Elite 8200 SFF Hangs on Reboot

[mdklassen]

> It'll reboot maybe 3 out of 5 times. The other times it still hangs. 

See: www.memtest.org

to create a bootable CD that will extensively test your RAM.

You don't actually need to test the RAM.

But, disconnect the SSD, and set the BIOS to boot from CD, and insert the CD.

Reboot 5 times, and see if MEMTEST86 boots (within a few seconds) 100% of the time.

MEMTEST86 can instantly be aborted, each time.

[js0873]

Just a quick update. As far as I can tell clearing the CMOS for the one machine that still wasn't booting fine every time has worked. All appears good now. Thanks again.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

That is great news.

Glad to have been of assistance.

[FredJordao]

Dear Paul, I thank you a lot your feedback on this page, cause your feedback prevented me from wasting money on RAM!!, lot's of it.

So facts:

I have an HP 8200 tower with a core i7, 20 gb ddr3 ram, 3x4 ggb 1 x 8gb, ssd 240gb "windows 10" and a 500 gb 7200 rpm hard drive

I'm on a second motherboard cause i was careless and stupid and destroyed a bios, when i was updating it, so i bought another one for replacement on ebay!

"When the pc was updating the bios i had the stupid idea to change the hour on the system and it frooze, after that the board was dead with beeps after beeps"

This motherboard came with the 2.26 bios, and when i put all together, ssd, hd the 20 gb and the core i7 the board first booted, but after the fist boot it started behaving erraticaly, when i took some ram sticks it worked, so i though, well maybe some ram sticks are bad!

I tried countless combinations and was already a bit despaired and going to buy some ram, and i though to come and have a look on the web about possible bios problems

I read about that device on the bios 

"In any event, since you can't revert to an older BIOS version once 2.29 is installed, the workaround to stop the hanging restart in W10, is to hide the TPM device."

I put a stick a 4 gb for the system to boot, it did, and went to the bios to disable it, and magic! the ram was all recognized as before, but now the system booted and did everything as expected, so i went on a forth to windows 10 to recognize the 4 sticks and the 20 gb of ddr3 wich it did and now reboots and shutdowns with no issues!

Thank you a lot for your feedback, you spared me a lot of money, headaches and some cursing! And no, i will not update the bios on this one, i'm traumatized.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi, @FredJordao

Glad this discussion was of help to you.

I wish someone would let us know if the new BIOS that HP released (v2.32) fixed that slow restart issue caused by v.2.29 (which has now been removed from the 8200 Elite support page).

I am too afraid to update mine from v2.28.  It works fine right now, so I don't want to mess it up.

[link470]

Hey everyone,

Thanks very much to everyone who's posted so far.  I've been following this thread (which I can no longer reply to, I signed up too late and the thread must be locked or it's become too old something because my account can't see a reply option), and then I found this thread and realized the reply button was available.  I'm not active on HP's forums, but I am a sysadmin in my day job, and I have a number of HP Compaq 8200 Elite SFF machines, including one sitting here with System BIOS J01 v02.32 (latest).  So I thought I'd shed some light on what I've discovered to help give back to the information I've learned from this thread.

TL;DR: BIOS 2.32 works with TPM enabled and Spectre protection.  Skip to the bottom for conclusion.

The Problem

Like many of you, I want to deploy Windows 10 on these.  But the problem with the long restart time and BIOS 2.29 meant that if we want decent restart times, we're stuck choosing between one of the following:

•Use BIOS 2.31 or higher to be protected against the Spectre vulnerability, but sacrifice Bitlocker by disabling the TPM

-or-

•Use BIOS 2.28 and have Bitlocker, but stay vulnerable to the Spectre vulnerability

As I'm sure we've all realized, these options both suck.

Test Hardware Specs

I'm testing an HP Compaq 8200 Elite SFF PC, with the following configuration:

•Intel i5-2400 3.1GHz

•4GB RAM (2x2GB sticks)

•Onboard video (VGA port is occupied, DisplayPort is empty)

•Either a 160GB 7200RPM HDD, or a 250GB SSD on SATA 1

•Optical drive on SATA 2

•Windows 10 v1803 64-Bit in all tests

My BIOS Settings

Here's my BIOS options on BIOS version 2.32 (only the ones I changed from default):

•Storage -> Storage Options -> Max eSATA Speed -> [3.0 Gbps]

•Security -> Device Security -> Everything showing Device Available, including Embedded Security Device

•Security -> Network Boot -> [Disabled]

•Advanced -> Power-On Options -> Option ROM Prompt -> [Disabled]

•Advanced -> Device Options -> NIC Option ROM Download -> [Disabled]

•Advanced -> AMT Configuration -> AMT -> [Disabled]

A couple notes:

-I'm not using AMT, so that's safe for me to disable

-I'm not PXE booting these machines besides the initial imaging, so there's no reason to leave this enabled

Observations

Windows 10 in Audit Mode installed via Legacy Boot/MBR on a HDD

I first tried to build a Windows 10 image directly on one of the machines by installing Windows 10 on an HDD and booting to Audit Mode (non-systems admins can ignore Audit Mode, it's not important for this).  When I installed Windows 10, I had installed via Legacy booting a flash drive with the Windows 10 volume licensing media on it, which meant I was using MBR on the hard drive.  I also disabled Legacy Boot Options in the BIOS and attempted to boot to confirm that I was in fact using Legacy Boot, and sure enough, the machine didn't boot, confirming Legacy Boot Options were required.

