HP Elitedesk 800 G1 Greyed out bios

[Stormeren]

Hello,

I was stupid enough to disable the VGA function in my bios and ever since i havent been able to change that back to enabled.

it is stuck on disabled and greyed out, i have tried to use the newest bios and the oldest bios from hp's official website but that dont change anything, neither does it if i clear cmos.

i have another mobo but i was unable to read the bios off that board with my CH341A mini programmer for some reason ( that other motherboard is not functioning as most of the pins in the cpu socket was bent thanks to my cat.

Are there anyone smart enough to help me recover the bios from my doner board with my BIOS/EPROM programmer or that can send me a bios with the VGA function enabled ? or maybe even a tool that can read the bios from windows and let me change functions and then i can flash the bios or something ? i am getting desperate as i need the computer with the VGA card in it and it wont boot if the VGA card is installed ( its an MXM card and not a pxi-e )


Best regards
Stormeren

[Lost_N_BIOS]

You may need to use different software versions for your CH341A and that particular BIOS chip, or you may need to select non-exect or similar instead BIOS Chip ID (Sometimes exact does not work). That only matters once you have it all setup correctly, have you used it before and been able to get a verified and valid (Not all FF or 00) backup image>

Here's package of many versions of the software, and the main driver installer. If you give me your exact BIOS model/ID I can test for you if I have exact chip and see which software works best
https://www.sendspace.com/file/gtcmvd

As for the current situation, aside from getting backups etc. Can you check ME firmware version with HWInfo64, it will be on left side of large window
https://www.hwinfo.com/download/

HP 800 G2 has Surestart BIOS protection crap, no modified BIOS is allowed, any BIOS you put on even with programmer gets automatically re-written. Hopefully your G1 is not like that, if we end up having to do mod BIOS for you.

Which one is your exact system so I can check BIOS, I may be able to just help you boot to grub and un-gray the setting (Or change the default setting)
https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/sel...pc/5387475
https://support.hp.com/us-en/product/hp-...pc/5387466

Are you certain the MXM card is still in working order? If not, that may be why it's grayed out for you now

[Stormeren]

Hello,

thanks for the reply.

The Bios chip in question is named either:
Winbond 23 01BFVS0 1452
or
Winbond 25 01BFVS0 1452
( it is hard to read without my microscope )

Now after installing your software it does read the chip and shows the hex codes, also it shows this:


Please look at the pictures provided

https://imgur.com/a/VPnNoyH

i will now try and read and save the bios from the motherboard with the greyed out setting.
worse case scenario is if i will have to solder the chips off and swap them.
All i want is to be able to use the MXM GPU again, and yes i am sure that it works, it is brand new and only stopped working when i turned that VGA seting to disabled, it does work in another mxm computer.

EDIT:

this is the computer with serial C8N28AV:
https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers/sel...ku=C8N28AV

[Stormeren]

forgot to add the bios bin that i extracted with the software:

https://ufile.io/s2bio

[Lost_N_BIOS]

W25Q64BV or W25Q128BV, are you sure it's not one of those model names instead of what you mentioned? What you named does not look like correct model names, but close After W25Q is always chip size, 32, 64, 128 etc, then BV, or FV etc. Yes, I checked your images now, it's W25Q128FV

As mentioned, it's probably unlikely we can write mod BIOS to the board, without it auto recovering. You can test that theory by writing this back to the board with simple edit I can do for you with unlocking the FD as a test. But, above BIOS is not complete (truncated), not verified and invalid dump (1MB instead of 16MB)

Please dump again with different software version, and or choose BV instead of FV during chip ID selection (Try that with same version software you already used, and then all others too try FV and BV) Dump first has to be 16MB, then you need to make sure it's not all FF's or 00's, then we can check to be sure it's valid.

Aside from BIOS modification, you can fix this issue in this manner, by booting to grub and changing a variable value. See this guide, steps #6 onward, apply to your board instead of Asus, except your board wants "Shellx64.efi" instead of the name used in that guide, so rename file to that.
https://www.win-raid.com/t3908f16-GUIDE-...-BIOS.html

I checked this BIOS, integrated video is disabled by default in stock BIOS, what is the exact name of the setting you changed, then I can give you the variable to use with the above guide
* Edit - The only places VGA is used in a setting name is VGA Pallet snooping which is not what you changed, and Boot >> VGA Support auto or EFI. << Is that the one you changed, from EFI to Auto? If that is the one, then here is the variable you need to change using the above guide

One Of: VGA Support, VarStoreInfo (VarOffset/VarName): 0x2B
Default: DefaultId: 0x0, Value (8 bit): 0x1 {5B 0D 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00}
One Of Option: Auto, Value (8 bit): 0x0 {09 0E 06 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00}
One Of Option: EFI Driver, Value (8 bit): 0x1 (default MFG) {09 0E 68 0B 20 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00}

So you will enter at the grub prompt, only the following to see current setting value (I assume 0x0, since you changed it from default)
Setup_var 0x2B

To put back to default enter the following
Setup_var 0x2B 0x1