HP 450 G9 Error DMA Protection

[techbbh]

When you say re-installed do you mean that you did a fresh install of windows?

[JWV6]

I did a reinstall of Windows on a couple of ours since that is what HP recommended, but the error came back two weeks later.

[curleys]

I just want to do a quick re-cap so people don't have to back read so much and to stop some of the confusion.

For me, i have 440 G9's, one client, school, about 350 autopilot configured from factory to user entra yadda yadda and about 3000 student machines, on prem AD joined, used with AD accounts. 70/30 on the win 11/win 10 breakdown.

all of them, or practically all, some I think never get rotated in on the student side, have this bug, every 90mins-2hours randomly crashed to some form of DMA memory validation error or attempt to access memory yadda yadda.

Newest bios updates as of february 25 does not fix anything. reinstalling via intune or fresh thumb drive changes nothing, issue comes back within a day or so of use.

changing the dma settings in the bios has so far (3 weeks in) been the only thing to stop the crashing.

I turn off these settings:

under Security -> under bios sure start -> turn off "virtualization based BIOS protection"

then under advanced -> turn off 1 "Virtualization technology" 2 "Virtualization technology for directed I/O" and 3 "DMA protection"

reboot

if using bitlocker you'll have to type your bitlocker key to get back to windows, at least once.

This is where I'm at with my ~4000 angry machines.

Thanks HP? would be nice if you'd even acknowledge the issue.

School is deciding between money to mobilize IT to address all machines or money to replace fleet with Non-HP.

[AlexTV1989]

Exactly, I completely formatted my PC. I deleted everything 🙂

[pthompson66]

If you have Bitlocker on your drives, the only thing I would recommend prior to changing the BIOS settings is to disable Bitlocker FIRST on the machine then go into the BIOS to make the changes. You shouldn't be prompted for a Bitlocker key if you do this first and it should save you a lot of time. 

[GandalfDaGrey]

After speaking with HP support twice, I found a couple of things. They confirmed that the Realtek RTL8852BE WiFi 6 802.11ax PCIe Adapter (Version 6001.15.155.1, released on 10/25/2024) is causing the DMA issue. Rolling back to Version 6001.15.152.0 prevents the blue screen. I have verified this fix on at least 10+ HP 450 G9 machines running Windows 10 22H2.

Here’s what HP provided in an email, which I forwarded to the C-suite:

"The data shows that the system is bug-checking due to a direct memory access violation occurring in the Realtek WiFi driver, rtwlane601.sys. I see that the driver is dated October 2024. I checked other reports and noticed a spike in this issue occurring after that driver date."

That was a couple of weeks ago.

Today, when I called HP for an update on whether there will be a driver fix from HP or Realtek, they couldn’t provide any details on whether Realtek will address the issue. However, they did inform me that HP will release a BIOS update with a SoftPaq to resolve the issue in the near future.

I hope this helps others. I can’t do much for 250 G10s, as I don’t have any in my environment, but it's possible the WiFi driver is the same. I can also confirm that 450 G10s running Windows 10 and 11 are not affected at all.