustainable Impact Report" (that is the official name of it). HP makes a big deal about such things (they are ESG-obsessed) and if you complain enuf, you will get relief!!! Btw, this works with most major tech firms that produce hard goods - like when you get stuck like here on the BIOS Password.
honestly, call your attorney and send them a cease and desist letter. once you're talking with their legal department you can negotiate PAID use of your content (and perhaps even use it as a way to direct more traffic to the STH website and youtube channel).
This pisses me off, multi-brazillion dollar corp is using some youtuber guy(who's remarkably better than them at supporting and presenting their own products) vids with no permission. This has to be handled.
Not a fan of governments getting involved unless they have to, but I really feel like some sort of "E-Waste" legislation is required here. Make companies like HP submit "e-waste' prevention documentation for each product, get fined for every action that increases e-waste potential and flat out ban this "you must send in the hardware" behavior.
no need for these specialized laws when you can have logical law structure that deals with general consumer goods life cycle as a whole and actually apply the law. These additional laws do nothing but bring extra jobs and money to government, making it larger at every turn
@@Cenot4ph For what it's worth, it doesn't much matter to me how it gets done, but something needs done. I agree with you that a more general purpose "total life cycle" regulation would be fantastic. Lots of things are easy/cheap to manufacture, but very costly (environmental, health, etc) when they are thrown in the trash heap and right now manufacturers does not have to care about the end of a products life.
Required source code/schematic/documentation release at EOL or bankruptcy would be fantastic as well, but I likely stand a better chance of winning the lottery twice than anything like that coming to law.
HP stopped allowing you to reset the BIOS password on your own computers as far back as 2019 and probably even before that. I have an old ProBook that has a BIOS password on it and HP said they would have to replace the motherboard at my expense. They also wouldn't tell me how much it was going to cost until I sent it in. The line about it being a security issue is also rather entertaining, I'm sure HP has not hardened their motherboard against someone just direct connecting to the BIOS chip and flashing it.
@@falsemcnuggethope It's not even a 2nd hand market target. Nothing stops companies from removing their bios passwords. HP doesn't set them. Plus, companies should remove their bios passwords as a matter of security, as an attacker could crack/decode it and use it to attack live inventory still used by the company.
Ya, that is what I had to do for mine flashing was a pain. I have also seen where people remove the bios chip and resolder one that they bought off ebay.
Bought this device, not our first version of the mini and of course it exceeded expectations yet again. We had tried a competitor's (geekom 12G version, which was cheaper and seemed to have all the right stuff, but it was SOOO loud that we quickly returned it. Just not workable at home or at work when machine is crazy loud. Got the HP I5-13500 which was faster than the I7-12500 at about 70% the price. Very, very quiet, nearly imperceptible sound at 2 feet. So fast and so nice to place on the desk out of the way. All the right things, DDR5 + 512GB fast SSD. Went out and bought Samsung 990 Pro 2TB and believe it or not, not as fast as the SSD that comes with this device standard. Just a great setup and will serve our dev teams for good while. Going out and buying a bunch more after this successful test.
Thanks for the valuable heads up. The concept of ownership is really messed up here. If I can’t reset my own BIOS password, they shouldn’t be selling these systems to retail consumers. They should just limit sales to enterprises where such restrictions are ok. However, your suggestion makes sense as well. Throwing away encryption keys and rendering existing data unreadable is an elegant solution.
Really and truly I feel like in the next 5 years personal computers will be brute-forcing these levels of encryption and / or copying all of the raw information and generating a key. Also, I'm pretty sure they did sell this computer to an enterprise or a company outfitting an enterprise and either the deal fell through or they ordered more computers than they needed and put them on eBay to try to recoup their losses. It's clear this "feature" what the enterprise customers demand, but I wish he would have went through the process of sending it in and having it reset, considering everyone is doing this moving forward it would be nice to know how the process was and how much it cost. A $5 service charge with a one-day turnaround and $10 shipping each way isn't really a showstopper. Put a $500 service charge and a 8-week turn around is a different story entirely.
Just few days ago I got the HP Pro 400 G9 mini, with the same CPU (12th gen i5), I maxed-out the RAM to 64 GB and replaced the SSD with 1 TB drive. It's an absolute beast for home ESXi and the single-thread performance is stellar.
@Patrick, try pulling the CMOS battery and let it sit for an hour. Pop it back in and it should reset to defaults. This is how I got around SecureBoot shenaniganry on a SFF 800 G4 last week.
I was going to suggest the same thing.... But if one hour doesn't work, just leave it unplugged until the next day without the CMOS battery and remember to drain the system at the beginning of this process. Advice from and ex HP employee.
I recently installed Linux Mint on an old Elitebook a friend had bought off eBay for far too much money. The previous owner had removed the wifi module, so I found a 'compatible' one (according to HP's service manual) and installed it only to find that the BIOS deactivated the module on start up according to a BIOS level whitelist that HP alter depending on country of sale. IOW the module I got would have worked fine if the laptop had been configured for sale in the USA, but not in the UK !! It's this kind of pointless anti-consumer control freakery that guarantees I'll never buy anything from HP or similar companies myself, while I'll vote with my wallet to support companies who unilaterally (without class action lawsuits driving their marketing BS) just do the right thing by their customers and the planet.
I picked up a plug and play MINI ACEPC with windows 10 in 4k for 350 dollars off amazon. I have never done a thing to it and it runs fast and I put a printer, Microsoft Xbox Series X Console on it with my big 49 inch screen Samsung. I had it for 6 years and it hardy ever get's turns off. runs great and it will for years to come.
We don’t use any HP minI PCs but we deploy hundreds of Elitebook and ZBook laptops. HP support has always been mediocre at best, always fighting you tooth and nail. Meanwhile we had an issue with a Optiplex Micro we used in a conference room and Dell came through with replacement parts no questions asked.
Back in my consulting days I had a laptop I called "HP6" because it was the sixth one in six months. One did not make it down the hall from picking it up at the IT helpdesk counter.
Dell support has always treated me well... But we got tied of calling them often. We went almost exclusively Lenovo about 15 years ago and it's been great.
I had this same problem with an HP Elitedesk 705 G4 that I bought off eBay for my homelab. HP refused any help besides letting me buy a new motherboard. So I had to go a little overboard, I went and purchased a clip on SOIC8 programmer. I was able to find a BIOS version that I could figure out how to remove the secure header and then I flashed it directly to the chip. Took a bit of research but it did feel like a huge accomplishment getting the password free bios on there.
I bought 13 of those in 2022 for Zoom Room PCs in conference rooms. 18 months later, at the end of 2023, they were obsolete. The system requirements skyrocketed for Zoom Rooms with the release of 5.17 and all of them had to be replaced. They run WAY better in Windows 10 than 11, FYI. But that kind of goes without saying for anything that isn't a 13th generation or later Intel CPU. For a basic desktop, they're just fine.
HP, IBM, and other computers coming off the commercial lease are designed so all options require the contract provider to authorise changes (for money). They are not a good value for that reason.
