HP bricks ProBook laptops with bad BIOS delivered via automatic updates — many users face black screen after Windows pushes new firmware
On May 26, a user on HP's support forums reported that a forced, automatic BIOS update had bricked their HP ProBook 455 G7 into an unusable state. Subsequently, other users have joined the thread to sound off about experiencing the same issue.
This common knowledge regarding BIOS software would, then, seem to make automatic, forced BIOS updates a real issue, even if it weren't breaking anything. Allowing the user to manually install and prepare their systems for a BIOS update is key to preventing issues like this.
At the time of writing, HP has made no official comment on the matter — and since this battery update was forced on laptops originally released in 2020, this issue has also bricked hardware outside of the warranty window, when previously users could simply send in the laptop for a free repair.
Overall, this isn't a very good look for HP, particularly its BIOS update practices. The fragility of BIOS software should have tipped off the powers at be at HP about the lack of foresight in this release model, and now we're seeing it in full force with forced, bugged BIOS updates that kill laptops.
The idea of forced automatic BIOS update is dumb. BIOS only should initialize its required components and fuck off afterwards.
seems like it should be an opt-in setting in BIOS;
There is no BIOS anymore. It's all UEFI, which is massively fatter and more complex. Being fat and complex, they have plenty of security vulnerabilities that need to be patched.
I am not all that big on conspiracies, but this is HP, which is famous for screwing people over for as much money as possible and bricking perfectly usable technology, so if it turns out this was intentional, I won't even be a little shocked.
As the enshittification of everything gains momentum, I could also see this as an intentional "oops!"
But we are talking about HP. They are now and always have been completely incompetent PC makers. I had friends back in the early 2000s with broken HP desktop computers that I refused to work on because they were the hardest to get working again.
I'd go Hanlon's Razor on this, because I've seen some stunning stupidity. It's not all evil when some of it is just plain dumb, because of incomplete testing and oversight, because they cut costs to save money, so the CEO gets a bonus, and ohhhhhhhh I see it now.
It's evil.
I wish we could get a dump of executive emails.
I remember warning labels on BIOS updates that basically said that if nothing is broken, don't do the update because the risk of bricking the device did not outweigh any potential benefits. That vendors are now pushing mandatory BIOS updates through Windows Update is terrifying.
When I heard that BIOS updates were going out automatically via Windows update I had just assumed the devices in question must be using an A/B update scheme to prevent the risk of accidentally bricking the system, because obviously they should.
Absolutely insane that's not the case.
Why can even touch bios from system? That sound like horrible attack vector. If can infect bios, no reformat or reinstall will remove virus.
You're not touching BIOS from the system. The software just downloads a cryptographically singed binary and reboots into BIOS. Then BIOS checks if the file is ok and proceeds to flash itself.
attack vetor if the person has physical access to your device, or the bios connect to the internet, at that point fuck it
No meant like if can infect system, could touch bios and infect, so make virus stay forever.
Which sound horrible.
Also Intel ME can connect to internet and is below BIOS. Agree, fuck it.
They really, really, should be doing A/B systems. Or just have an absolutely minimum loader that can load from EPROM/flash or USB so when the system storage gets messed up, you can still launch the updater from USB. That bios loader doesn't need to know more than how to talk to storage and shovel bytes to the CPU, maybe blink a LED, it's simple enough to be able to be actual ROM, never needing to be updated.
Wait, no: SD cards can talk SPI... it's not going to be fast but it's only a few megs anyway. The EPROM or Flash you're using probably speaks SPI, already. You could literally make a system which can load the BIOS from SD card for the cost of a card cage and maybe a jumper. You could have gigabytes of bios storage for three bucks by using off the shelf cheap SD cards, forget A/B storage you could do the whole bloody alphabet and people could replace the thing easily.
Here's some extra fun: there's a decent chance that you only need a cable with JST or DuPont connectors. I've seen a fair number of laptop motherboards with unused SPI headers/connectors just hanging out. My understanding being that they're for possible accessories or, literally for flashing/debugging the bios.
Are we sure it is the BIOS? Perhaps these people have run out of magenta subpixels or their printer ink subscription has lapsed.
Heh. Same HP. Though? I forget which company got what in the divorce. I think this one is the "code built by revolving-door sweatshops and who has budget to validate it" and not the "standing over the corpse of Print and hoping lock-in will keep customers" one. The two sides may sound the same but I'm sure there are differences.
