adding FeatureByte Information to the BIOS.

[Skylarking]

I am not support.

I am just a user that thought i could help another user having a problem.

However your posts were a little short and confusing to read (and mine are too long so no one is perfect).

But it sounds like you solved your problem. 

Cheers.).

[ToolBag]

I have just had this problem, I had to replace the system board on a Ellite Desk 800 G2 SFF. I have found the solution, when you press Ctrl + a to update the feature byte there will be a black box on the left hand side of where you type. Press back space to clear it, then type in the Feature Byte from the bottom of the base unit. No more error when you press enter.

[LongtimeHPtech]

The post makes no sense @ all.

contradicting yourself repeatedly.

The txt on the featurebyte lable is unreadable..

can someone tell me which characters are upper / lowercase?

Challenges figureing out "u,x,k,s,w,u" 

SOOOOO FRUSTRATING

thanks.

[Skylarking]

@LongtimeHPtech, yes, it is frustrating since the font chosen by HP is rather poor and difficult to read.

But it's not clear which post you're confused by or whether the whole thread confuses you :?

In any case, if you have the original motherboard and Windows OS and it boots, simply type the following in a command prompt and it will list the featurebyte and buildid for you: "wmic computersystem get oemstringarray"

The output will hopefully be more readable but you can always append "> c:\fb.txt" to the above command which will pipe the output into a file. Then you can view the file within notepad and even change the font if it's still hard to read.

But i can only guess your original motherboard does not boot and you have replaced it with another motherboard since you have said little in your post.

As i;ve already mentioned, if the motherboard is new, it should have a blank featurebyte field and you will be able to enter a string and have it accepted. Only a reboot (and ctrl-a) will you see that the updated featurebyte has actually been saved. However changing an existing featurebyte from a used motherboard is not possible, even though it seems like it's accepted in BIOS. In such cases, a reboot (and ctrl-a) will always show you the old featurebyte.

So the question is what have you actually done (replaced with new or refurbished motherboard?) and why (original motherboard wont boot?). More importantly, what are you wanting to do (reinstall the HP image or MS clean install?). We don't know any of this which makes it difficult to advise you...

So not clearly stating what sequence has transpired to this data and then jumping the gun and blaming others forum users is not good etiquette.

But one question other than the above background, is what featurebyte have you actually tried already and what esponce were you getting?

Does 2U3E 3X47 5K67 6J6S 6b7B 7H7M 7Q7T 7W7a 7map aqb3 bmdu f5.ef work?

As mentioned in my earlier post, if you look at inside your system recovery disks for "options map" and "DMI.ini" files (using 7-zip) it can tell you much. For example 47=Vos.B is associated with featurebyte 47 and presumably means the OS version is "Basic", while 6b=ATF_HAL.64 and presumably means 64 bit OS and 67=ATF_OS.7 presumably means Windows 7. This indicates a restore will result in Windows 7 Basic 64bit being installed. Spending a little time and looking at this information with thee files may help you work out what the correct structure is... Oh and the whole featurebyte string is protected by a checksum which in your case is ef so you can't change a few bytes and get some install you didn't pay for 🙂 It's all part of HP's secret sauce...

[LongtimeHPtech]

Thank you for your prompt reply.

I am in a corporate environment and responsible for hardware troubleshooting / resolution and must say it was a very poor choice on HP on choosing this font.

For my particular challenge.. the system board needed to be replaced.. so could not go into the o/s and use the WMIC command ( very useful command ) .

I have tried the ALL CAPS iteration and it failed.

I will eventually get  the correct combination.. but it is time consuming.. time I barely have when everything in my environment needs done yesterday.

frustrated.

[Skylarking]

If you're in a corporate environment, likely you'd be using a corporate OS image and NOT the HP recovery discs. So, in such a case, you don't need to set the featurebyte within BIOS as this information is only used by the HP System Recovery disc. Simply install your corporate image, acivate and consider it done and dusted 🙂

But if you are using the HP system recovery discs, then ring HP and get them to resolve this issue since it is caused by their poor font choice. That is, have HP specify the correct featurebyte for your specific system (so you can enter it yourself) OR if the system is still under warranty get a HP tech to come out and resolve the problem for you OR if outside warranty push them to take responsability for their 'not fit for purpose' font choice / recovery methods.

But again, if the replacement bourd is not a new HP board, a featurebyte may already be specified and you can't change it. In such a case, go back to the seller and get them to resolve the issue if indeed you were sold a new board!

Oh, and keep in mind that the HP System recovery disc needs the featurebyte to install but Windows itself also needs a SLIC (license certificate) within BIOS NVRAM and a matching ".xrm-ms" file on the HDD itself to complete the OS self activation. So, if your board does not have a SLIC entry within BIOS NVRAM (assume it's factory built that way and can't be changed, for example a system ordered with DOS/LINUX) then the HP recovered Windows OS will not self activate. So as you can see, it's multi-faceted but all this gets side stepped (and you loose the HP boatware) if you use a corporate image 🙂

And as a last note, as for trying the ALL CAPS iteration, did you actually try the featurebyte i specified in my previous post (which also includes lower case letters)? How did it fail? Did it initially accept the string and upon reboot didn't show what you previously entered (but the old featurebyte) or did it specify checksum fault when entering the data in BIOS?

[edited]

previously is specified the featurebyte should be:

2U3E 3X47 5K67 6J6S 6b7B 7H7M 7Q7T 7W7a 7map aqb3 bmdu f5.ef

but likely the last 'u' should actually be a "U" so also try

2U3E 3X47 5K67 6J6S 6b7B 7H7M 7Q7T 7W7a 7map aqb3 bmdU f5.ef

(assuming you care once you realise it's not relevant with coprorate OS images)