Unable to UEFI PXE boot HP laptops

We successfully UEFI PXE booted a Lenovo laptop to the OSD menu. However, we’re experiencing challenges UEFI PXE booting HP laptops like the HP840G2. Here’s what we tried with the HP840G2.

  1. Update BIOS with latest firmware.
  2. Disable secure boot in the BIOS.
  3. Enable UEFI Hybrid (with CSM) in the BIOS. Also attempted a test with UEFI in Native mode.

After pressing F12 during boot up we are seeing the message in the screenshot (shown below) for a short period of time. The computer then reboots into Windows from the local hard drive.

Any assistance or guidance for successfully UEFI PXE booting an HP laptop into the OSD menu would be greatly appreciated. As a side note, we are NOT currently using DHCP options or IP helpers as the OSD bare metal server is on the same subnet as the client.

Don_N, were you ever able to get the UEFI PXE boot resolved on the HP laptops? If so, what UEFI settings did you land on?

The newer HP laptops like the HP 840G3 UEFI PXE boot correctly to the Bigfix OSD server when the laptop is using the latest BIOS firmware, has UEFI hybrid (with CSM) enabled, secure boot disabled, and IPv4 enabled as a boot device in the BIOS.

Per HP support the newer HP laptops (like the HP840G3) use “advanced shell capabilities” within EFI. The older HP laptops don’t use the "advanced shell capabilities” and HP believes this might be what’s causing the computer to hang during a UEFI PXE boot. I’ve been struggling to get anyone from HP to look into this further.

Also, Bigfix OSD UEFI PXE boot doesn’t support “secure boot”. I opened a PMR for this and they asked me to submit an RFE for it. Please vote for this RFE. Link to RFE as follows http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rfe/execute?use_case=viewRfe&CR_ID=97383

Great information. Thanks for the reply.

My vote was submitted.

On a side-note, are you using BigFix to migrate your endpoints from Win7 to Win10? If so, have there been any major “roadblocks” you have experienced?

When we upgraded to 9.5.4, the change to Unicode is included. We discovered unexpected issues with items like SMBIOS and UEFI due to the Unicode change. In some cases casting queries or output as hexadecimal resolved our issues. Would Unicode potentially play a role in your environment?

We’re currently developing the Windows 10 base image for new PCs. The build out of the Bigfix Win7 to Win10 migration process is slated for mid year.

JonL,

Thanks for sharing the information about the Unicode change. We’ll need to take a more in depth look at the Unicode change when we’re ready to upgrade.

I have seen issues with SECURE BOOT UEFI enabled - We have created a Fixlet that pulls down the Vendor tool kit to make the SECURE BOOT option enabled after windows has been deployed.

Using the vendor toolkit might be the only viable option in the near term. Appears secure boot UEFI is here to stay.

Has anyone heard anymore about the RFE that was submitted? I viewed the site and noticed that the last update states that development was aware and would be taking action, however, that was in March and I’m not seeing any updates after that. Just checking in as this has become a major concern for my organization as well.

The ability to UEFI PXE boot with Secure Boot enabled was added to a recent release of OSD Bare metal server. We’ve been using it successfully for a few months to deploy Windows 10 1607. One issue we ran into when setting this up is that we had to re-upload the MDT bundle that we had created for Windows 10 and select the option to OVERWRITE. We typically select AUTO when uploading the MDT bundle but that wasn’t sufficient enough to update the components needed to support UEFI PXE boot with Secure Boot enabled .

More information on enabling this functionality - https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/SS63NW_9.5.0/com.ibm.bigfix.lifecycle.doc/Lifecycle/OSD_Users_Guide/c_bare_metal.html