(Keeping score at home? A drunk sailor with a fist full of hundies still can't buy anything off that horrendous website, so some things haven't changed in the divorce)
No one should buy HP products anymore. Seriously everything they make is terrible and then they break it more when they get bored of you and want you to buy another one.
Thing is, all the other major manufacturers are just as bad or worse.
As a PC technician, HP still somehow has the best service and support, which speaks volumes about how bad everyone else is. Dell's support tools are a generation behind HP's, and Lenovo's build quality is atrocious. Not to mention Lenovo's technician support is so badly fragmented and poorly run, they default to having the customer send the device in for repair and avoid sending an on-site technician just so they can avoid dealing with technician support. Speaking from personal experience, getting to the right person when I have a problem or need to order additional parts is like pulling teeth, and even if I manage to reach someone, they're usually equal parts incompetent and unhelpful.
And Apple doesn't even want to service their stuff.
These days, you have to pick your poison.
How do these things not have unbrickable A/B firmware partitions by now? Even I have that on a $2 microcontroller. Self-test doesn't pass after an update? Instant automatic rollback to the previous working partition.
It's pretty ridiculous not to have a way of recovering from a failed update.
On my desktop, I just have to plug a flash drive with the BIOS image into a specific USB port and press a button on the motherboard. It doesn't matter if the BIOS is broken and it doesn't even require a CPU or RAM to be installed.
HP notebooks can do that too though
Gigabyte?
do they even use 'dualbios' anymore? all i've seen lately is 'q flash' (for updating bios without a cpu or video present) on their boards.
It's an Asrock board.
Hate to be that guy, but I bet someone somewhere did the math of how much extra profit they can get from people having their device bricked and just getting a new one vs how many of them actually do the warranty claim
My motherboard legit does this. Though it's probably more so it's an industrial one with like 8 SATA ports than anything else.
Plenty of motherboards do that and plenty of laptops. It's just HP sucks big time, not only their printers. Fuck HP.
This is a classical example of user error.
They made the easily preventable mistake of buying HP.
PEBCAHP
Problem between keyboard and wallet
using windows*
fwupd under Linux also pushes firmware updates, if you let it.
yeah, it couldn't help with company stupidity
I hope HP aren't surprised when they get accosted with bricked laptops through their execs' windshields at random intervals...
If i knew of any execs near where i live they would be getting a front row seat to my reenactment of the Office Space printer scene.
It's rare for me to viscerally hate someone just for existing, but if i met an HP exec I would have to exert quite a bit of self control to not beat them until I lost feeling in my hands
Microsoft exec as well
After the first 4 words of the title I was assuming it was intentional - Glad it doesn't seem to be, but HP's reputation is just that bad.
HP expanding their bad practices from printers to PCs now?
Microsoft should also be to blame here. Sending BIOS updates via automatic windows updates should not be a thing.
The alternative is that BIOS updates simply never get applied.
Which is better than bricking a machine
Not sure when the sentiment changed, but it used to be heavily recommended against updating the bios on any computer unless there was a specific feature or fix your computer needed.
Sentiment changed when the "BIOS" became a component for enforcing security architecture via "SecureBoot" and also Bitlocker sealed to PCRs only does so much if the BIOS code is vulnerable. Now they really badly want a "trusted" chain from some root of trust until the OS bootloader takes over. Problem is that the developers have historically enjoyed being in a trusted, single user context for decades and so the firmware has been full of holes when actually pushed.
That's a better alternative...
Ugh. Microsoft really trying to advertise for Linux again
on these laptops you can update bios from bios, just needs to be connected via ethernet
But that's not automatic or forced. Linux would never automatically update a BIOS.
Updates for my laptop show up in the 'update' view of Discover. I currently manually decide whether to proceed, but the 'click to update all' I suspect is close enough for most people to be fully automatic, and perhaps even is fully automated for some people.
Is it even possible to update BIOS on Linux? AFAIK, the installers are either for Windows or directly through the BIOS itself.
I think its highly manufacturer dependent but I install BIOS updates from Ubuntu on all my Dells.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Flashing_BIOS_from_Linux
yes, but the manufacturer need to support, thinkpads update bios fine under linux for example, usinf fwupd
Right, but so few do that. In general, updating BIOS through Linux isn't really a thing.
HP did the damage.
My wife's Elitebook was also bricked by the most recent forced BIOS update.
Why anyone buys HP shit these days is beyond me. So many better options.
I have a no HP policy because of their printers and a no Samsung policy because of their TVs.
I also have a no Samsung policy, because of their refrigerators.
