Need to downgrade bios

[tomstar]

Hi CherylG

When I run the inspectre program with the new bios installed it shows this:

When I disable spectre protection, (and this only shows a YES because of the new bios), it shows this:

It provides an analysis of what it has done that you can scroll though. it  says spectre protection has been deliberately disabled through system settings improving computer performance but making the computer vulnerable to spectre.

It also states, even it the system's hardware has been updated to deal with spectre through bios/processor updates, the computers system settings will need to be changed to enable it full protection.

I definitely see performance improvements in any case. It's not subtle.

[tomstar]

I think I see what you are saying now. Its an interaction since the tool does not directly affect the bios but only the software part of the spectre fix.  Anyway it does seem to help.  Not sure if I'll keep it disabled. Maybe I'll just live with performance hits until I can find a better solution whether its through bios updates/downgrades or whatever.

I've read that microsoft is working on a fix that can do it all - including microcode for the bios, through a windows update since there are many machines that can't or won't update the bios and it is not an easy thing to do and they will need to be patched. 

Anyway, thanks again for all of your help.

[CherylG]

You're very welcome. Hope you find a permanent fix soon. From what I've read MS is aware their patches are having negative effect on performance for many machines. I assume this is a work in progress- pretty much like Windows 10 is. 🙂

[tomstar]

Thanks!  I created a thread at bleeping computer but so far no luck with suggestions.

[tomstar]

I tried something different. I tried to update it through firmware management in system diagnostics.

The instructions are somewhere but basically you go into the bios, and you note the system board ID. In my case it is 8014.

This number represents the bios bin file that will be used to update the bios.

So you create the usb recovery drive and then maybe just note where that bin file is: it is located in the bios folder/current folder. There are 5 bios files and 5 other files. So I noted that there is an 8014 file.

Okay so then shutdown computer. Put usb drive in, turn computer on, hit esc, hit f2 for system diabnostics, firmware management, update the bios/with specific image.

So then make the update bios from image choice, and it provides a drop down menu where I can access the usb recovery. I navigate to the 08014 bin file, it confirms it will install the F37 bios, and then it states unable to access the image file.

I also run into this message if I try to do rollbacks in the two common ways that are available.

So this would suggest it is locked right? It's like it is blocked from making the connection or reading/installing the file. I can reinstall the F38 bios no problem but nothing else works - no rollbacks or downgrades using various techniques.

[tomstar]

One other thing.. I noticed when I would try and downgrade the bios using the usb recovery drive in the normal way (win key + B  power etc) that when it would just sit there and nothing happened the caps lock light would flash in  a pattern - 2 pause,  2 pause consistently.

According to hp material on bios flash codes, this indicates bios corruption.

So then I just download F38 and reinstall it through the HP update utility that is part of it right through windows since it considers it an update as it is the latest bios. Basically just reinstalls it.

So the bios updates fine no errors or anything. So this should mean the bios is fine and not corrupt right? Since that is one of the fixes.. reinstall the bios.

If I try to do the recovery usb again it will show that two flash pattern. So then I reinstall the bios again to fix that if there really is some problem and it installs fine like I said.

My friends laptop behaves in the same way.

[tomstar]

Reading through a lot of downgrade bios threads, I saw one with an HP employee/Engineer and he said :

"Most BIOS's cannot be downgraded, especially if there was a serious security fix in one of them.

And downgrading the BIOS wouldn't help with GPU usage."

I assume that would apply to roll backs through uefi which is basically a downgrade to the previous bios?

Laptop seems a lilttle better if I disable hardware acceleration in the browsers  (FireFox lately is so stressful  on the CPU and Memory  with Quantum) and if I disable spectre protection in the inspectre tool it's pretty much normal so I guess I can work with that though I may just leave the protection enabled.

Thanks again for the help.

[CherylG]

Yes, the engineer's remark would apply to downgrade in any fashion. I actually think you were pretty fortunate to recover from that 2 flash pattern. Many people never see their laptop boot again after that-even with trying a BIOS recovery using Win key + B.

[tomstar]

Yeah it makes me wonder though was it really corrupted because it gave no indication in any way otherwise. No error message, no slow bootup/startup,  nothing.

It seems to me but of course I don't really know that it is the recovery usb that is corrupting it because any time I do it I will get this flash code as does a friends laptop. Either that or that is how it is acting with a bios that is locked and can't be downgraded? So it shows a corruption pattern. Is that possible?

I've reinstalled the latest bios 5 times after trying the usb and getting that flash code and it always goes smooth. The only reason i even bother doing that is because of that flash code which indicates corruption but I'm not seeing it in any way other than that flash code that always happens if I try the usb recovery.

Oh well. 

I think it would be great if along with the tools provided that information about the fact that many bios can't be downgraded was provided in a definitive way. Even if just in the bios material it could say something like this bios cannot be rolled back or downgraded. Because otherwise you don't what the problem is and you can really spend a lot of time on it.

Thanks again.

[tomstar]

My friend  has the same model laptop and the same bios (same behavior as I've described previously) and same version of the OS (the most up to date as of today)  and after looking at it closely I find it is running at least 10 degrees celcius warmer with nothing happening and  much cooler than that in certain instances. Our drivers and settings are the same.  I compressed aired my  fans vent. According to speedfan both of my fans are working. So  maybe its not the bios as far as heat goes?

His laptop is slighly slower at opening apps like mine since bios update but he doesn have the temperature issue. His at its coolest is around 30 degress celsius. Mine is never lower than 43 degree celcius and it  can get as high as 80 degrees celsius with some videos on. His laptop with same videos never gets much above 50 degrees celcius and is usually lower than that with same load and same processes. All of our browser settings and plugins and extensions are the same/same version.

Sfc and dism scan show no problems.

I'm going to do a clean install of Windows 10 just to eliminate something wrong with a driver or something.

If any improvement I'll post back.