HP Elitebook 830 G3 Bios password

[dmiion]

I have an issue with BIOS password in Elitebook 840 G3 notebook.

Password is not recognized and I can't access bios.

Originally, when I deployed notebooks, I had set a password for BIOS access via HP password tool as a part of OS deployment. Password works in all notebooks that I had to check over time, so it's not a forgotten password issue.

I have contacted local HP Support and they sent me smc.bin along with instructions.

However, instructions do not match operation of the notebook.

I figured out how to use smc.bin to gain access to bios, but I cannot reset security settings as it does still ask for password there, and cannot change password either.

I have contacted HP support again, but there has been no reply in a week.

Anyone else encountered something similar, or knows how to reset bios password and what SMC should be doing?

[CF4]

Hi

HP have prepared rather lengthy documents,
and there are videos to watch, to cover, seemingly, all BIOS eventualities.

BIOS Problems LAPtops.
https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c02693833

BIOS CheckSum error
https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c01368145

[dmiion]

Hi

Thanks for the links, but as far as I can tell, BIOS and laptop itself works normally.

The issue is only with known BIOS password not being accepted. Whether that is due to deployment issue where something random got in place of password, bits got flipped in nvram, or someone had changed it at some point, I do not know.

With smc.bin I can access bios menus and all settings appear to be valid, but still password is asked when trying to reset it.

[dmiion · Accepted solution]

I figured it out.

SMC.BIN has BIOS Version requirement. I upgraded bios from 1.10 to 1.23 and then was able to reset bios security settings.

One would think that HP engineers and support would know that, but no, just radio silence if something doesn't work.