[REQUEST] HP t730 Thin Client Setup Password for BIOS appears stringent

[t730Joe]

Hello forum,

I'm new to system building and I'm learning everyday...

Here's the story: I bought a t730 Thin Client (without an OS) brand new still in the box, but from an eBay'r... I know... mistake #1.

I thought I did my homework and really checked to be sure the unit was new and in the unopened original packaging before purchasing. When I received it, sure enough it was still sealed in the original box. I opened it up and it all appeared new and un-disturbed. Everything was there. Plastic wrap, documentation, mouse, keyboard. Looks legit to me.
 
When I booted it up for the first time, immediately it launched into something called eLux (some kind of hardware-independent operating system for cloud computing environments). So that prompted me to try to access the BIOS to change the boot order to re-image the SSD to my liking. I rebooted it and pressed f10  to access the BIOS and bingo... there was an "Enter Setup Password" message. I checked all the documentation in the box and there was nothing. I thought this was odd, so I called HP. They walked me through a series of troubleshooting tips but nothing worked. Eventually they recommended I return it from where I bought it because they could not assist. I reached out to the eBay'r I purchased from and of course they will not accept the return... it's now an opened box. I'm at the end of my wits dealing with this thin client. This was supposed to be a simple build... not a massive headache!

My goal for the t730 was to build a pfSense router... but without BIOS access, I cannot update the bios to accept my 4 port NIC and make other changes like boot order, device config and password options.

I've tried the following (multiple times) according to HP's troubleshooting guide, Resetting the Setup and Power-on passwords by following the instructions of pages 49-50 of the troubleshooting manual (http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c05348283).

I've tried all the default passwords for AMI, HP, HP/Compaq... Still nothing....

 Specs:

AMI 2.17.1246
HP L43 v55.08 (00.01.12 Rev.A)

Can someone recommend a solution? Any insight you can provide is greatly appreciated.

Thanks for reading!

[tinfever]

I actually ran into the exact same thing. Something is weird about the BIOS version. I'm wondering if these units with the v55.08 BIOS were specifically manufactured and locked down for a big company. The motherboard in mine actually says "PIXAR-A" but that could be totally unrelated.

As far as getting the BIOS unlocked, you have a couple options:

1) If you unit is still under warranty (you might be surprised, my unit was), you can ship it to HP and they'll reset the BIOS for you. It sounds like HP used to give out little programs that would reset the BIOS password for a specific unit and serial number but they've since stopped that service. Thus, they'll ask you to ship them the entire unit.

2) Buy a CH341A chip programmer (Like $8 on eBay). Remove (my BIOS chip is socket-able...bizarrely enough) then dump the existing BIOS chip and save it somewhere for safe keeping. Then erase and write the latest v1.15 BIOS bin from HP's website. This is what I did since I didn't feel like paying $20 to ship the thing to HP and it also sounded like fun.

This works perfectly except it'll wipe out any machine specific BIOS information like the serial number, asset ID, model number, etc. I don't think this is a functional issue though. I think the only concern would be if you had to have warranty work done on the machine for some other reason and you ship it to HP, only for them to freak out due to the blank fields in the BIOS. I think it's more likely that whoever would actually be working on the machine in that case just doesn't care so I think this is a pretty far fetched scenario.

If I knew how to extract the encrypted password from the BIOS, I have enough GPU power to probably crack it but in the end, I really just wanted to get the thing working. I've tried doing some brief comparisons between the dumped bios v55.08 and the HP provided versions like v1.04, v1.05, and v1.15 but the v55.08 seems really different or something.

I attached my stock locked bios dump in case someone more experienced with BIOS modding is curious. I'd also be interested to see which bits are different from your locked bios if you're able to dump it. I can't remember if flashrom will read the BIOS on my unit but I know it definitely couldn't write it. I tried everything I could think of to "upgrade" the bios but nothing worked except for manually reprogramming the bios chip.

Edit: Also, if you don't really want to mess with the BIOS, you might be able to just work around the issue without needing to get into the BIOS. If you pull the 16GB SSD out (assuming yours is like mine), you can likely load a pfsense or opnsense image directly to it from another computer with an adapter. Then, theoretically you could just put the SSD back in and the unit should boot straight to it. I think I even got mine to boot from USB with the locked BIOS but I don't recall the details of what, if anything, were involved with doing that.

[MODCHIP]

Any documentation on how to write the attached BIOS to the chip, what software did you use?

thanks you.

[imunro]

I should have run a Google search before I bought my ebay HP T730. Fortunately, the information provided here was sufficient to overcome the BIOS setup password issue.

I initially tried following HP's instructions for resetting the setup password. The system could then boot from USB and I was able to install pfsense, but the BIOS setup password was still set, the PCI expansion slot remained disabled and pfsense was not usable.
 
So, I went with option 2 and picked up a CH341A chip programmer with SOIC8 clip on Ebay for $5 shipped first class post from the USA. I disassembled the T730 and removed the BIOS chip. I couldn't get any version of the CH341A program to correctly detect the BIOS chip (MX25L6473F), but ASProgrammer version 1.4.1 with 64-bit CH341A drivers worked right out of the gate.

As previously reported, all machine specific BIOS information like the serial number, asset ID, model number, etc are wiped. I have not experienced any issues as a consequence thus far.

Unfortunately, I didn't save a copy of the original BIOS until after attempting to reset the setup password, so there are significant differences versus your stock locked bios dump.

Thanks for posting and helping me out.