"FBI Debug Mode" Box Upon Recovery

[MaxImpact]

My HP 1500 notebook makes some type of wireless connection everytime its powered on,even with the wireless addaptor pulled. Its probably a Bluetooth thing and some creep hanging around with his smartphone. 

[Deb673]

I’ had to restore my new hp back to it factory settings and while in the process that “debug mode” box popped up a lot . And command prompt box kept popping up . Both for only a few seconds each time . What’s debug mode mean and what does it do ?  I used hp recovery manager . 

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@WAWood wrote:

AjCal

Solely to prevent confusion, let's get some terminology straight, here.

You don't "format" a PC; instead, you "format" a drive.

So, essentially, you restored, recovered, or reinstalled your PC.  Since all of these are different, which one did you do? And HOW did you do it -- HP Recovery Manager, Win10 Reset/Recovery, pressing F11?

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[Daniel3800]

The "FBI Debug Mode" box is just someone at HP's idea of a joke.  The HP File Based Installer (which is where the FBI abbreviation comes from) is merely a part of HP's custom recovery process. 

When you run a system recovery on your HP computer (at least one running Windows 10), it first images a fairly generic Windows 10 installation to your C:\ drive (the "Recovery Preparation" stage), then the computer reboots and begins the "Recovery Installation" phase, which consists of various HP-created CMD scripts that configure the operating system and install the correct drivers and software based on system information embedded in the motherboard.  The FBI runs a series of commands in a specific order to create the Windows installation that HP intended for the PC to have.  When a new image is created (probably at least every time Microsoft releases a new "feature update" to Windows 10) there could be bugs in the recovery process which could cause certain steps to either not be completed properly or to get stuck and cause the recovery to never finish.  Therefore the recovery program (the "FBI") must be debugged before the image can be shipped with new PCs.  Hence the FBI Debug Mode window exists to aid the developers in fixing any issues. 

As can be seen in the picture of the dreaded box on the first page of this thread, there is, among other things, the ability to "Suspend" the recovery process, which stops the following commands from executing, "Single Step", which will run one command script only each time the option is selected, show the log file which could help pinpoint the source of the error, and resume normal operation.  On older HP systems, like Windows 7 and earlier, the FBI ran one time at the factory and an image of the hard drive was copied to the recovery partition after it was finished.  If a system recovery was initiated from the F11 recovery menu, the completed image would simply be copied back.  This PC-specific image would also be copied to the user-created recovery disc set.  The only way someone would see the File Based Installer is if they were using a recovery disc set ordered from HP.  The Windows 10 edition of HP's software skips the step of copying the completed image to the recovery partition, so we get to see the computer build the installation automatically step by step (which also means it takes a lot longer to finish the recovery than it used to).

While they probably should have gotten rid of the FBI Debug Mode box before putting the software on our PCs, once we understand that the FBI is not in the computer (or if they are, it is not because of this box), we are better off having it than not having it.  Microsoft's "reset your PC" method of restoring the computer to factory settings is much less reliable and more likely to fail when you need it most than HP's solution is.  My HP laptop failed to install the Windows 10 1803 update and then failed to roll the update back, which left the system unusable.  Windows Reset Your PC was broken, but HP's recovery partition was intact and worked perfectly.

[Daniel3800]

Here is a link to a picture of a CIA.ini file that someone posted on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/timothytrespas/status/531870572637351938?s=19

It clearly indicates that FBI is File Based Installer and CIA is Compaq Installation Assistant.  Clearly an HP employee was having fun with acronyms.

[MaxImpact]

Did you know you can minimized that recovery window and observe, and even run commands in the open command prompts.

Give it a try. The curser is mostly hidden but appears from time to time and the minimize button of the window is hidden but becomes visible when you move the invisible cursor over it.  I opened Services during a recovery and confirmed my suspicions that wireless and bluetooh were enabled and running. Remote desktop connections were also running.  Time to get a Farady room.