13:00 So, i suspected this might be a direction these companies were headed when Lenovo started fusing those AMD PSB fuses at the factory, anything to generate e-waste so you have to buy a service or replacement
I just wish we had chipmaker support for using salvaged chips and making our own motherboards at a small scale, and for recovering materials from dead boards. (It would also be neat if they stopped lasering the ECC capability out of the consumer chips.) But the oligopoly is too powerful.
I love the Project TinyMiniMicro videos! Ever since I saw one of them a couple of years ago, I have been steaming through my quest to downsize my computers. After about a year, I now have three HP EliteDesk's, with more in the planning! This 800 G9 you have might be great for the Proxmox cluster I want to set up. I have a full size desktop with an i5-12400 with Proxmox (moving my OpenMediaVault zfs zraid2 to bigger drives and turning that OMV into a Proxmox node) that is plenty for what I need it for now, but I want to do some experimenting. Having more Cores has been something I have been wanting to play around with for a long time, and these used EliteDesks fit the budget perfectly!
When I worked for a big vendor (not HP/HPE), if someone brought their laptop in because they needed the PoP or supervisor password reset/removed, I know the service team would check the s/n to see whether it was reported as stolen. The feature has merit to protect corporate and/or private data. That said, if HP Support were able to verify you and the unit, I'm a bit surprised that they couldn't then use the utility to clear it? After having taken a liberty with your videos (congrats BTW and thank you!), surprised they didn't go a little further to help you guys?
That makes sense though you do have to balance the security with the convenience for the end user. The part when they stopped offering the utility is bad having to have it most likely is good but how much is needed to get one is bad. I get the need for physical security in a corporate environment but HP didn't do it correctly. A correct way in my mind to do it correctly would be to require another part like a security key that you plug into the board when needing admin access instead of having it be a utility nor a jumper. Have the UEFI have the code to read the security key on it for when it is used and have a port on the board for it to go into. If they are claiming "security reasons" i cannot think of a better way to do physical security for the UEFI then this. As they are already in possession of the physical device it isn't to much to ask the repair guy to plug in a security key into it. It will mean remote unlock and remote reset password will not be a thing but it will be more secure.
But say you buy one off eBay, or Amazon, and you showed proof of purchase, but how do they know it wasn't stolen by the seller, or the seller was fencing? Motorola is the same way with their radios. They track of stolen, and lost radios.
I'm curious as to if the Reset capability still exists, but isn't exposed. Perhaps they just omitted the header? I would trace back the lines on the older one and see where they go... see if the same or similar IC exists on the new, and apply the reset condition at the chip.
Now I'm waiting for the 805 Ryzen version to see what the RDNA gfx chip can do with it (yes I'm not expecting much, but it's leaps ahead of Intel's on chip stuff).
You just need proof that you bought it, the serial number, and the system needs an accurate clock. They can send you a file you put on a USB drive and it will allow password bypass for a limited time and you can set or clear the administrator password. The trick is getting to someone that knows and is willing to do that. I used to work on HP Laptops and Mini's just like this, G5 mini/laptop and newer AMD and Intel CPU, HP started doing this method. I dont have access to that account any more so I can't do it. If you know someone that does field service for HP, they can get the tool to wipe and re-load the motherboard bios and the motherboard config from the specification codes on the case label.
The reason they chose to do this with the BIOS password is simple. HP is dumb. A piece of supporting evidence. I once received from HP a box of the size usually used to pack a 1U server. It was abnormally light, though. I opened the box, and instead of finding a server with styrofoam packing surrounds, I found a solid wall of styrofoam peanuts. Upon digging through the peanuts, I found the single item contained in the box. It was a single piece of paper with a license code on it. It was centered precisely in the box, ensconced among the styrofoam peanuts.
Wow, talk about burying the lede. Really hope you can dig deeper into this. Is Dell doing this? Lenovo? Is this the beginning of the end for buying used mini PCs off eBay?
if HP can reset it then there has to be an easy way to do it - ie: there's got to be test points on the mobo somewhere and you can short the pins there to restore to factory defaults. it's not a security issue, it's a CASH GRAB
Don't we all? More to the point, I'd love to have chipmaker and chassis maker support to make a motherboard with, say, a Xeon CPU, that could fit into a laptop chassis I currently have which is out of warranty.
I have a G2 HP EliteDesk mini that I have yet to commission. It's bare bones and needs a CPU, Power Brick, RAM plus a drive and I think I will sell it or give it away. I have multiple Dell Micros and I really don't know how I ended up buying this particular brand. Rather than invest my time and money in HP I think I should stick with Dell for now.
Would be nice to get a high quality shot of the motherboard out there so someone can reverse engineer a way to flash the bios using a flash programmer.
My bet is that there's a small flash chip on the board that if you simply zeroed it out (or changed a few bits so the checksum didn't match), the BIOS would load defaults. This is what removing the jumper originally did when it used battery backed CMOS RAM; hence, the term "clear CMOS". An appropriate device could be made out of a $4 Raspberry Pi Pico and some wire.
I'd be interested in seeing HP develop a semi-external GPU box (separate box but permanent to the host system, not a true eGPU in the typical sense) of the same dimensions, with a link between the boxes; I assume PCIe x8, I know the chips are capable of 20 total lanes off CPU directly, but I'm not sure how the system itself is configured, and I know there's an 8-lane OCulink though I'm not sure of compatibility with PCIe 5.0. This would keep the system box at a preferred power level with managed cooling, while the GPU box is kept at its own power level with managed cooling, both within the same footprint so that systems can still be tessellated as originally implemented, with a total singular system being ~2L. With a GPU setup like this, discrete power, more overhead, etc., this kind of double-TinyMiniMacro could be very interesting, especially if it's able to break out of mobile-spec into desktop-spec; also an argument for a return of a MXM-like spec, I know Dell had (and still has?) an MXM-successor, and I know Framework is doing something similar with the same, though altered pinout, connector that is going to be (now is?) open hardware. Though my only concern is cooling, a radial-in radial-out really isn't the most efficient way to move air, for the dimensions I wonder if a cross-flow fan would be better, though Frore Systems AirJet coolers might be an absolute powerhouse with this kind of formfactor once their products are more widely available. If the cards fall right, this could be an actual Mac Mini killer.
The Optiplex Micro 7000 from last year has DDR4 if you want a slightly cheaper option. I've been running it as my main development station for a good six months and it has been very reliable & also quieter than a laptop. Has brilliant Linux support out of the box, fwupd support, none of the HP nonsense.
It is WILD to me that the 7000 Micro had both DDR4 and DDR5 options. Usually, vendors would make DDR4 a lower-end unit (e.g. the OptiPlex 5000 series.) When we reviewed the Dell OptiPlex 7000 Micro it was a DDR5 device. ruclips.net/video/AQuYhUvQIPQ/видео.html Linux support on all of these 1L PCs is very good since they use essentially the same core parts.
IMO, unless you're just serving videos and music off NAS or things like that, then having bonded network cables is much better so it can be real used for real powerhouse work from your PC.
