EFI Preboot Guidelines and Windows 8 UEFI Secure Boot for HP Business Notebooks and Desktops PPS Business Notebook and Desktop - Technical White Paper

Technical white paper | UEFI Secure Boot on HP business notebooks, desktops, and workstations
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UEFI pre-boot guidelines
As computer technology has advanced, the BIOS has expanded to handle new components, larger and more complex
chipsets, add-in cards, and other enhancements. This expansion has made the BIOS increasingly intricate. Development of
the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI ) is the computer industry’s solution to BIOS limitations. UEFI is a set of
modular interfaces that replaces the set of traditional BIOS interfaces between the OS and platform firmware.
UEFI is derived from high-level C language and is driver-based, scalable, and easy to debug and upgrade. UEFI uses a
modular, platform-independent architecture that can perform boot and other BIOS functions. HP employs this technology
to implement an UEFI partition on all of its business notebook and desktop computers.
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Along with replacing the traditional
BIOS interface, the HP UEFI partition adds tools to the pre-boot system environment.
The HP UEFI partition is viewable on the hard drive, labeled as HP_TOOLS. Starting with 2008, HP business notebook and
desktop platforms that included the UEFI BIOS, HP created the UEFI partition as a FAT32 primary partition, due to UEFI
limitations with accessing other partition formats. These guidelines include specifications for the Microsoft® Windows® 8
operating system (OS).
All mention of notebooks, desktops, and workstations in this document refer to HP business products only. For more
information about UEFI, go to http://www.hp.com/go/techcenter
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Supported models
Table 1 shows the HP business notebooks, desktop computers, and workstations that support UEFI Pre-boot Guidelines and
Windows 8 UEFI Secure Boot. Unless otherwise indicated, the information in this document applies to the notebooks,
desktops, and workstations listed in Table 1. Differences in UEFI pre-boot or Secure Boot implementation between HP
business products are noted where appropriate.
Table 1. HP business PCs supporting UEFI pre-boot guidelines and Windows 8 UEFI Secure Boot.
HP business notebooks HP business desktops HP workstations
HP Elitebook p series HP Compaq 8300 Elite series EliteBook 8570w, 8770w
HP ProBook b/m/s series HP Compaq 6300 and 6305 Pro series Workstations Z1, Z220 (CMT/SFF), Z420, Z620, Z820
HP_TOOLS for HP UEFI and pre-boot applications
Partitions and directory paths for pre-boot deliverables have changed in Windows 8. Table 2 shows the Windows 8 changes.
Table 2. Pre-boot deliverables with partition and directory paths for Windows 8 on GPT-formatted notebooks and
desktops/workstations
Component Partition name and path
on GPT-formatted notebook HDD
Partition name and path
on GPT-formatted desktop/workstation HDD
BIOS images [ESP] /UEFI/HP/BIOS [/New, /Current,
/Previous]
ESP] /UEFI/HP/BIOS [/New, /Current, /Previous]
UEFI BIOS Update [ESP] /UEFI/HP/ BiosUpdate n/a
System Diagnostics [ESP] /UEFI/HP/SystemDiags [ESP] /UEFI/HP/SystemDiags
Language [HP_TOOLS] /HEWLETT-PACKARD /Language n/a
Custom Logo [HP_TOOLS] /HEWLETT-PACKARD/Logo n/a
SpareKey Language [HP_TOOLS] /HEWLETT-PACKARD/SpareKey n/a
SecureHV [HP_TOOLS] /HEWLETT-PACKARD/SecureHV [HP_TOOLS] /HEWLETT-PACKARD/SecureHV
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Except for the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC.