HP Z4G5 with installed TBT4-340L1AA boots twice

[blisterx1]

HP Z4G5 workstation with OS Win11 23H2. TBT4 HP 340L1AA is installed  and seems to work.
However each time the PC is switched on it boots twice. The power lamp first is on and after a while it goes off and a second later it goes on again and the OS starts. This behavior was not observed before the Thunderbolt 4 card has been installed.
Is this normal behavior?
Thanks for any helpful comments.
Best regards

Blisterx1   

[autoexec]

I have seen this behavior on a HP Z4 G5 with the TBT4 card. A work around was to leave the HP Z4 G5 connected to the UPS with the UPS powered on at all times. Good luck!

[SDH]

Not TB4 but possibly related to your experience...

Your first boot is a "cold boot" and the automatic reboot is a "warm boot" (technically a restart). In our case the critical medical imaging display calibration software we were needing to run after we upgraded from W7Pro64 to W10 (and now W11), would always work if it was launched after a restart but never would run (fail with error) if it was launched after a fresh cold boot. Those two are not the same, especially if "fast startup" is turned on. So, for a while we'd cold boot and then immediately restart, and then that software would launch properly. Turns out the better fix was to disable "fast startup" from the Power Options app in the W10/W11 Control Panel. I've posted about that here in the past and have shown exactly how to disable fast startup. Here's how on a laptop I happened to have handy but on workstations the navigation is the same:

I do this in all my builds...

Note that this is different from the "fast boot" option in BIOS. It is an OS preference setting instead, and different from hibernation. There are multiple ways to accomplish this, but my way lets you easily check the status via control panel, and that is what we use here.

This is the first thing I'd try, and please let us know what you find. Turns out "fast startup" is defaulted to enabled by MS in both W10 and W11, and is "recommended" in the Control Panel app, but if you search Google for info you'll find it is not well liked by many. We found it is not fast at all and caused us a world of hurt for a while. Once I figured this out and had our IT guys change that setting the problem went away, never came back, and that is what we've been doing for years now.

[blisterx1]

Hi,

thanks for your info. OS is always Win 11 Pro. MS-Fastboot is always switched off (Powercfg -h off)

First I would like to tell you that on a HP Z4G4 with TBT3-card installed and MS-Fastboot disabled a double boot when the workstation was switched on via the front start button was not observed. In this case it was also not relevant whether the power cord of the Z4G4 was switched off or switched on. In both cases a double boot was not observed.

However on a HP Z4G5 the situation is different.

1. Before installation of a TBT4-card and MS-Fastboot switched off no double boot was observed. Also when the powercord to the Z4G5 was switched off or switched on.

2. After installation of the TBT4-card the situation has changed. MS-Fastboot is always disabled.

A double boot is observed when the power cord of the Z4G5 was switched off and the Z4G5 was switched on via the front start button.

A double boot is not observed when the power cord to Z4G5 is switched on and the Z4G5 has been switched on via the front start button.

It seems that the TBT4-card is the problem with double boot. But a workaround exists (see above). However this is not normal behavior and probably a Bios-update could solve the problem.

Best regards

blisterx1

[blisterx1]

Hi,

thanks for the info.
I have already observed this  workaround .

Thanks and best regards

blisterx1

[Z440Roger]

No, its not a normal behaviour. There seems to be an issue with G5 machines with TB4 cards that needs to be fixed by HP.

I have the Z4 G5 with the TB4 card, the HP 340L1AA, and while i dont have the issues described here i have another issue that re-boots the computer. If i connect my G-RAID SHUTTLE 4 to the computer when it is on and booted, the computer re-boot every time. This does not happen with the same G-RAID SHUTTLE 4 connected to my Z4 G4 with the TB3 card installed. Latest BIOS, latest TB4 drivers. It happens on fresh instals of win 11 as well.

So while this will not help for your issue it´s yet another story of G5+TB4.

The workaround for this is to connect the G-RAID SHUTTLE 4 while the computer is shut off and than start the computer and pressing the power switch on the back of the G-RAID SHUTTLE 4.

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@blisterx1 wrote:

Is this normal behavior?