I was given a small form factor PC almost identical in size and shape to the one you're talking about. It puts out a lot of heat above and below it when I push the performance just a little bit too much. I have it sitting on a metal C-channel bracket that affords plenty of air flow between it and my desktop. It raises the mini PC about 2.75 inches off the table. It also features 18 1 inch holes in that bracket. With a metal tray beneath it I can place its power brick.
I recently got an older G2 and it also had a bios admin pwd...which was removed asap using the normal blue plug shorting procedure. If that workaround hadn't been there it'd have been sitting with a basically useless machine because I needed to change a whole lot of things in the bios....like getting the latest bios to make sure there's no malware in the old one..... Then I locked it up again - with my own settings - to make sure no malware gets to change things without my knowing.
Commenting on @Maestro_Longaniza: "The G4 HP minis were the last generation to offer the physical jumper to reset the bios. G5 and on, have this new "security" feature. ... Now I always check the bios first. Use the "ESC" key to access the HP bios..." This comment is perhaps the most informative of all that I have read in this thread, but can you please clarify the last part about "checking the BIOS" first. Does that you mean that you can access/change the HP BIOS admin password BEFORE attempting to make any hardware changes (which would otherwise lock you out)? Or is this video implying that used post-G4 HP minis are effectively bricks (if they can't be upgraded, as intended)??? If that were true, I find it strange that this issue hasn't already been widely publicized before now -- given that there are so many second-hand units on the market. Maybe I'm missing something?
imagien dual 2.5G with one port being POE+ of course you'd be limited in clock speeds, but the higher core count processors are still pretty darn good at 12w
Luckily I have a JD from the largest law school in California so I have several friends that practice in the space. But always try to resolve it outside of that process.
Still with a 1 gig NIC built in . Ugh. Can't unlock the BIOS, hard nope-it's mine. I'm finding Minisforum and Beelink are making smaller mini PCs that show better performance for a much better price point-and 2.5 NIC standard. While I have several G6s and a G8 I'm not pursuing these any more.
You can test generic passwords like password and admin because the more recent hp desktops require setting a password for changing some settings. I know i've done it on many hp systems
I still prefer the Lenovo M920q and P320 tiny's as I run Intel X520 and Chelsio 10GB SFP+ cards in them with no funky issues, they work great as little XCP-ng hosts. Got mine for under $200 each and they are rock solid little servers.
Impressive that it can house a laptop GPU. Personally, I picked up one of the Dell 7050 micro units sporting a 7700T (supposedly as good or better performance than the 8600T) for a $100. Can't wait for these newer generations to get even cheaper!
HP used to be a great innovative company in the 1980's. They made lots of scientific and medical instruments, in addition to computers. The when Fiorina and others took over and acquired Compaq and Palm, it was all down hill. It became a marketing and distribution company, inventing nothing.
Thanks for warning me to never buy anything that's come from HP. When you started this video I was thinking that this might be a nice system but by the end.....
Enterprise units with vpro are like that, even lenovo. The thing is if you buy this as a regular user, the vpro will be disabled. But if you buy it from an enterprise (or used on some marketplace), you'll have to deal with these type of problems.
bios passwords that can't be skirted around have been pretty standard across the whole industry for quite awhile now? why is this a surprise./ only being mentioned now? The days of pulling the cmos battery or shorting some pins to reset it haven't been a reality in biz PCs in 10+ years easily.
Lenovo does the same thing. No way to recover/remove the bios password. I bought a second hand Lenovo laptop that had the same issue, low usage hours and locked bios with over 3 years onsite warranty. Warranty transfered just fine. But I can't change the OS, or make any other system changes bios access.
I have stopped buying these new 1L pc's and I just use a ITX Erying i5 12500 board in a small generic case. No proprietary lock out, nothing weird, it just works hardware.
Re: supervisor password, Lenovo has been doing the same thing with laptops for years now. Super annoying. The future seems to be locked bootloaders anyway, the Win11 requirements certainly are an indication of that creeping in. Hmm, future? Maybe present - the computer you carry around all day in your pocket already does this.
Your experience with the impossibility of getting past the "security" of the HP policy regarding their systems, as well as HP's disregard for your copyright, is another validation of why I no longer buy any HP products. I'm retired now, but when I was working, my employer standardized on HP workstations and laptops. Some things were excellently supported, while others were dead ends that should have never left the design process. HP is not the company it once was, and that's a pity.
Yikes. Is there a computer company worth recommending anymore even? I wonder if HP is doing the same nonsense with their z series stuff. Makes wonder what would have happened if I had bought a second hand HP Z6 desktop like I was thinking about.
13:50 no way man today hp engineers are those milenials fools that don't know what they're doing. Thank you for the video as always awesome. PD: on the hp probook, elitebook laptop series they are doing the same thing on BIOS password and the only solution is to reload the BIOS (from unwelding the chip or using a chinesse cable thing like BIOS reader) and editing the BIOS file with an hex editor. Agree with you is such a e-waste.
They figure they can make more money if people can't sell the old hardware. Alternatively they can also charge for the service like resetting it. Most likely there is a pin that one the bios can be set to ground will reset the password. or they have tool that plugs in and does it.They just don't want people to know about it or they won't make any money. Frankly, we need to start putting federal laws in place to prevent these behaviors that cause e-waste such as chrome books expiring and stuff like this. It is amazing the environmentalist and EPA having got all up in arms about it.
I've had exp with Gen 2 and 3 35W and for basic computing and really light gaming they are pretty nice, but while all but silent when idling the minute you add any load the fan cranks up and spoils it. You can buy a SFF Optiplex that is the equal and not have to put up with the fan noise and you can add a graphics card. I have come to think they are just too small to properly cool a desktop CPU. Saying that, if you have memory and etc already an early gen barebones is ridiculously cheap. The fan noise ruins the exp. That and the absurd fragile HDD ribbon cable in a PC that cost a lot when new.
I was looking to move on from my Lenovo Thinkcenter m700, and was really excited to about this new HP elite mini. I was intending to buy one with the optional Nvidia 3050, but there is conflicting information as to if it is an actual TI or Max-Q variant and what wattage is runs on. These all seem to run about $1500, instead I found a Lenovo p360 ultra i9 with 64gb ddr4 and A5000 for $1900. 2x the size but hugely increased performance for $400.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I got one (Elitedesk 800 G4) for use as a desktop computer. It is way powerful enough for me. I had to fight the bios (not locked) around the "secure boot" and "trusted computing" stuff to get Debian GNU/Linux on it, but I won in the end.
