The HP BIOS that locks non-whitelisted mini-PCI cards out?
We don't have a definite confirmation on this yet, but one blogger's raising a whole lot of ruckus because
apparently his HP laptop's BIOS has a mini-PCI card whitelist—upgrade the card with a non-HP-approved device, and your
laptop won't boot. So yes, that means not only is HP probably making dough on the side by selling vendors the right to
use their cards in an otherwise open architecture, but upgrades sold after the fact simply won't work (unless HP
updates that white-list, and what do you think the odds of that are?). And now we're hearing some IBM laptops
apparently rock the same trick. Seriously, what kinds of companies would have the guts to challenge their consumers to
this kind of showdown? Is HP trying to publicly hemorrhage consumers?
[Via BoingBoing]
Filed under: Laptops
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
CloudyPrison @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
Looks like I'm suggesting non-HP products today at work, wee! Go HP, shoot yourself in the foot.
suntiger @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
Fucking asswipes. Do they think they can get away with this sort of shit without anyone noticing?
Everyone spread this to the rooftops. Maybe we can get it to be like ATRAC3 and they'll capitulate.
Snappy! @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
They are not the first, and won't be the last.
IBM's X30 (in fact X series notebooks) do not have built-in optical drives. They want you to buy their expensive upgrades, such as a $299 USB DVDROM or combo drive thingie OR get their X30 slice bay thingie which makes their X30 thicker, heavier and unportable!
So they lock out 3rd party USB optical drives which works perfectly on a whitebox pc or a normal notebook which supports boot-via-usb. USB-Bootup has been around for years, so its a shame that IBM had to do such a thing. I mean, if their X3 slice thingie and usb drives are not selling, they should think what they did wrong and not strongarm users to use only their upgrades. Why isn't anyone shooting them for anti-trust or something??
And now, HP too!!
gorkon @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
This is for the INTERNAL devices....such as Mini-PCI Modems, Ethernet cards, sound cards and other internal devices. This is not for PC Cards.
Tremiel Maganantes @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
IBM laptops indeed do the same thing. What's even more infuriating is that I ordered a T41 w/ the optional miniPCI WiFi card from IBM not too long ago. They forgot it. When I called them and went through two days of CRM-tool BS, they agreed to repair my laptop if I sent it in. I complied and a couple days later got it back in the exact same state. It came with a note from the repair department: 'Nothing broken, wireless card missing.' After a letting my fury die down for a while, I get back on the phone and go through ten trillion layers of customer service and they agree to send me a card. A couple days later, I got a package in the mail from IBM containing an Intel card. I installed it (which was a huge pain in the ass in itself) and the machine wouldn't boot. Error 1802. Google revealed the existence of the BIOS miniPCI whitelist, and in addition, revealed the existence of a tool that flashes your bios and destroys the list (included here for historians:
http://jcnp.pku.edu.cn/~shadow/1802/no-1802.com ).
Rus @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
I don't understand the big deal - at least for laptops. I would think this is more of a driver issue than anything - anyway.
Laptop boards are NOT standard boards like PC mainboards are.
Apple has essentially been doing this for a year or two. I can't put any 802.11g mini pci airport extreme card in the slot (it's just mini pci) - the machine won't boot even if I I put a card with the same chipset in the slot
Jason Stewart @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
This is something we have known about for a little while, at least concerning their ZD7000 laptops:
http://www.zd7000forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=4137&highlight=bios
Rombus @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
Ill confirm this for the TC1100, they have been doing that since atleast the TC1100 release
Eric Pobirs @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
This is ridiculous whining. The number of end users messing with mini-PCI devices in laptops is vanishingly small. The configuration rarely changes after leaving the factory and even when it does this isn't a ripe market for third party add-ons.
This sort of thing isn't at all uncommon. When a warranty can be voided by opening the case anywhere but intended locations such as a memory slot, why should anyone be surprised that the company protects themselves from customer service nightmare where you spend an hour talking to the irate user before they admit they hacked their system. I long ago did support for Amiga games and got dozens of idiots using non-standard memory upgrades that required a special application to activate. THey couldn't understand why their hacked memory wasn't recognized when our games booted.
christopher wanko @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
It's only ridiculous whining if you believe vendors have the right to lock-in consumers. The market will correct this eventually, as locked-in consumer who "whine" migrate to more user-friendly suppliers.
markm @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
I can confirm the bad news - to get a card I bought working with my hp/compaq I had to revert to an older version of its bios.
If I remember correctly v42 wouldn't work but v34 would.