I work at in a place that has 1000s of these piece of shit probooks. There is so much marketing about environmentalism yet these laptops are e-waste after 4 years if they even last that long. No one repairs any thing.
I tried to disable the atom cores on the £2000 laptop recently.
It took me about 10 mins not finding it in the BIOS, to discover that HP just doesn't have an option for it.
What are your suggestions? The only reasonable choice I've found is the Framework. I'd prefer if I had more than a single choice.
I don't buy enough laptops to answer that. My last purchase was an Asus which I'm happy with, but after their recent scandal with scamming customers on warranties I don't think I'll be buying from them again. But HP has such a terrible track record with laptops, printers, and just the way they operate in general for consumer stuff, that I would never consider purchasing consumer devices from them.
If a Linux distro pushed bad HP firmware, people would be blaming the Linux distro. Why does Microsoft get a free pass?
I think it's HP that pushed the update though. So I'm guessing that it's their driver that they broke not windows in general.
It's not really Microsoft's fault, they're just delivering what HP releases via the firmware update channel.
I mean, Microsoft are a bag of dicks, but not on this one.
Some Linux distros probably did push the bad HP firmware. Vendors push updates via fwupd.
They don't get the blame, but they definitely will earn a conspiracy charge. They didn't commit the crime but they drove the van.
HP laptops are garbage. This is the hinge of my HP X360 laptop after 6 months of occasional use: https://i.imgur.com/LhZWBIt.jpg
Damn that laptop is unhinged
They're very inconsistent. I've had an x360 since 2020 and, aside from the hinge being weak, it's still going. I'm also pretty careless with my equipment. My wife uses it now.
But then, I've seen more than one like yours that has seemed to evaporate like a cheap t-shirt.
HP has known the hinges are defective since they introduced them. There are so many people having problems a class action suit was filed about it.
Hp means Hinge problem as every single one of their laptops have some problem with their hinges
I have an HP 530 from 2007, and its hinges are fine. I upgraded it to 2 GB of RAM (I have core2duo model) and installed Linux Mint. I use it at work to open the corporate web portal and watch youtube, which is only possible with a modern web browser.
Check the torq of the hinge screws. They tend to come loose over time and can rock a little. This can cause the plastic to break that holds the female standoffs that it attaches too.
They don’t play well with Linux. Occasionally my HP laptop will turn back on SecureBoot with no warning. There’s also like a full minute of delay between opening the thing and keyboard strokes registering. (Iirc, HP is so Linux hostile it’s not really supported by Arch)
Must depend on the model. I've been running Mint on that (repaired) X360 for years without significant problems outside crappy Realtek wireless module issues.
Mine will start immediately after shutting down. I have never found a solution other than holding the power button
That problem has every consumer laptop. Lenovos Ideapads and Thinkbooks do the same. As well as the Asus, Acer, etc notebooks from the cheaper end.
I do those hinge repairs from time to time for customers and its rarely a thinkpad, elitebooks, probook, etc.
If it's not a touchscreen, it's fairly easy to repair. Still shouldn't have broke in the first place, but it's just the back panel cover.
I've repaired hundreds of laptops across multiple vendors on all kinds of damage, fwiw.
Touchscreens are also easy to repair, they just have two more wires in the ribbon, that's all.
Depends on the model. Some are more involved than others.
Yeah, agree. But it doesn't have to be that way. Some companies are just lazy, sadly.
There's been a few models I've tried repairing in the field, and it would have required a likely damaging of the end of the WiFi antenna wires (at the very least). Some will have this effectively thick copper tape that's soldered onto the end of the WiFi wires, and the glue is very aggressive.
And again, some you can peel off without too much trouble, but some not as easily. Granted the vast majority of my repairs were onsite at the customers home/business.
At a business we had an hp laptop for 6 months before it bricked. We sent in for warranty, they sent it back saying we broke it in a noncovered way
It was a workstation on a table top that never had any food etc near us. Even with appeals they will not fix it. My IT guy is now aware we do not do business with them.
This happened to me on my daughters Lenovo. Got a windows update overnight. Updated while traveling in the car. Wouldn't boot. Apparently the BIOS updated and there was no fix. Had to send gor a replacement under warranty. Sent it off, took 8 weeks to get it back. Wasn't even the same serial number, just a replacement with no sdd.
Microsoft has no business forcing firmware updates on anything. This is something HP should have handled. Those laptops are THEIR products, not Microsoft's.
If a bad update is rolled out then it's the responsibility of the software maker partner (HP) and the distributor (Microsoft), not just one or the other.