Honestly, the 12900T would be a great little micro server, but i really want the full package, either Ryzen 7 7740G(basically 7840HS with ~90w max power draw instead of 55w), or the rumored -14th- 15th gen Intel with something like 128-192Xe EUs supposedly with the same or better features than ARC. But imagine if AMD included a Xilinx Alveo co-processor FPGA for that amazing hardware encoding. Wouldnt need to be very big, just 1-4 streams, but having that on the CPU would be a game changer. In all my testing, no hardware encoder, not even the Apple M2, comes close to CPU encoding, with some codec combinations being so bad on hardware, that CPU offers the same quality at 1/6th the file size I dont have an Alveo yet, but i plan to get one as i pivoted from satellite TV, to recording local TV in ~2015, sure we were lucky enough to get wired internet let 2020, but i've been so frustrated with streaming servies that i basically only have HBO now because i'm tired of chasing shows around, and shows randomly being canceled. If AMD made a $700 single chip ALVEO, or a cut down single chip that does like 1-2 streams for $300, i'd be all over that, because it would let me cut my recording server from a 7950X, down to a 12100 and under full load would probably draw under 30w, instead of ~230w, allowing my UPS to run for several hours without power, and in theory, long enough to run overnight until the sun comes up and starts trickle charging
HP replaced (11) HP ProBook G7 laptop BIOS chips here in AZ, with a 3rd party engineering firm / repair outfit out of New Mexico; this was due to a bios update brick issue which was reproduced on their end. No cost to us. You can solder on a aftermarket or overstock BIOS chip matching your post 2017 HP product. It’s like apple with no right to repair or at least without a major headache. 😂
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Because security by obscurity I guess. It’s _much_ easier to reset the jumper, but they remove that option making it feel more secure. But BIOS overwrite should do the same thing just requires some special tools that not many have - a clip and a chip programmer.
You'd think there would at least be solder joints somewhere that you could short out IN PLACE OF the missing jumpers. Thats how it was done back in the 80's - 90's before jumpers started being implemented mainstream. I bet with trial and error you could find a spot to short out that wipes the BIOS settings, as it makes no sense that there wouldn't at least be unmarked solder joints for shorting in HP labs/development.
The lack of support is the reason I no longer purchase HP for any of my clients... It's a shame because they make decent hardware.... These days I'm almost exclusively a Dell shop (MSP)
You might consider updating the title to something that indicates HP’s bad behavior because if I just saw the video title or didn’t watch to the end your current title makes it sound like you are raving about this model and w/o any of the downsides. What do you think?
@@ServeTheHomeVideoand that is the ‘unreal’ part.. ‘unreal’ can also be taken in a POSITIVE way, eg “great” “super” “good”… ‘It is UNREAL that SpaceX has launched and landed a booster 16 times!’
hi patrick, i have got a question that probably only you can answer, regarding the Lenovo Tiny VI Vertical Stand , I saw it in 1 of your video before! I just wonder can the HP mini and Dell micro fit into it perfectly?
so in the end what are we saying... if I buy one of units used , which I want to do, I may be stuck with hp security issues while trying to upgrade. are they trying to kill the used market for these pc's ??
I have an HP laptop, and honestly, a part of me wants it to break so I can return it, get the money back, and get a laptop from a better brand (hopefully Framework) instead.
Key Lesson Leaned: Don't buy anything from HP Inc. No mini PC's, laptops, or printers. Don't spend a dime with them. Don't reward bad behavior. Every vendor using bogus "security" arguments needs to go on the Do Not Buy list.
Demanding a ransom for accessing your own device.
HP laptops, 3 dead in 3 years, were already on my no-go list, now the rest of HP just got added. Their BS with their printers. They've really gone down the drain.
Been avoiding them for at least 5 years now. Sad. They used to be an amazing company.
Let's be honest. I have owned a few HP printers and know a lot of peoploe that used to own them.
Nobody was happy with those printers.
Amazingly whenever someone switched to Brother printers, they stopped complayning... I did a switch as well (about 12 years ago) and my printer just works, so boring... ;)
I agree it’s ridiculous. I tried to upgrade my Wi-Fi card to a better Wi-Fi card and the bios auto disabled it for security reasons and I’m like what the f&$k and to be clear this was an HP ProBook from 2012
That lockout on the BIOS is a show-stopper. Many thanks for this video.
perhaps this could be avoided by insisting on getting the admin password along with the PC? no password, no sale.
@@daveweinstein5044 if the password isn't disclosed in auction details, then the item is not as described and ebay will let you return it regardless of the seller's policy.
@@daveweinstein5044 Good luck getting that from a third party reseller.
Yeah i had a older one, took a few mins of finding and reading the manual where and how to change the jumper and i had full control.
Nothing like a slap in the face from HP. Absolutely silly policies.
Amazing nobody talks about this.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Because the only customer that matters to HP is the one who buys it brand new. HP has no economic incentive to care about any downstream market. The only way to put pressure on HP is if we can convince it's bad for the first owner, e.g. it increases the TCO for the first-hand owner if people are paying less for second-hand units.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Louis Rossmann talks about these kinds of issues all the time. It is certainly not unique to HP.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo There's no BIOS password cracker? I ran into this on a used Dell laptop that I got from eBay. Entering the computer's info into a website calculated the unlock code and I was able to de-protect the BIOS.
@@aarong9378 link?
Dirty little secret about HP ... all you have to do is call HP corp main number and ask for Office of Environment Affairs (or something like that) and complain that without help from HP, this will become e-waste and (this is the thing) ... point out that is completely inconsistent with the most recent "Sustainable Impact Report" (that is the official name of it). HP makes a big deal about such things (they are ESG-obsessed) and if you complain enuf, you will get relief!!! Btw, this works with most major tech firms that produce hard goods - like when you get stuck like here on the BIOS Password.
Interesting.
So HP stole your copyrighted work and locked you out of your computer unless you pay a ransom. Nice bunch of criminals those HP guys.
honestly, call your attorney and send them a cease and desist letter. once you're talking with their legal department you can negotiate PAID use of your content (and perhaps even use it as a way to direct more traffic to the STH website and youtube channel).
This pisses me off, multi-brazillion dollar corp is using some youtuber guy(who's remarkably better than them at supporting and presenting their own products) vids with no permission. This has to be handled.
Epic comment
Not a fan of governments getting involved unless they have to, but I really feel like some sort of "E-Waste" legislation is required here. Make companies like HP submit "e-waste' prevention documentation for each product, get fined for every action that increases e-waste potential and flat out ban this "you must send in the hardware" behavior.
no need for these specialized laws when you can have logical law structure that deals with general consumer goods life cycle as a whole and actually apply the law.
These additional laws do nothing but bring extra jobs and money to government, making it larger at every turn
@@Cenot4ph For what it's worth, it doesn't much matter to me how it gets done, but something needs done. I agree with you that a more general purpose "total life cycle" regulation would be fantastic. Lots of things are easy/cheap to manufacture, but very costly (environmental, health, etc) when they are thrown in the trash heap and right now manufacturers does not have to care about the end of a products life.
Required source code/schematic/documentation release at EOL or bankruptcy would be fantastic as well, but I likely stand a better chance of winning the lottery twice than anything like that coming to law.
This should be included in right-to-repair legislation.
