Cluttermagnet Posted October 15, 2024 Posted October 15, 2024 (edited) Hi, All- I'm here to ask for a little help with the dreaded UEFI... A friend just gave me on old HP Omen gaming tower, model 870-244. As expected, I am unable to get to the BIOS- it keeps intercepting that. Oh, I do get various boot screens but it's all HP UEFI stuff. I can get so far as having a blue BIOS-y looking window that offers UEFI Boot Sources or Legacy Boot devices. But It won't actually let me select Legacy devices. I have a DVD in the optical drive with Linux Mint 22, and I can hear the drive head sound (twice) each time I boot. This is about a 2018 computer build... I would sure like to get a look at the BIOS to see what devices boot order is set up. Upon further playing, I disconnected the Win 10 HDD and substituted an old 120GB SSD I had laying around. Initial success- I was able to boot into 2 live DVD sessions of Mint 22, access the net via FF, etc. The mobo was able to boot to my DVD with no BIOS fiddling. Then things went sour after I used gparted to move some partitions around on that drive. I was getting ready to install MInt 22. Now the tower can't utilize that drive, not can it do anything with a brand new, out of box, unformatted 1TB HDD. Not can it use another 32GB SSD I had on hand. So apparently I have hosed... something... At least the mobo can 'see' all of these drives but they are now unusable for a live DVD linux session. BTW after that happened, I moved the 120GB SSD over to another computer and used gparted to start from scratch- reformatted, set up an extended partition with swap and two ext4 in it, plus three other FAT32 primary partitions. I formatted the drive MSDOS... I think the linux partitions had previously been ext3, if that makes any difference... No help. So as a test, I hooked up the original WIn 10 HDD and was able to boot into windows. This tells me the mobo and power supply and RAM etc are all still good. That is where it stands. I'm confused, frankly. Open to suggestions. What would you suggest I try next? My friend sanitized Windows and also set me up as an alternative user with admin privileges before giving me this tower. Removed all personal files, defragmented Windows, did general cleanup. Windows seemed to be working fine, other than being so very tediously slow to boot up (remember, HDD on board). Thanks, guys- I would really appreciate any help you might send my way... Clutter Edited October 15, 2024 by Cluttermagnet Quote
Cluttermagnet Posted October 15, 2024 Author Posted October 15, 2024 (edited) BTW the specs on this box are (roughly): 3.6GHz dual I-7 Intel processor, 16GB RAM installed... Win 10 installed on original HDD... Something like a 240GB drive... Edited October 15, 2024 by Cluttermagnet Quote
Cluttermagnet Posted October 15, 2024 Author Posted October 15, 2024 (edited) https://i.imgur.com/ZIsMBxa.jpeg Failed to open EFI/Boot/mmx64.efi - Not found Failed to load image??: Not found Failed to start MokManager: Not found Something has gone seriously wrong: Import_mok_state() failed: Not found One update: After struggling with a torturously complicated 'boot menu', I did find that pressing/holding F6 at power up got me to where I could F10 to get into the BIOS. A necessary prior step is to hit the Esc key to get into their 'startup menu'. Whew! But changing the boot order does not help. Despite moving the DVD drive to the top of the list, I still get the error message above. This box could formerly boot into a lived DVD session, now it consistently refuses to do so and is complaining about not finding a bootable image? I'm wondering if I might be dealing with a flaky DVD drive. Previously I had not been getting the mobo to recognize a DVD copy of Mint 20.1. I then downloaded and burned an image of Mint 22 and that did it- booted into a live DVD session on Mint 22- twice. Then came the hard drive problems, possibly self-inflicted? I'm now thinking maybe I burn an image into a flash drive and plug it into a USB port? USB is in the boot order... Edit: Usb stick with Mint 22 also fails to boot. Same error message. Update: Changed from Secure Boot to Legacy Boot in the BIOS under Security.