HP ZBOOK create S91 Firmware issue after update Win10/Win11

[r4b3]

H@all

after updating my "ZBOOK create G7 (1J3R8EA)" to Win11,

The Device-Manager display´s "HP S91 System Firmware" as not functional.

It tells me i have to restart the System to get the Firmware in place an active.

The Message is "0xC000009A" (insufficiant system ressources)

During a reboot after the HP Bios is displayed a short try to upgrade the firmware is shown,

but without success.

I tried to remove the device and reinstall etc. but nothing gets me a solution.

(Using the actual S91 / Bios package from the product related HP site)

[Jupitero · Accepted solution]

Hello.

Your laptop was originally shipped before Windows 11 was released, so if your BIOS version is very old it may be the reason for the error message in Device Manager.

Windows 11 can download and install BIOS updates to relatively recent HP laptop models via Windows Update. I think the update has not functioned properly which is why the laptop tries to work with updates on every boot.

If your laptop BIOS is password protected, the update can also fail. Try removing the password temporarily.

The HP BIOS update does not update the firmware inside Windows, instead it copies all the necessary firmware update packages to the EFI partition on your SSD and when the laptop notices them on boot, they are installed.

You could try clearing the pending updates from the EFI partition. The EFI partition is not visible but it can be mounted from Windows with the mountvol command: on an elevated (admin) command line running the command mountvol z: /S will show the EFI partition as a Z: drive.

In the Z:\EFI\HP folder you can delete the BIOSUpdate and BIOS (if also present) folders. Dismount the EFI partition with mountvol z: /D and reboot your computer to verify that no updates are pending after that.

Deleting or altering the EFI folder itself or any of the other folders under it (Microsoft, Boot) can break your Windows installation. Be careful!

After this operation please try again with the latest BIOS version 01.14.20 upgrade package. Please note that the BIOS update program has an option to create a bootable USB drive, which can also be used for the update if you continue to have problems for any reason.

[r4b3]

Thank you very much for this solution.

The behavior was a bit different then described but generally successful 😉

I´ve mounted the EFI partition and deleted the whole content from the folder "Z:\efi\hp\DEVFW".

I restarted the Device and after that, a BIOS update was processed.

(dont know from where the update was triggerd, it might be queued!?)

After the successfull BIOS Update, the Device was booting as normal and now the device Manager is clean.

But now are new files within the "Z:\efi\hp\DEVFW" folder.

So it might be a lack of resource issue as described in the error message.

After removing the old files manually, it was possible to bring the new ones in 😉

Thx & Best Regards

Klaus

[Jupitero]

Hello.

Glad you got it working!

The reason for this failure is typically too small EFI partition. HP factory installs Windows with a 300MB EFI partition which is adequate for BIOS updates and also the HP UEFI Diagnostics which is installed there. If you reinstall Windows from scratch, the EFI partition defaults to 100MB and can get filled up.

While the EFI partition is just a simple FAT32 partition, it is placed between partitions and it cannot be extended after Windows is installed. (in any easy manner, that is)