Translation "Not a fan of government getting involved unless it helps me"
HP stopped allowing you to reset the BIOS password on your own computers as far back as 2019 and probably even before that. I have an old ProBook that has a BIOS password on it and HP said they would have to replace the motherboard at my expense. They also wouldn't tell me how much it was going to cost until I sent it in. The line about it being a security issue is also rather entertaining, I'm sure HP has not hardened their motherboard against someone just direct connecting to the BIOS chip and flashing it.
It's ultimately a low-effort anti-theft thing (though thieves will still sell bios locked laptops)
@@BOXabaca you mean anti second hand market thing
It like you are only renting the model.
@@falsemcnuggethope It's not even a 2nd hand market target.
Nothing stops companies from removing their bios passwords. HP doesn't set them.
Plus, companies should remove their bios passwords as a matter of security, as an attacker could crack/decode it and use it to attack live inventory still used by the company.
Ya, that is what I had to do for mine flashing was a pain. I have also seen where people remove the bios chip and resolder one that they bought off ebay.
Bought this device, not our first version of the mini and of course it exceeded expectations yet again. We had tried a competitor's (geekom 12G version, which was cheaper and seemed to have all the right stuff, but it was SOOO loud that we quickly returned it. Just not workable at home or at work when machine is crazy loud. Got the HP I5-13500 which was faster than the I7-12500 at about 70% the price. Very, very quiet, nearly imperceptible sound at 2 feet. So fast and so nice to place on the desk out of the way. All the right things, DDR5 + 512GB fast SSD. Went out and bought Samsung 990 Pro 2TB and believe it or not, not as fast as the SSD that comes with this device standard. Just a great setup and will serve our dev teams for good while. Going out and buying a bunch more after this successful test.
Thanks for the valuable heads up. The concept of ownership is really messed up here. If I can’t reset my own BIOS password, they shouldn’t be selling these systems to retail consumers. They should just limit sales to enterprises where such restrictions are ok. However, your suggestion makes sense as well. Throwing away encryption keys and rendering existing data unreadable is an elegant solution.
Really and truly I feel like in the next 5 years personal computers will be brute-forcing these levels of encryption and / or copying all of the raw information and generating a key.
Also, I'm pretty sure they did sell this computer to an enterprise or a company outfitting an enterprise and either the deal fell through or they ordered more computers than they needed and put them on eBay to try to recoup their losses.
It's clear this "feature" what the enterprise customers demand, but I wish he would have went through the process of sending it in and having it reset, considering everyone is doing this moving forward it would be nice to know how the process was and how much it cost. A $5 service charge with a one-day turnaround and $10 shipping each way isn't really a showstopper. Put a $500 service charge and a 8-week turn around is a different story entirely.
Just few days ago I got the HP Pro 400 G9 mini, with the same CPU (12th gen i5), I maxed-out the RAM to 64 GB and replaced the SSD with 1 TB drive. It's an absolute beast for home ESXi and the single-thread performance is stellar.
Super awesome!
What is the noise situation when using it for normal, everyday work?
We show that in the power and noise section. Very good.
@Patrick, try pulling the CMOS battery and let it sit for an hour. Pop it back in and it should reset to defaults. This is how I got around SecureBoot shenaniganry on a SFF 800 G4 last week.
Will give it a try. We did a 30 min battery pull.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo ...and the result...?
It depends if HP set up the key in non-volatile memory (which it sounds like they did).
I was going to suggest the same thing....
But if one hour doesn't work, just leave it unplugged until the next day without the CMOS battery and remember to drain the system at the beginning of this process.
Advice from and ex HP employee.
I recently installed Linux Mint on an old Elitebook a friend had bought off eBay for far too much money. The previous owner had removed the wifi module, so I found a 'compatible' one (according to HP's service manual) and installed it only to find that the BIOS deactivated the module on start up according to a BIOS level whitelist that HP alter depending on country of sale. IOW the module I got would have worked fine if the laptop had been configured for sale in the USA, but not in the UK !!
It's this kind of pointless anti-consumer control freakery that guarantees I'll never buy anything from HP or similar companies myself, while I'll vote with my wallet to support companies who unilaterally (without class action lawsuits driving their marketing BS) just do the right thing by their customers and the planet.
Legal WiFi frequencies vary by country, so it might not be as nefarious as you think.
I picked up a plug and play MINI ACEPC with windows 10 in 4k for 350 dollars off amazon. I have never done a thing to it and it runs fast and I put a printer, Microsoft Xbox Series X Console on it with my big 49 inch screen Samsung. I had it for 6 years and it hardy ever get's turns off. runs great and it will for years to come.
We don’t use any HP minI PCs but we deploy hundreds of Elitebook and ZBook laptops. HP support has always been mediocre at best, always fighting you tooth and nail. Meanwhile we had an issue with a Optiplex Micro we used in a conference room and Dell came through with replacement parts no questions asked.
Back in my consulting days I had a laptop I called "HP6" because it was the sixth one in six months. One did not make it down the hall from picking it up at the IT helpdesk counter.
Dell support has always treated me well... But we got tied of calling them often. We went almost exclusively Lenovo about 15 years ago and it's been great.
You should include security issues getting these second hand too. There's some bloody nasty malware out there.
Totally, but that is some of the risk with second hand that the buyer assumes, hence why it is discounted price wise to new hardware.
I had this same problem with an HP Elitedesk 705 G4 that I bought off eBay for my homelab. HP refused any help besides letting me buy a new motherboard. So I had to go a little overboard, I went and purchased a clip on SOIC8 programmer. I was able to find a BIOS version that I could figure out how to remove the secure header and then I flashed it directly to the chip. Took a bit of research but it did feel like a huge accomplishment getting the password free bios on there.
That is what I recommend as well. A motherboard replacement is way overboard and HP should be able to reflash the IC, but just don't want to.
That is insane, some real key lessons learned right there.
I bought 13 of those in 2022 for Zoom Room PCs in conference rooms. 18 months later, at the end of 2023, they were obsolete. The system requirements skyrocketed for Zoom Rooms with the release of 5.17 and all of them had to be replaced. They run WAY better in Windows 10 than 11, FYI. But that kind of goes without saying for anything that isn't a 13th generation or later Intel CPU. For a basic desktop, they're just fine.
We have one of those HP Teams boxes and something similar happened except they cannot run Win 11 due to being older CPUs
Amazing compact machine for programming! Silent and Powerful at the same time, plus plenty of options for an upgrade!
...if you don't need to make BIOS changes...
HP, IBM, and other computers coming off the commercial lease are designed so all options require the contract provider to authorise changes (for money). They are not a good value for that reason.
13:00 So, i suspected this might be a direction these companies were headed when Lenovo started fusing those AMD PSB fuses at the factory, anything to generate e-waste so you have to buy a service or replacement
I love this channel because of the power consumption tests
Good feedback. We added that format last year.
Great video! Thank you for highlighting why I should avoid buying HP products.
I just wish we had chipmaker support for using salvaged chips and making our own motherboards at a small scale, and for recovering materials from dead boards. (It would also be neat if they stopped lasering the ECC capability out of the consumer chips.) But the oligopoly is too powerful.
