On Sep 03, 2025, lbrtchx@tutamail.com wrote: > > I got a DELL laptopwhich started getting problematic and manifesting > "a mind of itsown" right on arrival (remove the battery, WiFi card and > let it sit for more than 24 hours for it to start trying to call home > by itself). It came with what DELL calls "secureBIOS" (you don't have > access to) and had Windows preinstalled. Ididn't care much about it > because I was booting it with a Debian LiveDVD, but later I needed > access to its internal NVMe SSD, but DELLdoesn't let you access it if > you don't boot using their cr@ppy BIOS into the installed Windows > base! Sounds like "safeBIOS", which to my understanding is a corporate-laptop feature to protect against tampering. You'll likely need to poke around their manuals to see about disabling it. One would imagine that a company recycling / reselling laptops would have turned that off before sale, but ... > > > To me this ispreposterous. It is like selling someone a car and > expecting thebuyer to only get gas from your "secure, authorized > gasstations" within a prescribed area! If I'm reading the manual right, it's basically a verification checksum that the BIOS hasn't been tampered with. No different than say APT failing because a downloaded *deb didn't match the releases.txt entry. > Would HP let youaccess their BIOS setup, memory card, ... within Linux? Generally, no. UEFI/BIOS management is typically done external to an OS. > How do you dealwith such "secure BIOS" nonsense? Read Dell's manuals on the topic, I suppose. Hopefully it's not a case of "if it panics, the machine is a brick". -- |_|O|_| |_|_|O| Github: https://github.com/dpurgert |O|O|O| PGP: DDAB 23FB 19FA 7D85 1CC1 E067 6D65 70E5 4CE7 2860
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