HP Business Notebook Computer EFI Guidelines - White paper

Introduction

As computer technology has advanced, the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) has expanded to

handle new components, larger and more complex chipsets, add-in cards, and so on. This forced

expansion of the BIOS has made it increasingly intricate.

The computer industry’s answer to BIOS limitations is the development of the Extensible Firmware

Interface. EFI is a set of modular interfaces that replaces the set of traditional BIOS interfaces between

the operating system and platform firmware.

EFI is based on the high-level C language and is driver-based, scalable, and easy to debug and

upgrade. EFI uses a modular, platform-independent architecture that can perform boot and other BIOS

functions.

Tapping into this technology, HP has implemented an EFI partition on all of its commercial notebook

computers.

Along with replacing the traditional BIOS interface, the HP version of the EFI partition

adds tools to the preboot system environment. The HP EFI partition is viewable on the hard drive and

is labeled as HP_TOOLS. On 2008 commercial notebook platforms with the EFI BIOS, HP created the

EFI partition as a FAT32 primary partition, due to EFI limitations with accessing other partition

formats. Total EFI partition size is 1 GB.

For more information about EFI, go to http://www.hp.com/go/techcenter

EFI applications and tools

The EFI partition and HP EFI applications and tools are not required for the basic operation of HP

notebook computers. However, if the EFI partition or applications are missing, the EFI features

described in this paper will not be available.

Applications accessible during startup

The HP EFI partition includes the following applications, which are accessible during computer

startup:

 HP QuickLook 2 or later versions (select models)

 HP System Diagnostics

HP QuickLook 2 or later versions

QuickLook is a personal information manager (PIM) viewer for Microsoft® Outlook 2003 and 2007.

QuickLook captures Microsoft Outlook email, calendar, task, and contact information, and then

displays it without starting the operating system and without launching Microsoft Outlook. QuickLook

can access cached Outlook information at the press of a single button, whether the computer is off or

in Hibernation.

HP System Diagnostics

HP System Diagnostics allows you to perform diagnostic tests on the following components:

 Primary hard drive

 System memory modules

You can also use this tool to obtain information about the computer, such as model number, processor

type, total memory, serial number, and so on.

Except for the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC.