On Mon, 20 Jul 2020 20:27:44 -0300
"George N. White III" <gnwiii(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, 20 Jul 2020 at 18:59, Sreyan Chakravarty
<sreyan32(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 1, 2020 at 4:06 AM George N. White III
> <gnwiii(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> In general, the earlier the mitigations are applied, the harder it
>> is to exploit the bugs, and
>> some mitigations can only be applied at the BIOS level, so you
>> need to check your BIOS
>> vendor's updates and forums.
>>
>>
> Sorry for the late reply.
>
> Does anyone here use an HP laptop ?
>
> Specifically this model:
>
https://support.hp.com/in-en/document/c04919819#AbT1
>
This mentions FreeDOS under "Software" at the bottom of the page.
> I have a very weird problem it seems. In my BIOS startup screen
> there seems to be no option like "Update BIOS".
>
> The particular model I am using HP only publishes exe files that
> can be used from within Windows via which the BIOS update can
> happen within the OS.
>
> They do not care about Linux. Hence my only option was to do the
> BIOS update from outside the OS. Now I can't find the option to
> update the BIOS from a USB.
>
> I have contacted HP via their Community forum but I doubt that I
> will get a response.
>
> In the meantime if anyone knows anything about this problem let me
> know, or what the best place would be to ask about this issue.
>
https://support.hp.com/ca-en/document/c00042629 suggests that you can
create a BIOS update USB drive
from a BIOS update .exe file using a different PC running Windows.
Some .exe files run in freeDOS and generate a .bin file. Some HP
laptops have "BIOS update from file" in the System Diagnostics (maybe
press F2 while booting) with the .bin file on a FAT format USB key.
https://askubuntu.com/questions/539120/how-to-perform-a-hp-bios-upgrade-w...
has a number of examples for differnet HP models.