Greed is everything for humans 😢 we try to take with us stuff after we die.
With HP - It is all about revenue. Screw the customer. I gave up on them a long time ago.
Maybe MSI can get you the keys 🕺
Nice one.
Because of this series I have bought a 6th gen i5 HP 600 G3 Mini, might not be the fastest. But it works well as a homeserver.
Got a 800 G2 for the same reason. Works like a charm. With a very useful blue plug...thank you very much!
@@kevinrtres same
I love the Project TinyMiniMicro videos!
Ever since I saw one of them a couple of years ago, I have been steaming through my quest to downsize my computers. After about a year, I now have three HP EliteDesk's, with more in the planning!
This 800 G9 you have might be great for the Proxmox cluster I want to set up. I have a full size desktop with an i5-12400 with Proxmox (moving my OpenMediaVault zfs zraid2 to bigger drives and turning that OMV into a Proxmox node) that is plenty for what I need it for now, but I want to do some experimenting. Having more Cores has been something I have been wanting to play around with for a long time, and these used EliteDesks fit the budget perfectly!
We all need someone like Patrick in our lives who get so excited about tech.
When I worked for a big vendor (not HP/HPE), if someone brought their laptop in because they needed the PoP or supervisor password reset/removed, I know the service team would check the s/n to see whether it was reported as stolen. The feature has merit to protect corporate and/or private data. That said, if HP Support were able to verify you and the unit, I'm a bit surprised that they couldn't then use the utility to clear it? After having taken a liberty with your videos (congrats BTW and thank you!), surprised they didn't go a little further to help you guys?
They can clear it by generating a MPM unlock key
That makes sense though you do have to balance the security with the convenience for the end user. The part when they stopped offering the utility is bad having to have it most likely is good but how much is needed to get one is bad. I get the need for physical security in a corporate environment but HP didn't do it correctly. A correct way in my mind to do it correctly would be to require another part like a security key that you plug into the board when needing admin access instead of having it be a utility nor a jumper. Have the UEFI have the code to read the security key on it for when it is used and have a port on the board for it to go into. If they are claiming "security reasons" i cannot think of a better way to do physical security for the UEFI then this. As they are already in possession of the physical device it isn't to much to ask the repair guy to plug in a security key into it. It will mean remote unlock and remote reset password will not be a thing but it will be more secure.
But say you buy one off eBay, or Amazon, and you showed proof of purchase, but how do they know it wasn't stolen by the seller, or the seller was fencing? Motorola is the same way with their radios. They track of stolen, and lost radios.
Got one of these, its awesome! Now I just need a tinyminimicro nas for my 4x 4TB 2.5" ssds. 10GB RJ45, low power low noise... go
I have an idea.
I'm curious as to if the Reset capability still exists, but isn't exposed. Perhaps they just omitted the header? I would trace back the lines on the older one and see where they go... see if the same or similar IC exists on the new, and apply the reset condition at the chip.
This is HP - You should have learnt the lessons from their Printer business - Awful company.
It was once a great company but unfortunately the Indians are running it to the ground
Now I'm waiting for the 805 Ryzen version to see what the RDNA gfx chip can do with it (yes I'm not expecting much, but it's leaps ahead of Intel's on chip stuff).
Great job Patrick!
You just need proof that you bought it, the serial number, and the system needs an accurate clock. They can send you a file you put on a USB drive and it will allow password bypass for a limited time and you can set or clear the administrator password.
The trick is getting to someone that knows and is willing to do that. I used to work on HP Laptops and Mini's just like this, G5 mini/laptop and newer AMD and Intel CPU, HP started doing this method.
I dont have access to that account any more so I can't do it.
If you know someone that does field service for HP, they can get the tool to wipe and re-load the motherboard bios and the motherboard config from the specification codes on the case label.
The reason they chose to do this with the BIOS password is simple. HP is dumb.
A piece of supporting evidence. I once received from HP a box of the size usually used to pack a 1U server. It was abnormally light, though. I opened the box, and instead of finding a server with styrofoam packing surrounds, I found a solid wall of styrofoam peanuts. Upon digging through the peanuts, I found the single item contained in the box. It was a single piece of paper with a license code on it. It was centered precisely in the box, ensconced among the styrofoam peanuts.
It could be cool pairing this with EGPU via Thunderbolt.
Since you've got two m.2 PCIe 4.0 x4 slots, probably be cheaper (and maybe even more performant) just to attach a GDC Beast 🤷♂️
Wow, talk about burying the lede. Really hope you can dig deeper into this. Is Dell doing this? Lenovo? Is this the beginning of the end for buying used mini PCs off eBay?
Hehe, the price direct from HP can be said to be "a little more" than $515 for sure :D
if HP can reset it then there has to be an easy way to do it - ie: there's got to be test points on the mobo somewhere and you can short the pins there to restore to factory defaults. it's not a security issue, it's a CASH GRAB
I wish there was a Xeon-based 1l PC with ECC RAM.
Don't we all?
More to the point, I'd love to have chipmaker and chassis maker support to make a motherboard with, say, a Xeon CPU, that could fit into a laptop chassis I currently have which is out of warranty.
I have a G2 HP EliteDesk mini that I have yet to commission. It's bare bones and needs
a CPU, Power Brick, RAM plus a drive and I think I will sell it or give it away.
I have multiple Dell Micros and I really don't know how I ended up buying this particular
brand. Rather than invest my time and money in HP I think I should stick with Dell for now.
Would be nice to get a high quality shot of the motherboard out there so someone can reverse engineer a way to flash the bios using a flash programmer.
My bet is that there's a small flash chip on the board that if you simply zeroed it out (or changed a few bits so the checksum didn't match), the BIOS would load defaults. This is what removing the jumper originally did when it used battery backed CMOS RAM; hence, the term "clear CMOS".
An appropriate device could be made out of a $4 Raspberry Pi Pico and some wire.
I'd be interested in seeing HP develop a semi-external GPU box (separate box but permanent to the host system, not a true eGPU in the typical sense) of the same dimensions, with a link between the boxes; I assume PCIe x8, I know the chips are capable of 20 total lanes off CPU directly, but I'm not sure how the system itself is configured, and I know there's an 8-lane OCulink though I'm not sure of compatibility with PCIe 5.0. This would keep the system box at a preferred power level with managed cooling, while the GPU box is kept at its own power level with managed cooling, both within the same footprint so that systems can still be tessellated as originally implemented, with a total singular system being ~2L. With a GPU setup like this, discrete power, more overhead, etc., this kind of double-TinyMiniMacro could be very interesting, especially if it's able to break out of mobile-spec into desktop-spec; also an argument for a return of a MXM-like spec, I know Dell had (and still has?) an MXM-successor, and I know Framework is doing something similar with the same, though altered pinout, connector that is going to be (now is?) open hardware. Though my only concern is cooling, a radial-in radial-out really isn't the most efficient way to move air, for the dimensions I wonder if a cross-flow fan would be better, though Frore Systems AirJet coolers might be an absolute powerhouse with this kind of formfactor once their products are more widely available. If the cards fall right, this could be an actual Mac Mini killer.