Both Microsoft and HP have branding on their laptops and a responsibility post-sale for the reliability of their systems. Hardware, firmware and OS responsibilities are all party to this chain of failure.
Microsoft: All your PC are belong to us.
What you say!!?
Move, Zig!
"Hit the road Jack"
This logic breaks down when you realize the laptop is mine, and not HP's or Windows. And any software that is mine, my copy of windows should also be mine and not microsoft's, can modify my device if I have selected some of my software to do that.
Well, you might want to avoid
fwupdtoo thenFwupd is a pull model, not a pushed automatic update. Who the fuck doesn’t read release notes and do due diligence before running fwupd?
Every fucking Ubuntu user where it's installed by default in Software Center?
Fedora pulls fwupd by default. If you use one of the 'check for updates' UIs, fwupd, dnf, and flatpak sources are all polled.
On the offhand chance that someone with a bricked HP laptop stumbles here looking for what to do (prob via smartphone or public library computer),
I'm assuming the users might be coming from Windows
hopefully this helps someone out there
To expand: said M.2 SSD contains all of your data, and can be plugged into another computer to recover it, put it on a USB drive or upload it to an online drive. A local PC repair shop is going to be unable to make the PC work again at present, but they can help you with extracting the SDD and your data for less than $100.
I'd strongly recommend against that at this point since it will be useless without your Bitlocker key form the laptop's TPM.
Since probably 99% of Windows PCs don't run Bitlocker, I think your recommendation is a bit overblown.
Even if it isn't "bitlocker" branded, most Windows PCs ship with "BitLocker" enabled. The distinction between Windows Home disk encryption and "BitLocker" is that BitLocker additionally allows external management of the key material, while Home only supports the TPM and your microsoft account for the key/recovery codes.
No, they simply do not. Microsoft branded hardware, sure. But I've never seen a Dell or an HP with Bitlocker enabled from the factory, and at this point I've put my hands on thousands of them.
I can tell you every factory preload of windows on a Lenovo I have seen for the past few years has disk encryption on by default (windows home, so not "bitlocker", but it's the same thing with respect to being tied to TPM.
When did you last check the statistic you just pulled from your ass? Bitlocker is on by default on all machines that support it, which is all pc's and laptops being sold the past few years.
The only exception used to be when you bypass oobe to create a local user account, which also isn't supported anymore.
Part of my job description includes repairing PCs. I see quite a lot of them over the course of a month. I also set up lots of new PCs for people when they buy them. All I see Bitlocker enabled on by default are Surface devices and the occasional Lenovo laptop/tablet hybrid POS. So I pulled that statistic from my own personal observations.
yeeesh is this with Windows 10 and/or 11?still not a fan of Windows
edit:
just remembered this is Windows 11, unfortunately I know some people that got forced to use it with most modern laptops
Assuming BitLocker wasnt enabled and if so you backed up your key. Otherwise your data is gone.
we've had clients have their dell systems bricked from bios updates. it's not just hp.
at least dell (reluctantly) offered free repairs, even out of warranty, on those models at the time. 'repair' being motherboard swap plus shipping both ways if not covered by an onsite warranty plan.
i still have one of those 'repaired' systems here. user gave it to us years after it got fixed. it just sat, unused, once they got it back as they bought a new one due to the lengthy turnaround they were quoted.
I had Windows push a bios update on my HP omen desktop. It completed the update but wouldn't get back up after restart. The fans went crazy for a moment and then it was dead. Luckily I had warranty left. They replaced processor and motherboard. Good job HP/Microsoft.
HP is the one responsible here, Windows is just the delivery service HP uses to deliver their updates.
I’m all for hating on Microsoft, but you don’t blame the UPS driver for delivering a bomb to your house.
I swear when it comes to forced updates of any kind it seems like this kind of outcome is always inevitable. There will at some point always be a bad update.
HP:
Just one extra free bit of advertising for Linux.
What does a motherboard BIOS have to do with Windows other than that was how the update was delivered? I swear Lemmy loves to shoehorn Linux into any article that even mentions Windows.
So what does this have to do with Windows and Linux other than the fact that Linux wouldn't have a mandatory unskippable update?
If they were running Linux the HP update utility would not be running.
This is interesting. Not a lawyer, but I'd encourage anyone in Australia to demand a free repair under Australian Consumer Law because the company bricked the laptop. I'd guess it would fall under the Acceptable Quality consumer guarantee, since the fault was caused directly by the manufacturer.
Not sure how you'd go about proving that, but you could then just take it to your state tribunal, like VCAt in Victoria and file a small claim.
