Trying to edit System Ids in Bios on HP 290 G1 SFF desktop PC

[bryyan]

Hello All, 

I killed the motherboard of my HP 290 G1 SFF desktop PC by spilling some soup on it while the case was open. Ugh! So I got a new motherboard from a Chinese vendor and it works great, however the system Ids are empty. Since my model is a business model I thought I would be able to edit the system IDs by going into the BIOS, typing the magical CTRL+A combo and I could type in all the missing data that is written on my case such as serial number, BID, Feature Byte, etc. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to work. So my questions are: 

1. Is the 290 G1 SFF really a business model or a consumer model?
2. If it is a business model, am I not supposed to be able to edit those system Ids by myself
3. If I am indeed able to do it by myself, how should I proceed?
4. and this is a slightly different question but is it possible to capture screenshot in HP Bioses and how

Thank you for your time

[DGroves · Accepted solution]

take care you may only have so many boots without entering in the necessary information some models will lock you out (brick) the motherboard other systems will not have a countdown number  and can be rebooted as many time as you like

1. your system is a  business model

2,. most of the needed information can be found on a label on the outside of your case or on a label on the motherboard or by HP "parts surfer" (see included youtube link)

3. the feature byte string gives people the most problems as it's case sensitive

4. if unsure of a entry skip/leave blank till sure as once it's entered/saved/locked it can no longer be edited by a end user

for the 290 G1 you may need the BCU tool or the "HP DMI Tools" software which is no longer available from HP

BCU Tool download:

https://ftp.ext.hp.com/pub/caps-softpaq/cmit/HP_BCU.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQJuJZNOuXg

[bryyan]

Thank you for coming back to me with a solution. Now I remember I was fairly ahead in the process but got stuck after typing 

C:\Program Files (x86)\HP\BCU>BiosConfigUtility64.exe /getconfig:bios.txt

to which I get the typical lines below:
<BIOSCONFIG Version="" Computername="VERSAILLES" Date="2025/11/13" Time="16:28:52" UTC="1">
<SUCCESS msg="No errors occurred" />
<Information msg="BCU return value" real="0" translated="0" />

But then when I open the bios.txt file, instead of getting just blank spaces as shown in the video at 5:05, I get (ReadOnly) everywhere as shown below: 

Manufacturer (ReadOnly)
HP
Product Name (ReadOnly)

SKU Number (ReadOnly)

Serial Number (ReadOnly)

Asset Tag (ReadOnly)

Why do I get that? CMD runs as admin. Now it also comes back to me that I performed a procedure  (I can't remember exactly what) that results in the computer booting with a notification that "the computer is in unlocked mode" or whatever (just before the Windows logo shows up). So that's where I'm at right now. 

Should I just ignore the (ReadOnly) and try to proceed with the step #2, setconfig:bios.txt. I got stuck there the last time because I'm afraid I might brick the motherboard.  I would really appreciate if you could tell me how I should proceed from here on. 

Thanks again.

[DGroves]

if you had looked at the BCU tool link i provided you would have seen the light blue "HP BCU User Guide" link that gives you directions on how to use the BCU

https://ftp.hp.com/pub/caps-softpaq/cmit/whitepapers/BIOS_Configuration_Utility_User_Guide.pdf

if the system says DMI unlocked that means settings can be written to the DMI,

looking at your bios.txt file the BCU has determined that it's currently in read only mode which means that the bios dmi settings can't be saved or the BCU does not support your model system and needs the DMI tools app specific to your model instead which is no longer available from HP if you can unlock the bios the changes could be saved, but as i said once locked the BCU app can't unlock it

you would need to change the Read only mode somehow to write enable

are you able to access the hidden HP advanced bios settings page?

1. Boot up your computer and then press the F8, F9, F10 or Del key to get in to BIOS. Then quickly press the A key to show the Advanced settings.
2. In the BIOS, press Fn+Tab for 3 times.

at this point your best course is to return the existing board and get a used one that has the DMI information already applied or look for a slightly newer used system on ebay

[bryyan]

I did it eventually. I was distraught by the fact I had all these "ReadOnly" fields at the top of the config file (like SKU number (ReadOnly), serial number (ReadOnly), Product name (ReadOnly) and I thought this won't do, but it turns out that further down the config file I had another occurrence of all these entries as well as BID and Feature Byte and they were not ReadOnly. So I followed the rest of the procedure as shown on the video and when I restarted I got a warning that "System Family" was missing from the DMI entries, which I had to acknowledge before the machine went on with the booting process. I noticed that the Windows logo was replaced by the HP logo. And when I restarted again and went into the BIOS to check whether the System Ids reflected the new values, they were indeed showing as expected. Now why would I have some entries/fields twice in the config file, once with ReadOnly and once as a blank space (and therefore writable) doesn't make sense at all to me, but it is what it is. 

Problem SOLVED by DGroves. Thank you for bearing with me. 

[DGroves]

thanks for the update, and the information about the duplicate entries in the bios.txt file other users may find this information to be useful