I won't be buying another HP laptop anytime soon.
Carmi @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
Anything that locks consumers in with non-standard expansion options is a bad idea.
In a sector - hardware - already noted for its commoditization and end user disloyalty, anything that drives consumers away represents short-sighted strategy.
This is a case of a company being so focused on the minutae of hardware configuration that it forgets how important the soft aspects of customer relationship management are to its long-term success.
Carmi
http://writteninc.blogspot.com
Snappy! @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
If the add-on is some super-unique only one kind of design that is *only* available from a vendor (say IBM or HP), then by all means LOCK it up. But then again, in such cases, there is no need to lock things up is there?
The point is that, here we are 20++ years since the PC was born, and proprietary architecture came and gone, with standards like ISA, EISA, PCI, AGP, EDO-RAM, SDRAM, DDR etc remaining because they encourage growth and collaboration, and then we have hardware vendors like HP and IBM tweaking their firmware so that STANDARD hardware interface are made non standard or unusable altogether.
Its like we are browsing this very page because standards like TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML and what have you not exists. Then if some joker vendor decides that they want to make their own flavor of web browser, and in the end, html pages are not usable. So who's fault is that?
Why are we bashing MS for its non-standard compliant IE and not IBM/HP for doing so in the hardware arena?
Eric, guess what? Amiga died because it refused to adopt standards!! While everyone was collaborating and using common interfaces, Amiga stuck on with its own proprietary systems. If IBM and HP do not include such whitelist in their BIOS, guess what? That group of users who are savvy enough to do their own upgrades won't be calling their tech support up anyway! So much for making sure that protecting "themselves from customer service nightmare".
Well, designing this kind of closed-system when it is really using standard parts is *creating* customer service nightmare!
Snappy! @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
If the add-on is some super-unique only one kind of design that is *only* available from a vendor (say IBM or HP), then by all means LOCK it up. But then again, in such cases, there is no need to lock things up is there?
The point is that, here we are 20++ years since the PC was born, and proprietary architecture came and gone, with standards like ISA, EISA, PCI, AGP, EDO-RAM, SDRAM, DDR etc remaining because they encourage growth and collaboration, and then we have hardware vendors like HP and IBM tweaking their firmware so that STANDARD hardware interface are made non standard or unusable altogether.
Its like we are browsing this very page because standards like TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML and what have you not exists. Then if some joker vendor decides that they want to make their own flavor of web browser, and in the end, html pages are not usable. So who's fault is that?
Why are we bashing MS for its non-standard compliant IE and not IBM/HP for doing so in the hardware arena?
Eric, guess what? Amiga died because it refused to adopt standards!! While everyone was collaborating and using common interfaces, Amiga stuck on with its own proprietary systems. If IBM and HP do not include such whitelist in their BIOS, guess what? That group of users who are savvy enough to do their own upgrades won't be calling their tech support up anyway! So much for making sure that protecting "themselves from customer service nightmare".
Well, designing this kind of closed-system when it is really using standard parts is *creating* customer service nightmare!
Jim Smith @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
This is just the latest nail in the coffin.
HP sucks. They have become a very evil company, nasty to their employees, nasty to their customers in so many new and creative ways. I mourned the great Hewlett-Packard's death in 1999. Even without Carly, their greedy board of directors is intact.
Don't buy HP.
Michiel @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
I have an IBM T41 together with a Dell wireless miniPCI card (the trumobile 1150). IBM preinstalls an app called 'IBM access connections' on most recent notebooks, it switches network profiles etc. when required. However; it would crash after succesfully completing a profile switch (I later found the cause, was unrelated to the miniPCI card).
But the IBM tech I spoke to was sure surprised; it wasn't supposed to work in the first place according to him...
ejdmoo @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
I hope people understand, this is NOT the PCMCIA card that most people put into their laptops. This is not for whitlisting against the netgear card you buy at Best Buy. This is for a miniPCI slot!
Here's a good picture of a miniPCI card
http://www.ixbt.com/comm/wireless/asus-wl-500g/minipci.jpg
Joey Geraci @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
I think that pretty much everybody that reads this forum knows what a mini-pci card is. And the people that say that upgrading a mini-pci card is so unheard of obviously must not be very knowledgeable. Do you say that upgrading ram is not common too? Because upgrading a mini-pci card is just as easy as upgrading ram. The only reason why it might not be quite as common is because you can't find mini-pci cards in places like Best Buy, you have to search online. But this kind of practice is just going to make their customers flock from them.
jcs @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
http://www.paul.sladen.org/thinkpad-r31/wifi-card-pci-ids.html
Dwayne @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
You woulden't get away with this in Canada it violates competition laws.