The Optiplex Micro 7000 from last year has DDR4 if you want a slightly cheaper option. I've been running it as my main development station for a good six months and it has been very reliable & also quieter than a laptop. Has brilliant Linux support out of the box, fwupd support, none of the HP nonsense.
It is WILD to me that the 7000 Micro had both DDR4 and DDR5 options. Usually, vendors would make DDR4 a lower-end unit (e.g. the OptiPlex 5000 series.) When we reviewed the Dell OptiPlex 7000 Micro it was a DDR5 device. ruclips.net/video/AQuYhUvQIPQ/видео.html
Linux support on all of these 1L PCs is very good since they use essentially the same core parts.
I would love to see someone offer something like this with support for external sas shelves. Would make a great, small NAS box.
Some of them have a pcie x8 slot and you could put an LSI HBA in there
IMO, unless you're just serving videos and music off NAS or things like that, then having bonded network cables is much better so it can be real used for real powerhouse work from your PC.
I was given a small form factor PC almost identical in size and shape to the one you're talking about. It puts out a lot of heat above and below it when I push the performance just a little bit too much. I have it sitting on a metal C-channel bracket that affords plenty of air flow between it and my desktop. It raises the mini PC about 2.75 inches off the table. It also features 18 1 inch holes in that bracket. With a metal tray beneath it I can place its power brick.
I recently got an older G2 and it also had a bios admin pwd...which was removed asap using the normal blue plug shorting procedure. If that workaround hadn't been there it'd have been sitting with a basically useless machine because I needed to change a whole lot of things in the bios....like getting the latest bios to make sure there's no malware in the old one.....
Then I locked it up again - with my own settings - to make sure no malware gets to change things without my knowing.
Commenting on @Maestro_Longaniza: "The G4 HP minis were the last generation to offer the physical jumper to reset the bios. G5 and on, have this new "security" feature. ... Now I always check the bios first. Use the "ESC" key to access the HP bios..." This comment is perhaps the most informative of all that I have read in this thread, but can you please clarify the last part about "checking the BIOS" first. Does that you mean that you can access/change the HP BIOS admin password BEFORE attempting to make any hardware changes (which would otherwise lock you out)? Or is this video implying that used post-G4 HP minis are effectively bricks (if they can't be upgraded, as intended)??? If that were true, I find it strange that this issue hasn't already been widely publicized before now -- given that there are so many second-hand units on the market. Maybe I'm missing something?
imagien dual 2.5G with one port being POE+ of course you'd be limited in clock speeds, but the higher core count processors are still pretty darn good at 12w
It sounds like you need to get with a copyright attorney and put some pressure on HP about your images.
Luckily I have a JD from the largest law school in California so I have several friends that practice in the space. But always try to resolve it outside of that process.
Copyright strike
Still with a 1 gig NIC built in . Ugh. Can't unlock the BIOS, hard nope-it's mine. I'm finding Minisforum and Beelink are making smaller mini PCs that show better performance for a much better price point-and 2.5 NIC standard. While I have several G6s and a G8 I'm not pursuing these any more.
We have been buying the 2.5GbE NICs for these for $20-25 on eBay and the 10Gbase-T Flex IO V2 NICs for $129.
you should DMCA-takedown the HP videos that stole your copyrighted work
13:50 I think HP is great fan of STH , that's why they are using STH's THUMNAIL....!!!😂🤣
You can test generic passwords like password and admin because the more recent hp desktops require setting a password for changing some settings. I know i've done it on many hp systems
There are also tools to generate master passwords from the system serial number however these systems may be too new to have one yet
I still prefer the Lenovo M920q and P320 tiny's as I run Intel X520 and Chelsio 10GB SFP+ cards in them with no funky issues, they work great as little XCP-ng hosts. Got mine for under $200 each and they are rock solid little servers.
Did you give HP a copyright strike?
This is enough cases it would have taken down their channel.
pretty sure HP Support is just an outsourced group somewhere in Asia. Big companies gonna do big company things.
Impressive that it can house a laptop GPU.
Personally, I picked up one of the Dell 7050 micro units sporting a 7700T (supposedly as good or better performance than the 8600T) for a $100. Can't wait for these newer generations to get even cheaper!
How utterly ridiculous and environmentally irresponsible to not be able to reset the BIOS password! :(
HP yet again proving why you should not buy from them.
HP used to be a great innovative company in the 1980's. They made lots of scientific and medical instruments, in addition to computers. The when Fiorina and others took over and acquired Compaq and Palm, it was all down hill. It became a marketing and distribution company, inventing nothing.
It became a campain support
Thanks for warning me to never buy anything that's come from HP. When you started this video I was thinking that this might be a nice system but by the end.....
I can’t believe Hewlett-Packard stole your image.
over the years I have never had an HP that didn't have a cooling issue.
If you really want to reset it, you could load the bios raw straight to the IC as if you bricked it with power loss during a flash.
Enterprise units with vpro are like that, even lenovo. The thing is if you buy this as a regular user, the vpro will be disabled. But if you buy it from an enterprise (or used on some marketplace), you'll have to deal with these type of problems.
No USB 2 is annoying for home automation. As 2.4GHz transmitters for various wireless protocols get interference from USB3.
bios passwords that can't be skirted around have been pretty standard across the whole industry for quite awhile now? why is this a surprise./ only being mentioned now? The days of pulling the cmos battery or shorting some pins to reset it haven't been a reality in biz PCs in 10+ years easily.
Much less than that. We looked at this in the EliteDesk 800 G3/G4 where there was the reset jumper. EliteDesk is the biz PC line for HP.
HP saw what Apple was doing and said, 'hold my beer'.
And, sue HP for copyright violations!
What a nice attitude, I would be really pissed is someone else used my materials, ESPECIALLY if it was bit Corp like HP.
Lenovo does the same thing. No way to recover/remove the bios password. I bought a second hand Lenovo laptop that had the same issue, low usage hours and locked bios with over 3 years onsite warranty.
Warranty transfered just fine. But I can't change the OS, or make any other system changes bios access.
I have stopped buying these new 1L pc's and I just use a ITX Erying i5 12500 board in a small generic case. No proprietary lock out, nothing weird, it just works hardware.
Stuff like the lockout makes me to just stick with small custom builds rather than mini-pc vendor form.
Absolutely hate HP and their draconian password thing. I am not sure I would ever purchase one just because of that.
Re: supervisor password, Lenovo has been doing the same thing with laptops for years now. Super annoying.
The future seems to be locked bootloaders anyway, the Win11 requirements certainly are an indication of that creeping in. Hmm, future? Maybe present - the computer you carry around all day in your pocket already does this.
Your experience with the impossibility of getting past the "security" of the HP policy regarding their systems, as well as HP's disregard for your copyright, is another validation of why I no longer buy any HP products. I'm retired now, but when I was working, my employer standardized on HP workstations and laptops. Some things were excellently supported, while others were dead ends that should have never left the design process. HP is not the company it once was, and that's a pity.
