How can I bring a Z-Drive G2 runing in a Z-420 ?

[MtothaJ]

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@Alphavil wrote:

Wow thanks for that great HowTo 🙂

I prepared the Rom.bin  but now I have the problem to flash the bios with it 😞

I tried 3 differend USB Sticks (USB 2.0 / FAT32) but nothing works ....

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I am assuming that after adding the NVMe module to the bios it fails the HP bios signature verification and the bios will not flash using the standard HP method.

IMHO there are two real options if you cannot get the drive to work as is:

1) Get a 950 Pro

2) Socket the bios and burn the modified bios with an external flash programmer

As for the cost of option 2), the socket is c.a. 10 USD on ALiexpress, the programmer is 5 USD, new blank bios chips are 1 USD / piece, add to that the cost of desoldering / soldering (would not recomend to do this yourself unless you have the skills and equipement).  This option has the additional advantages in that you are free to experiment with the bios (potential to unlock all bios menus, power management unlock (mainly turbo multipliers / duration), boot block modification for v2 Ivy Bridge CPU's if you have the old 2011 boot block date etc.).

[Alphavil]

Hi had the wrong ffs-file

no I successfully flashed the bios:

But .... still no way to start Win 10. I try again a fresh installation :catindifferent:

I checked the partion's:

[MtothaJ]

I can really only write in relation to experiences with the 950 Pro - having checked my bios with Win 10 installed I can see WIndows Boot Manager in 'Storage' --> 'Boot order' under 'UEFI sources / devices'.

Can you see Windows Boot Manager in your bios?

[MtothaJ]

One additional comment which may be crucial - after you changed the settings to EFI, be sure to enable 'Legacy Support' in Secure boot configuration (secure boot is set to off).

I have found that this defaluts to disabled / off when the EFI settings are toggled and it is required for the system to boot of the 950 Pro drive.

[Alphavil]

Sorry for my late response, but I was ill at home 😞

So I checked and Legacy Support is Enabled and Secure Boot Disabled.

Still no change to run the Z-Drive 😞

By the way I see that after bios sequence (more than before):

[Brian1965]

Hi Alphavil,

Just out of curiosity, if you change your video BIOS from EFI to Legacy, does the computer behave the same at boot?

[Alphavil]

Hi Brian,

if I change the video BIOS from EFI to Legacy there come's : "No disc drive found" 😞

[Brian1965]

The main reason I queried your video BIOS setting is because my Z620/Quadro K4200 computer won't boot with the video BIOS set to EFI. When I initally did the fresh UEFI install on my Z620 with my Samsung SM951 (AHCI)/ASUS PCIe card fitted (with PXE, Mass Storage and Video set to EFI), I got the same blinking black cursor of doom. As soon as I switched the video BIOS setting to Legacy, the UEFI Windows 7 installation started and ran normally. If I switch my video BIOS to EFI now, my computer hangs when the Windows logo appears. It won't even boot in Safe Mode. Switching the video BIOS back to Legacy puts everything back to normal (working).

As I don't have any experience with NVMe drives I would recommend you read this thread;

http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/NVMe-PCIe-SSD-boot-...

In particular, see Scarr500 comments down the page.

[MtothaJ]

I have found this workaround, which may supposedly allow to boot from NVMe drivers on older systems:

https://audiocricket.com/2016/12/31/booting-samsung-sm961-on-asus-p6t-se-mainboard/

HAven't tested this myslef but if all else is not working it may be worth trying.