Once I was at the desktop after installation, I went ahead and restarted, and sure enough, with the above BIOS configurations, the machine hung when restarting.  Shut downs, as expected, were normal and quick, as was starting back up.

After disabling the TPM (BIOS: Security -> Device Security -> Embedded Security Device -> [Device Hidden]), restarts were quick, as has been observed.  Changing the TPM back to Device Available made the PC restart slow again.

Windows 10 installed via EFI Boot/GPT on a SSD

Next, I tried popping a solid state drive into the machine and installing Windows using EFI on a GPT partitioned drive.  With all of the same BIOS settings above, the machine restarts no problem.  It's quick.  TPM is enabled, and Windows Device Manager sees it.  I disabled Legacy booting in the BIOS just to double check that I was in fact booting from EFI, and I could still boot after disabling every Legacy Boot Option, and every EFI boot option except Windows Boot Manager.  This appears to be the optimal setup on BIOS 2.32; using EFI booting with a GPT partitioned drive.

Windows 10 installed via EFI Boot/GPT on a HDD

To eliminate the fact that SSD's were somehow required for a machine with BIOS version 2.32 to restart quickly with TPM enabled, I did the same installation as above, but on a HDD; partitioning the hard drive with GPT, and installing Windows 10 with EFI booting.  This worked.  I was able to leave TPM enabled, and reboot the machine all I wanted, and it restarted correctly every time.  I then verified I was using only EFI by disabling all boot options except EFI > Windows Boot Manager, and the system still restarted quick.

Interesting Note:

I installed the Windows 10 image I had via a flash drive that itself, was actually MBR configured.  I had legacy booted into Windows PE from the flash drive, configured the internal hard drive with a GPT partition and FAT32 system partition for EFI, and deployed the Windows 10 .wim image, and when I restarted the system afterwards, the computer still took a long time to restart, even though I was just exiting my Windows PE environment on the flash drive, confirming that the problem appears to be restarting out of a Legacy Booted environment, regardless of if you were booted via an internal drive, or a removable/flash drive.

Fixing The Problem For Existing Installations

I now know what to do for my deployments and have scripts to automate the process of creating the partitions and deploying the image. But for those of you who just want to update to BIOS 2.32 to get protection against the Spectre vulnerability while still using TPM, and may not have that knowledge, you'll need to do one of the following:

•Follow a guide like this one to change your existing Windows 10 installation from MBR to GPT, and start using UEFI booting

•Reinstall the latest version of Windows 10 using GPT and UEFI from the beginning and start fresh by following a guide like this one

Conclusion

•BIOS 2.32 can be used with TPM enabled, and fast restart times

•EFI booting with a GPT partitioned hard drive seems to be the working scenario with TPM, with MBR/Legacy Booting causing the restart delay with TPM enabled

•HDD vs SSD doesn't matter

•Audit Mode vs Normal doesn't matter

•Fast Boot in Windows doesn't matter; it can be on or off

[BumblesD]

Just signed up to say many thanks to Link470 for carrying out the investigation and giving a detailed write-up.

I'd already updated my 8200 to v02.32 without knowing of the delayed re-boot issue and had given up on a fix after reading the various posts regarding it.  Following Link470's first solution to fix the problem I converted my drive from MBR to GPT, after a couple of reboots it now has no delay when re-booting.

I'm not sure why but the first re-boot just seemed to hang at a 'prompt' (not that i could do/enter anything there) so I rebooted again and went into the BIOS to check settings, saved and exited (even though I'd not changed anything) and it booted into Windows.  Out of curiosity I re-booted again and went into the BIOS where I noticed that there was a new entry in the EFI Boot Sources called 'Windows Boot Manager'  (see picture below).  It may indicate something and help others.

This thread and solution needs to be linked to the other threads if they're not closed and added to a FAQ if there is one.

[SamboNZ]

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@Paul_Tikkanen wrote:

I wish someone would let us know if the new BIOS that HP released (v2.32) fixed that slow restart issue caused by v.2.29 (which has now been removed from the 8200 Elite support page).

Your wish has been granted... sort of... 🙂

Today I updated a 8300 Elite (very similar to the 8200 and having an identical issue) to BIOS v3.08 dated 26 April 2019 and I can confirm that with Windows 10 1909 (legacy SATA & MBR install) and the 'Embedded Security Device' set to 'Available', reboots are fast and the delayed reboot issue is resolved.

The latest 8200 Elite BIOS is v2.33 Rev.A, dated May 1, 2019, so while not the same version number, I'd say it's pretty likely that the same fix is in this version too.  Of course, that's just an educated guess..