Yikes. Is there a computer company worth recommending anymore even? I wonder if HP is doing the same nonsense with their z series stuff. Makes wonder what would have happened if I had bought a second hand HP Z6 desktop like I was thinking about.
13:50 no way man today hp engineers are those milenials fools that don't know what they're doing. Thank you for the video as always awesome. PD: on the hp probook, elitebook laptop series they are doing the same thing on BIOS password and the only solution is to reload the BIOS (from unwelding the chip or using a chinesse cable thing like BIOS reader) and editing the BIOS file with an hex editor. Agree with you is such a e-waste.
usually removing the cmos battery from the board clears it together with the bios password
Thank you for sharing your key lessons learned. Based on thouse I'll never buy any HP device! You saved me a lot of headache, thank you!
Please send HP a copyright take down request and/or sue their arse off.
They figure they can make more money if people can't sell the old hardware. Alternatively they can also charge for the service like resetting it. Most likely there is a pin that one the bios can be set to ground will reset the password. or they have tool that plugs in and does it.They just don't want people to know about it or they won't make any money. Frankly, we need to start putting federal laws in place to prevent these behaviors that cause e-waste such as chrome books expiring and stuff like this. It is amazing the environmentalist and EPA having got all up in arms about it.
I've had exp with Gen 2 and 3 35W and for basic computing and really light gaming they are pretty nice, but while all but silent when idling the minute you add any load the fan cranks up and spoils it. You can buy a SFF Optiplex that is the equal and not have to put up with the fan noise and you can add a graphics card. I have come to think they are just too small to properly cool a desktop CPU. Saying that, if you have memory and etc already an early gen barebones is ridiculously cheap. The fan noise ruins the exp. That and the absurd fragile HDD ribbon cable in a PC that cost a lot when new.
I was looking to move on from my Lenovo Thinkcenter m700, and was really excited to about this new HP elite mini. I was intending to buy one with the optional Nvidia 3050, but there is conflicting information as to if it is an actual TI or Max-Q variant and what wattage is runs on. These all seem to run about $1500, instead I found a Lenovo p360 ultra i9 with 64gb ddr4 and A5000 for $1900. 2x the size but hugely increased performance for $400.
i5-8500T's are cheeeeeeap now, and a great middle ground.
Those have been my favorite for some time.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I got one (Elitedesk 800 G4) for use as a desktop computer. It is way powerful enough for me. I had to fight the bios (not locked) around the "secure boot" and "trusted computing" stuff to get Debian GNU/Linux on it, but I won in the end.
@@andrewwigglesworth3030 me too, and the struggle was more intense due to my dual boot setup
Honestly, the 12900T would be a great little micro server, but i really want the full package, either Ryzen 7 7740G(basically 7840HS with ~90w max power draw instead of 55w), or the rumored -14th- 15th gen Intel with something like 128-192Xe EUs supposedly with the same or better features than ARC.
But imagine if AMD included a Xilinx Alveo co-processor FPGA for that amazing hardware encoding. Wouldnt need to be very big, just 1-4 streams, but having that on the CPU would be a game changer.
In all my testing, no hardware encoder, not even the Apple M2, comes close to CPU encoding, with some codec combinations being so bad on hardware, that CPU offers the same quality at 1/6th the file size
I dont have an Alveo yet, but i plan to get one as i pivoted from satellite TV, to recording local TV in ~2015, sure we were lucky enough to get wired internet let 2020, but i've been so frustrated with streaming servies that i basically only have HBO now because i'm tired of chasing shows around, and shows randomly being canceled.
If AMD made a $700 single chip ALVEO, or a cut down single chip that does like 1-2 streams for $300, i'd be all over that, because it would let me cut my recording server from a 7950X, down to a 12100 and under full load would probably draw under 30w, instead of ~230w, allowing my UPS to run for several hours without power, and in theory, long enough to run overnight until the sun comes up and starts trickle charging
HP replaced (11) HP ProBook G7 laptop BIOS chips here in AZ, with a 3rd party engineering firm / repair outfit out of New Mexico; this was due to a bios update brick issue which was reproduced on their end. No cost to us. You can solder on a aftermarket or overstock BIOS chip matching your post 2017 HP product. It’s like apple with no right to repair or at least without a major headache. 😂
I guess if worst comes to worst you could manually flash the bios. It requires specialized equipment but not too terribly difficult.
specialised equipment being a raspberry pi and a chip clip? ;p
If you an locate the ROM chip where the UEFI is located, you could flash directly to the chip and blow away the admin password in one go.
Assuming that worked, then what is the point of not having the jumper from a hardware security perspective?
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Because security by obscurity I guess. It’s _much_ easier to reset the jumper, but they remove that option making it feel more secure. But BIOS overwrite should do the same thing just requires some special tools that not many have - a clip and a chip programmer.
@@DygearFlashing was also done on the “titan ridge TB3” card allowing a old Mac 5,1 to run TB3: its amazing
Just realized.... Why dont desktops come with sfp28 or w.e. on them?! I know technically more cost, but like thats i feature id pay for
It is a LOT more cost. More than the CPU, memory, and RAM in this system combined.
You'd think there would at least be solder joints somewhere that you could short out IN PLACE OF the missing jumpers. Thats how it was done back in the 80's - 90's before jumpers started being implemented mainstream. I bet with trial and error you could find a spot to short out that wipes the BIOS settings, as it makes no sense that there wouldn't at least be unmarked solder joints for shorting in HP labs/development.
Agreed
The lack of support is the reason I no longer purchase HP for any of my clients... It's a shame because they make decent hardware.... These days I'm almost exclusively a Dell shop (MSP)
You might consider updating the title to something that indicates HP’s bad behavior because if I just saw the video title or didn’t watch to the end your current title makes it sound like you are raving about this model and w/o any of the downsides. What do you think?
That is the "Unreal" part. It is unreal that we ran into those issues.
@@ServeTheHomeVideoand that is the ‘unreal’ part.. ‘unreal’ can also be taken in a POSITIVE way, eg “great” “super” “good”…
‘It is UNREAL that SpaceX has launched and landed a booster 16 times!’
Funny, this is our machine we work with in my job…😅
hi patrick, i have got a question that probably only you can answer, regarding the Lenovo Tiny VI Vertical Stand , I saw it in 1 of your video before!
I just wonder can the HP mini and Dell micro fit into it perfectly?
Not really perfectly.
5:30 I'm surprised the heatsink is aluminium instead of copper fins... I could swear it was copper on the 35 W models in previous generations ?
I think it was in the 65W ones just based on a quick look through the archives.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo thanks !
so in the end what are we saying... if I buy one of units used , which I want to do, I may be stuck with hp security issues while trying to upgrade. are they trying to kill the used market for these pc's ??
Probably the black market. Unfortunately, most admins with large groups to get rid of are usually lazy.
I have an HP laptop, and honestly, a part of me wants it to break so I can return it, get the money back, and get a laptop from a better brand (hopefully Framework) instead.