Unauthorized change to the secure boot keys & cannot upgrade bios

[Jernej_]

Hello,

recently I started seeing a warning each time I boot up my laptop saying that "HP Sure start detected an unathorized change to the Secure Boot keys." See

I am not sure what caused this I do recall doing a system upgrade on the OS (Ubuntu) not long before this started happening.

Since this warning persists, I figured I'd upgrade the bios. I've downloaded sp107399.exe  

Which seems to be the latest BIOS for this specifc laptop. I've put the respective .BIN file into the EFI folder so that the structure looks like this

HP/BIOS/New/N75_0149.bin
HP/BIOS/Previous/N75_0149.bin

Similarly, I've put the .bin files on a USB key with the same file structure as above. When restarting the OS I coulnd not get the update process to work. Specifically, the BIOS says it cannot find any bios upgrade files. See 

At this point I don't know what else to do. I've tried googling for this same problem and tested the suggested variants, but nothing seem to work. As a final note here is the system information page from the BIOS

Can someone help me upgrading the bios? Also, what could be causing this secure boot warning? Any ideas?

[tk_srq]

Jernej_:

If you can still get on BIOS, maybe you can reset BIOS to the factory setting. That's a lot safer than updating BIOS and the reset may fix your problem. I have a malfunctioning  HP Elitebook 840 G3 and trying to fix it. Yours is 840 G5 but probably the same BIOS as mine.  Go to BIOS then the main menu and scroll down to "Apply Factory Defaults and Exit."

[Jernej_]

Hey there,

the thing is that I haven't touched any of the BIOS settings prior to this warning. Therefore, I'd firs tlike to understand what caused this issue. Otherwise, I might be  ignoring a critical security warning. 

[WAWood]

@Jernej_ 

The screenshot mentions specific folders, so even though you have the .bin file, you probably need the others as well.

I would extract  all the files from the HP BIOS update file and put them into the folders indicated in the screenshot.  I don't know where each file goes, so you will probably have to experiment to get the organization that works.

[Jernej_]

@WaWood

Unfortunately this does not seem to work. Others have reported the exact same issue last year https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/Invalid-BIOS-image/td-p/712495...and also here https://github.com/eriksjolund/install-linux-hp-elitebook-850-g5/issues/2

Is there a way to figure out how  HPFirmwareUpdRec64.exe structures the files for this specific BIOS driver?

[tk_srq]

@Jernej_

A BIOS glitch can happen even without your involvement to get on BIOS and change its parameters.

BTW, the latest BIOS of  your Elitebook 840 G5 is NOT sp107399. That's for Elitebook 840 G3 and I downloaded it not too long ago for my 840 G3 machine. Per HP website the latest BIOS for you will be 01.12.00 (sp 107454).

[Jernej_]

Yes you are right, I didn't provide the proper link but I did in fact pick the executable that you mention (sp107454)