HP Business Notebook HP_TOOLS Partition Guidelines

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HP Business Notebook

HP TOOLS Partition

Guidelines

V1.6

November 2009

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Table of Contents:

1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 2

2. Supported Platforms ............................................................................................................ 2

3. Location of HP EFI and Preboot applications- the HP TOOLS Fat32 Partition ............................ 3

Volume Name ................................................................................................................. 3

HP_TOOLS Partition Size .................................................................................................. 3

4. HP_TOOLS Partition Directories and Descriptions ................................................................... 3

5. EFI Power Management ........................................................................................................ 4

6. How BIOS Launches EFI and other preboot Applications: ....................................................... 4

7. Preboot Security Requirements ............................................................................................. 5

Signed preboot applications ............................................................................................. 5

Additional F10 Policies for Preboot Environment ............................................................... 5

8. Additional References .......................................................................................................... 6

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Summary of content (6 pages)

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HP Business Notebook HP TOOLS Partition Guidelines V1.6 November 2009 Table of Contents: 1. Introduction .........................................................................................................................2 2. Supported Platforms ............................................................................................................2 3. Location of HP EFI and Preboot applications- the HP TOOLS Fat32 Partition ............................3 Volume Name .........................
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1. Introduction As computer technology has advanced, the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) has expanded in an effort to handle new components, larger and more complex chipsets, add‐in cards, and so on. This expansion of the BIOS has made it increasingly intricate. The computer industry’s answer to address BIOS limitations is the development of the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI).
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HP EFI applications and preboot applications provide extensive preboot functions to the system BIOS residing in the flash rom. These HP preboot applications are placed on a HP specific partition. On 2008 and later commercial notebook platforms with EFI BIOS, the preboot partition HP_TOOLS is created by the preinstall team as a Fat32 partition. Warning Do not encrypt HP_TOOLS partition using software encryption programs such as Windows BitLocker or Full Volume Encryption for HP ProtectTools.
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5. EFI Power Management There is no power management under EFI shell. There will be some thermal management. 6. How BIOS Launches EFI and Other Preboot Applications For HP Signed Preboot Applications The HP signed preboot applications; the executable file and the “filename.sig”signature file are stored in the same sub directory. In current implementation, there are hot keys (noted below) defined for HP certain preboot applications. is used to launch the QuickLook EFI application.
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7. Preboot Security Requirements Signed Preboot Applications When a preboot application is launched, it has as much control of the system resource as the BIOS. Since these applications reside on the public hard drive partition which are easily accessible and thus hacked, it’s necessary for BIOS to only launch HP signed preboot applications.
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The EFI BIOS provides the following policy to control the availability of the QuickWeb application option. 8. Additional References For additional information, refer to the resources listed below: HP Technology Center http://www.hp.com/go/techcenter HP technical support http://www.hp.com/support Intel’s Extensible Firmware Interface (Home Page) http://www.intel.com/technology/efi/ © 2009 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice.