HP has been doing this shit for ages in other spaces. When I tried to put a non-HP burner in one of their desktop computers years ago, the burner spun out of control and refused to open. Same thing happened again when I got a replacement burner. When I finally got a HP burner, it worked fine.
The same tower also refused to acknowledge an aftermarket GPU, despite changing the jumpers like guides suggested.
Look, I fucking hate HP so don’t take this as supporting them in any way, but I don’t think what you’re describing is possible. The tower is nothing more than a bunch of mounting points to attach hardware made by other manufacturers. They don’t make motherboards or chips. They could maybe have a deal for a custom branded bios maybe with certain settings locked down. They could have some shitware installed in windows, but none of that would have an impact before windows loaded.
I just don’t see how what you’re describing is possible even if they wanted to. It would be a major scandal and everyone would’ve heard about it. Remember the Sony rootkit CDs?
HP and/or Compaq used to make their own PCs in the 90’s going into the 2000’s.
For example they used to have special motherboards that were basically backplanes and CPU cards to suit.It’s quite possible they did dumb shit with IDE connectors/pinouts that meant that some devices didn’t work.
It wouldn’t have been a major scandal, it just would have been, “yeah some aftermarket drives don’t work with HP”, which was pretty common across the entire market back then. We’re basically in the golden age of system compatibility right now, things were an absolute shitshow back then.
Honestly, I figured it was just some wonky shit with those cheap Pavilion parts and didn’t think much of it at the time. I was mostly just annoyed that I couldn’t really do much of anything with the tower. All was well when I could finally afford to build my own!
HP has been doing this shit for ages in other spaces. When I tried to put a non-HP burner in one of their desktop computers years ago, the burner spun out of control and refused to open. Same thing happened again when I got a replacement burner. When I finally got a HP burner, it worked fine.
The same tower also refused to acknowledge an aftermarket GPU, despite changing the jumpers like guides suggested.
Don’t buy anything HP. Don’t support them at all.
Look, I fucking hate HP so don’t take this as supporting them in any way, but I don’t think what you’re describing is possible. The tower is nothing more than a bunch of mounting points to attach hardware made by other manufacturers. They don’t make motherboards or chips. They could maybe have a deal for a custom branded bios maybe with certain settings locked down. They could have some shitware installed in windows, but none of that would have an impact before windows loaded.
I just don’t see how what you’re describing is possible even if they wanted to. It would be a major scandal and everyone would’ve heard about it. Remember the Sony rootkit CDs?
HP and/or Compaq used to make their own PCs in the 90’s going into the 2000’s.
For example they used to have special motherboards that were basically backplanes and CPU cards to suit.It’s quite possible they did dumb shit with IDE connectors/pinouts that meant that some devices didn’t work.
It wouldn’t have been a major scandal, it just would have been, “yeah some aftermarket drives don’t work with HP”, which was pretty common across the entire market back then. We’re basically in the golden age of system compatibility right now, things were an absolute shitshow back then.
Honestly, I figured it was just some wonky shit with those cheap Pavilion parts and didn’t think much of it at the time. I was mostly just annoyed that I couldn’t really do much of anything with the tower. All was well when I could finally afford to build my own!