HP Omen 17-an014ng

[fl12fl12fl1]

Subject: Inquiry: VT-d/IOMMU Support and Advanced BIOS Options on HP Omen 17-an014ng

Dear HP Support Team,

I am a long-time HP customer and have always appreciated the reliability of your laptops and printers. Recently, I encountered an issue with my HP Omen 17-an014ng that I have been unable to resolve, despite investing significant time and effort.

Background:
I am running a virtualization environment on this system and have successfully enabled “Virtualization Technology” (VT-x) in the BIOS. However, I require support for VT-d/IOMMU (VT-d (Intel) or AMD-Vi (AMD)) to enable proper PCI device passthrough—specifically for securely forwarding input devices (keyboard, mouse, USB, etc.) between virtual machines. In most systems, VT-d or IOMMU settings appear alongside VT-x in the BIOS, but on my Omen 17-an014ng, no such option is available.

What I have tried:

• Updated to the latest BIOS version available on the HP website (F.24 Rev.A, 2021)

• Searched thoroughly in the BIOS settings, including under all available menus

• Attempted common key combinations and advanced boot menu tricks to unlock hidden BIOS features (e.g., F9, F10, Shift+Tab, etc.)

Summary of my findings:

• There appears to be no option to enable VT-d/IOMMU in the BIOS.

• The Advanced tab is not present, as is often the case with HP’s consumer/gaming laptops.

• Without VT-d/IOMMU support, critical virtualization features—such as secure input device management and PCI passthrough—are not available, limiting the system’s usefulness for standard virtualization scenarios.

My questions:

• Can you please confirm whether VT-d/IOMMU support is available by default (even if not visible in BIOS) for the HP Omen 17-an014ng?

• Is there any supported or recommended method to access advanced BIOS options to enable VT-d/IOMMU?

• If not, is VT-d/IOMMU intentionally disabled or unsupported on this model?

• Is there any other way to force it on , upgrade the laptop, deploy any additonal piece of soft or hardware external or internal to enable it. 

Thank you for your assistance and clarification.

Kind regards,
Florian Schütte

[fl12fl12fl1 · Accepted solution]

What i forgot to mention:

- i tried in this week several OS if this use case is supported but it starts becoming  painful and time consuming. This use case literally works with all laptops i own besides this.

- in a last resort and to get clarity i tried to implement Qubes OS and dedicated manage input passthrough via udev rules and to enable convenient debugging via the architecture. 

On my HP Omen 17-an014ng, I attempted to follow Qubes OS best practices by creating a dedicated USB qube (usb-vault) and assigning the system’s USB controller to this qube, thereby isolating USB device access from dom0 for security. However PCI device passthrough did not function as expected:

• The USB controller appeared assigned to usb-vault, but USB devices (e.g., keyboard) were either not detected, or detected only within the USB qube, and not accessible in dom0 (admin vm) or other AppVMs. This logic follows all other devices which come along with USB - be a printer or any other. 

• My conclusion for now - without VT-d/IOMMU, hardware isolation of USB was not achievable, and device management via the USB qube was unstable or non-functional for any time of virtualization. Thus the functionality is incomplete to support the virtualization use case offered via Bios.