Windows 11 25H2 on HP Z400 and TPM upgrade

[listastudio]

I was able to install Windows 11 23H2 using Rufus patches to bypass TPM and BIOS limitations and upgrading RAM to 12 or 24GB in my HP Z400 workstations.

Later upgrade to Windows 11 24H2 performed corretly at first, but after switching off and restarting my eight HP Z400 workstations soon or later all seats were jumping to a black screen of death, such as, not ending the rebooting even with latest bios 3.61.

I discovered that the use of OS installed in HD or SSD directly connected to the motherboard was the limitation.

By using only SSD connected to additional SAS/SATA RAID SAS controller LSI SAS2008+, instead to the motherbord's controller, I was able to solve the issue.

Actually. all my eight Z400 workstations, also upgraded to Xeon W5690 processor, run Win 11 Pro 25H2.

I truly hope next build 26H1 will still be working this way, but I am afraid the the TPM limitation can become an issue.

Any hope to upgrade the TPM from 1.2 to upper level on HP Z400?

[SDH]

That is an excellent tip. Do you have any added info on the firmware or OEM type on that LSI SAS2008+ add-in card? That should work on all 3 of the ZX00 main workstations. Remember that there are a version 1 and a version 2 for each of those and that you'd only want the version 2 ones.

For others who don't know that generation of workstations well... they only provide SATA II technology at the motherboard, with interface max speed of 3.0 Gbit/s. There are no SATA III (6.0 GBit/s) ports on the motherboards. There are also no PCIe Gen3 slots on the motherboard... only Gen 1 or Gen2. The most capable PCIe slots to place that x8 card is the lower PCIe x16 one (#4), or the upper x8 slot (#1). Both of those provide PCIe Gen2 bandwidth (but slot #1 only has x4 true electrical lanes despite being x8 mechanical). I believe the card if placed in the lower PCIe x16 slot will then provide full SATA III bandwidth to one or two SATA III SSDs for best user experience:

Regarding your question on changing the TPM version in the ZX00 generation of workstations... No go on that. The Infineon chip soldered onto your motherboard is the same as that also used on the ZX20 next generation of HP workstations. It is not like that on the next ZX40 generation of workstations. Yours cannot be firmware updated. The ZX40's Infineon chip is different... it is an EEPROM chip that can be flashed back and forth from/to TPM 1.2 or TPM 2.0.

[DGroves]

regarding a TPM 2.0 upgrade for the Zx20/Zx00 systems,

in practical terms no they are not able to get TPM 2.0

HP Zx20 and the earlier Zx00 workstations use a infineon SLB 9635 chip soldered directly onto the motherboard for TPM 1.2,   this chip is not TPM 2.0 compatible and is no longer in production. it uses a  I2C interface for programing

https://www.digikey.com/htmldatasheets/production/71176/0/0/1/slb9635-tt-1-2-product-brief.html

it was superseded/replaced by the SLB 9660/9665 which is pin compatible with the SLB 9635 and this chip is TPM 1.2/2.0 compatible

so it might be possible to use the 9660/9665  a replacement TPM chip on the Zx20/Zx00 workstations as it has the same pinout as the discontinued tpm chip

so in theory it's possible to replace the TPM 9635 chip on your motherboard with the 9665

https://www.infineon.com/assets/row/public/documents/30/49/infineon-data-sheet-slb9660-1.2-rev1.2-ds...

https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/infineon-technologies/SLB9665TT20FW563XUMA3/9922573

the downside?..............installing/upgrading the TMP firmware on the chip is questionable the HP TPM updater may or may not work if you do this conversion

in regard's to upgrading the onboard SATA, i've been mentioning users install a adaptec ASR-6805 SAS/SATA pci-e card (with the optional cach/batt module) in the Zx00/Zx20 lines of workstations for several years this card has all of the abilities of the LSI 2008 mustang based cards but unlike the LSI 2008 the 6805 supports SAS/SATA with cache and a onboard XOR cpu for vastly faster transfer speeds and useable RAID 5/10 modes

[listastudio]

I deeply appreciate Your comments and advises!

All my eight Z400 are second generation capable of 24GB Ram and running bios 3.61.

I was so unhappy of not beeing able to upgrade from Win 11 23H2 (installed with Rufus bupasses)  to upper releases, jumping to a black screen at reboot, that I made a try with the first workstation buying the cheapest SAS2008+ card and a Xeon W5690 processor for a total of 60$ investment one of the cheapest Ebay sellers from Asia and it worked out!

So I made the same for all other seven workstations and only one had a problem, which turned out to be caused by a defective Xeon W5690, immediately substituted by the Ebay reseller.

So actually all these eight Z400 run Win11 Pro 25H2 with latest builds, 24GB Ram, OS on SSD at 6.0 GBit/s, other HDs also connected to SAS2008+ and only the original DVD writer connected to  SATA II on motherboard. Surprisingly, also two old 5,25 floppy drivers in these Z400 are recognized by Win11 25H2 as drive A on two of the workstations, so that I have the capability of reading some very old floppies of the time together.

Tomorrow I will chech the versions of the SAS2008+ and will provide more details.

[listastudio]

MPT LSI Corp. bios 7.07.01.00 (2010.09.16) and MPT2 Avago bios 7.39.02.00 (2015.08.03), both works.

[listastudio]

Great advices, I appreciate Your help!

[SDH · Accepted solution]

Listastudio,

I've been doing some work on the ZX00 workstations upgrades to W11 25H2 and remembered that you might benefit from this copy/paste from another post... use of the LSI cards to bring SATA III bandwidth to the ZX00 workstations through a PCIe Gen2 slot does not change the need to understand how to set Rufus 11 up correctly to create the Rufus boot drive:

I've been asked by some forum members on use of Rufus with the Z400/ Z600/ Z800 workstations. I'd assume that all of us know that these workstations are not and never will be UEFI-capable.

Thus, you can't select the UEFI settings when you run Rufus to create a thumb drive appropriate for the ZX00 family. You must choose "MBR" for Partition Scheme, and "BIOS (or UEFI-CSM)" as your Target System settings.

As a result, I have two W11 25H2 8GB thumb drives... one for the more recent EFI/UEFI capable HP workstations, and the another for the earlier non-EFI/non-UEFI capable workstations (ZX00 and earlier).

The ZX20 and later HP workstations get the GPT/UEFI Rufus treatment as do the Elite/Pro 8300 and beyond HP business class PCs. Anything earlier gets MBR/BIOS (legacy) Rufus treatment.