Michael Robertson @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
A friend of mine in that business has the following view:
"I've had it up to here with 3rd party shit and all the problems it causes. Half the time it ends up at the bench and only then do we realise the problem has been caused by a 3rd party component, wasting everyones time. Then you get the customers insisting that it must be a faulty systemboard that's causing their crappy thing not to work, so we swap it over, same problem.
The other problem we get is with counterfeit memory, hard drives, etc. Customer calls up with a faulty part, we assume it's HP, send out a replacement disk and only then we find the array won't rebuild because our disks are a tad smaller than most 3rd party disks. With the memory we'll send out a new piece and it's quite possible that we'll get a 3rd party one back in exchange. Most of the time this stuff happens when someone has moved on, or given the equipment to someone else that does not know about the 3rd party components.
Not everything in an open architecture is compatible, it should be - but it's not"
James Green @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
I'm sure I've seen this trick talked about somewhere before.
Oh, yeah, http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~mjg59/thinkpad/wireless.html
Gilo @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
HP , IBM , and what about To - $ - hiba ?
Takes only toshibas premium priced mini pci cards which are just b 11mbs btw .
JSprouls @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
Anyone ignorant enough to buy a windows os-based laptop deserves whatever bullshit they
receive with the POS.
Patrick Sikorski @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
Hewlett Packard is a great company and if they can find more ways to make money then more power to them. I only buy Hewlett Packard... So, Everything I buy is compatable with evertything else. I think people should stick with one company. If you buy an IBM laptop then you should only buy IBM accessories.
lacanadio @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
I tried an Atheros mini-PCI card and it lost on a ZD7000. It *isn't* good biz practice, long-term, to lock people into things. The smart ones will walk and spread the bad rep.
As for buying one vendor...remember "No one ever got fired for buying IBM"? Hmm...didn't IBM hit some rough spots in a couple years back? Also, I have recent experience bailing out someone who bought single (expensive) vendor equipment expecting everything to "just work", without any relevant applications/engineering experience.
Sheesh.
Bob
Sean @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
I also have one of these HP bricks. The IBM guys have a working hack, but the HP owners are still out of luck. Luckily, mine is from the transition period, so there is an old BIOS that still works.
Even before this issue came to light, I had blacklisted HP from all corporate purchases. I suggest everyone else in a position to do so blacklist them as well.
Eduardo Coutinho @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
HP sucks
I have a Pavilion ze4920LA and all the old bios versions available in HP support site (F.06 is the older). Does anyone has a pre-F.06 bios for ze4900 series?
Thank you
Rob Don @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
I read all these comments with interest...HP suck! I have been told by them that my AMD64Bit Presario cannot run 64 Bit operating systems!
This is what they said:
I understand your concern about modifying the BIOS in the Presario
R3228EA in order to install 64bit operating system.
I regret to inform you that this Presario is designed to work with 32
bit operating system and HP/Compaq does not recommend installation of 64
bit operating system in the Presario computers, as we do not have any
test data on it. However, if the system meets the minimum requirement
to install the operating system you can install the operating system in
the system.
The BIOS equipped in this computer is specifically designed for the
hardware equipped in the system. It is not possible to change the BIOS
options or remove any information from the BIOS, by flashing the BIOS.
However, you can download the BIOS update for this Presario from the
following website:
So, AMD64Athlon is not designed for ^4Bit Operating Systems apparently!
Janos Marki @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
Well everyone, I have the same problem, got a brilliant 802.11a,b,g,h,j card on eBay for my HP nx7000, machine stops before booting with the "unsupported wireless device" message. If anyone has an idea around this, I would be most glad to get it!
Thanks!
Karl DeLyria @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
The IBM Thinkpad T42 has the same #$%^ lock. I tried an Intel 2200BG made for a Dell and the laptop will not boot.
edong @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
actually you can get a bios from phoenix directally that doesnt have any of hps stuff in it. i got one. it cost 60 bucks, but hey, who cares. and they guaranee it. it is from esupport.com.
Bert Loedeman @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
Hi there, I agree. I got myself an HP Compaq nw8240 and tried to install a Senao wireless card. The laptop does not function anymore until the original card is reinserted. It's a great pity for those who want to extend their network range without external laptop parts! I do not consider HP after this laptop!
andreas @ Dec 19th 2005 1:04AM
i can not boot my nw8240 when i put in an intel mimipci card :(