Maintenance and Service Guide
B Statement of memory volatility
The purpose of this chapter is to provide general information regarding nonvolatile memory in HP Business
PCs. This chapter also provides general instructions for restoring nonvolatile memory that can contain
personal data after the system has been powered o and the hard drive has been removed.
HP Business PC products that use Intel®-based or AMD®-based system boards contain volatile DDR memory.
The amount of nonvolatile memory present in the system depends upon the system conguration. Intel-
based and AMD-based system boards contain nonvolatile memory subcomponents as originally shipped from
HP, assuming that no subsequent modications have been made to the system and assuming that no
applications, features, or functionality have been added to or installed on the system.
Following system shutdown and removal of all power sources from an HP Business PC system, personal data
can remain on volatile system memory (DIMMs) for a nite period of time and will also remain in nonvolatile
memory. Use the steps below to remove personal data from the PC, including the nonvolatile memory found
in Intel-based and AMD-based system boards.
Current BIOS steps
Follow these steps to restore or erase the motherboard memory that can contain personal data. Restoring or
re-programming non-volatile memory that does not store personal data is neither necessary nor
recommended.
1. Enter the F10 BIOS Setup menu by powering on the system and pressing F10 as soon as the HP logo
appears. If the system has a BIOS administrator password, enter the password at the prompt.
a. In the Main menu, select Apply Factory Defaults and Exit. The system will reboot. Upon reboot,
custom BIOS settings will be cleared.
b. Enter the BIOS (F10) setup menu. Select the Security tab, then Restore Security Settings to
Factory Defaults. The system will automatically reboot. Upon reboot, you may be asked to press
F1 to proceed with clearing the TPM. The following data will be cleared after this step is complete:
●
BIOS Administrator password
●
POST Power-On password
●
TPM memory
●
Virtualization and TXT setting
●
Sure Start settings
c. Remove AC power and the 3 V system battery for at least 5 minutes. After this, the following
memories will be cleared:
●
System RAM memory from the installed DIMMs
●
Battery-backed SIO RAM
●
Real Time Clock (RTC) battery backed-up CMOS conguration memory (CMOS)
2. Remove and retain the storage drives.
3. If drive contents must be cleared, use the Secure Erase BIOS feature:
Current BIOS steps 83