HP z240 boot from CD or USB

[Simon_Weel]

We bought three new z240 workstations. On one of them, I configured Windows 10 and all applications. Then created an image and now I want to deploy that image to the other two pc's. So I slip in the USB boot-stick, turn on the machine, press F9 for the boot menu and then... the boot menu doesn't show the USB drive. Right, since the boot menu does have an entry to boot from CD,  I put in a bootable CD and do the same thing. From the boot menu, I select the CD drive and press enter. The cd takes a spin and then... I'm back in the BIOS Start menu. I choose the option to change BIOS settings and change the boot settings to 'Enabled legacy boot and Disable secure boot'. Restart the machine, press F9 etc. but it simply won't boot from CD. I end up in the Startup menu every time, no matter what BIOS settings I try.

It's a brand new machine with BIOS 1.60. I do have a batch of older z240's with BIOS 1.58 and they have no problem booting from either USB or CD.

Any clue what's going on here?

Simon

[iMaxx]

Need to check how the USB and CD was created.

If the WIn10 machine is on UEFI only mode (No legacy mode) they will not work unles properly formatted.

USB keys formated for UEFI will be Fat32 and not NTFS.

Compare the BIOS' of the new and old systems.

[Simon_Weel]

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@iMaxx wrote:

USB keys formated for UEFI will be Fat32 and not NTFS.

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OK, that was one of the problems. As it turned out, it didn't work on the older machines as well. The BIOS settings are a bit ambiguous. In section 'Secure Boot Configuration' you can set 'Legacy support enable and Secure boot disable'. Under 'Boot options', there are two sections called 'Legacy boot options' and 'UEFI boot options'. Both are greyed out but checked. Both display the media usable for booting. I was under the impression those settings would be enought to boot from legacy media. But it's not.

To boot from legacy media, a rather cumbersome method is needed to configure things, see https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/BIOS-Refuses-to-En...

So I created a UEFI  USB drive using Rufus: https://rufus.akeo.ie/?locale=en_US and that worked fine. I haven't been able to create a UFEI-bootable CD although.

Anyway, I think HP has some work to do on the BIOS and / or documentation on this point?

Simon

[iMaxx]

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@Simon_Weel wrote:

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@iMaxx wrote:

USB keys formated for UEFI will be Fat32 and not NTFS.

---

OK, that was one of the problems. As it turned out, it didn't work on the older machines as well. The BIOS settings are a bit ambiguous. In section 'Secure Boot Configuration' you can set 'Legacy support enable and Secure boot disable'. Under 'Boot options', there are two sections called 'Legacy boot options' and 'UEFI boot options'. Both are greyed out but checked. Both display the media usable for booting. I was under the impression those settings would be enought to boot from legacy media. But it's not.

To boot from legacy media, a rather cumbersome method is needed to configure things, see https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/BIOS-Refuses-to-En...

So I created a UEFI  USB drive using Rufus: https://rufus.akeo.ie/?locale=en_US and that worked fine. I haven't been able to create a UFEI-bootable CD although.

Anyway, I think HP has some work to do on the BIOS and / or documentation on this point?

Simon

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Its more of an OS change and the BIOS having to change to adapt (As well as hardware.). UEFI mode is all about security but I will bring this up to R&D.

Going forward, you always want to use UEFI mode with Secureboot. Time to let legacy go. 🙂

For optical drives, it all depends on the contents that are being put on it. It needs an EFI boot loader in \efi\boot folder. So, you can mount a Windows 10 ISO, insert and blank DVD and, quite literally, copy the contents of the WIn10 ISO to the DVD.