Not a lawyer, not legal advice, but something to think about if you're in this situation.
Since when does Windows Update touch the BIOS? How is that even possible?
Windows update fetches all sorts of things now. If the hardware advertises X device then Windows update will check if it has anything for it. Approved vendors can provide all sorts of guff. Historically that has included drivers that intentionally brick your devices. HP probably packaged up some software that updates the BIOS and got it into the Windows Update DBs.
About halfway through windows 10 iirc
Jeez, I am currently trying to install Linux on my HP ProBook and having issues with it - one thing I noticed was my bios was last updated in 2014 so I was going to see if updating helped... Might hold off on that now
i rarely victim-blame, but if you're buying HP anything, then yea...
At one point they didn’t suck so much, but everything has been infected with enshittification
I will NOT buy a Texas calculator.
Is it just for ProBooks?....I think something similar is plaguing my Pavilion Gaming as well.
Presumably any model using the same motherboard/chip set, running that OS, I would think. Not my area of expertise.
Thanks for Update HP But I use Linux :)
And presumably not an HP motherboard, so this doesn't really apply to you.
? I have HP probook 6570b
Anyway, they break it, they fix or replace it.
There's even laws in some countries about computer sabotage. Germany for one.
My experience when I worked in support for a device manufacturer is that if you get high enough in the support tree and can demonstrate that this effects you (and the support person will also have a matrix of affected devices) you'll still get a repair/replacement outside of warranty for them bricking your computer with a bad update.
We had a specific instance where a specific budget model of phone sold by Boost mobile would brick after a specific update for people who had subsidy unlocked it and taken it to a GSM carrier such as T-Mobile (this was shortly pre-merger) or AT&T. This update rolled out about 2.5 years after this devices release, so most customers were ~12 months outside of warranty. Since the scope of affected devices was so narrow our directions from the top was to replace affected devices regardless of warranty status, and the replacement would come with a standard 30 day replacement warranty
So in short, I would expect HP to repair/replace affected devices that bricked after this BIOS update regardless of warranty status, but I would expect some amount of hassle in terms of reaching a specific support department before you get assistance and standard refusal of service for customer induced physical damage (smashed screen, smashed ports, mashed potatoes in the ports, badly bent, etc.)
I read this as talking about BadBIOS at first - did that ever turn out to be real, or was it just paranoia?
firmware updates that come through windows update are from your PC's manufacturer.
I've heard that some antivirus programs, such as comodo, can sometimes cause that to happen after certain windows updates.
This is why you need to delay your windows updates with the group policy editor....Or policy plus if you don't have windows pro
"qa ? Never heard of that"
The article doesn’t say/clarify. Was it some crap HP software that performs driver updates, and it decided to force a bios flash? Or was it windows update itself?
If it was windows itself, holy crap, that’s a serious over reach on Microsoft’s part. Like “this is insanity windows needs to be removed” bad.
Years ago Windows used to not provide drivers. This lead to many users never downloading drivers for their devices. Users ran their devices for years without trackpad, Wifi and GPU drivers etc. The drivers were also scattered all over the internet.
These days vendors can supply Windows with drivers and even Bios updates.
It is very unlikely Microsoft pushed these drivers out themselves. HP likely provided the Bios update..
The irony here is that if you've an HP laptop you'll still need to download certain drivers from HP to get things to work at 100%, for instance you may get all the hardware working after running windows update but your special brightness or wtv keys won't work unless you go into HP's website and download a thing.
It was most likely HP, through Windows Update (which handles device-specific driver etc. updates that OEMs are in control of). Microsoft doesn't concern itself with pushing BIOS updates to some random 4-year old HP model
User error, should've got an EliteBook instead of that cheaper thing. :P
What would be the solution? Re-solder some chip from the motherboard?
What the hell. How are automatic bios updates a thing. That seems like a horrible idea for multople different reasons.
I thought UEFI had replaced BIOS a number of years ago. Or are we just keeping the name BIOS because everyone knows it?
The latter. It has been BIOS for so long that it is ubiquitous now.
If you don't use HP and you don't use windows you won't have the problem. You should be boycotting HP as a part of BDS anyway. https://bdsmovement.net/boycott-hp
"But I already bought an HP." If you had adopted BDS much earlier like you should have you wouldn't have these problems.
I wish HP made good products so I could not buy it to boycott them. But I already don't buy their crap.
This is Hilary Clinton's fault.
Nah, somehow it's Ronald Reagan's fault.