* Mint 22 appears to be installing from the USB stick now. I did, however, get a warning that no efi partition could be found (or something to that effect). Warning that the installed OS might not be bootable. This has been a pitched battle, every step of the way. Need I say that I hate UEFI? Clearly they worked hard to make this as difficult as possible... OS installed fast enough, and appears to be repeatably bootable at power up. What a freakin' ordeal this has been! *I will have to recheck whether dropping Secure Boot has affected my ability to boot into Win 10 using the original HDD that came with the tower. But then the only anticipated use I can foresee presently for Windows is to possibly be able to finally use a couple of flat bed scanners that are Windows only compatible. They have been gathering dust for close to 20 years now... After ~17 years playing in the Linux sandbox, I may have gotten a little better at 'self help', figuring things out on my own. Clutter Edited October 15, 2024 by Cluttermagnet 1 Quote
securitybreach Posted October 15, 2024 Posted October 15, 2024 Ok, your problem is 99% secure boot. Just as expected, it boots fine after removing secure boot. Secure boot is made for windows but you can get it to work under linux if you don't mind wasting time for a useless feature. https://www.makeuseof.com/what-is-secure-boot-how-does-it-work/ You had me thinking it over until you mentioned Secure Boot and then I knew exactly what your issues were. Quote
securitybreach Posted October 15, 2024 Posted October 15, 2024 UEFI works great on linux so that was not your issue at all. You may as well move to it as legacy has its limitations (2tb boot drive and such). 1 Quote
Hedon James Posted October 15, 2024 Posted October 15, 2024 1 hour ago, securitybreach said: Ok, your problem is 99% secure boot. Just as expected, it boots fine after removing secure boot. Secure boot is made for windows but you can get it to work under linux if you don't mind wasting time for a useless feature. https://www.makeuseof.com/what-is-secure-boot-how-does-it-work/ You had me thinking it over until you mentioned Secure Boot and then I knew exactly what your issues were. I was thinking the same thing as I read through this. If Clutter had just turned off SecureBoot, this might have gone quite smooth for him. No doubt it was difficult to locate in an unfamiliar UEFI/BIOS setup. Moving the EFI partition was the fatal blow, however, and all hell broke loose. If EFI had been left intact, it was still easily salvageable. Never move an EFI partition that's already on the disk. It's okay to create and install an EFI partition on a new and unformatted disk. Don't move THAT partition. There are exceptions, but for those like myself, it always breaks something and just creates WAY more work than necessary. Leave EFI partitions alone. 1 hour ago, securitybreach said: UEFI works great on linux so that was not your issue at all. You may as well move to it as legacy has its limitations (2tb boot drive and such). Clutter has already enabled Legacy mode and seemingly installed Mint22 with a MBR/BIOS config. He'd have to start over....turn off Legacy/COSM boot, and reinstall Mint with a GPT/UEFI configuration. Since it's a brand new installation, presumably without heavy customizations already made, I'd probably do that; if only for the reason to gain experience with UEFI, as BIOS will soon go the way as 32-bit OS....specialty cases only. I agree with SB....UEFI is better. UEFI is the future (present?!) and it's actually no more complicated than BIOS. It's that damn SecureBoot that gives UEFI a bad reputation. Thank Microsoft for that (shocker!). It sounds like you resolved it yourself, Clutter, but if you wanted to have a go at it again for the added experience and knowledge, just disable SecureBoot and Legacy Mode in the UEFI. Your LiveMedia should install without a hitch....with all the benefits of UEFI. FWIW... 2 Quote
Cluttermagnet Posted October 15, 2024 Author Posted October 15, 2024 (edited) Thanks, Guys- At this point, much of what you're saying makes intuitive sense. No, I don't have all that much emotional investment in the currently installed Mint 22 OS. Just a good chunk of my time, banging my head against Secure Boot, which I had kinda sorta heard about already. So I didn't really expect it would be all that smooth an operation. The key stumbling block was the tower didn't come with the user manual- thus a lot of unnecessary fumbling to get at the BIOS. I finally found it based on a hint from the former owner ("maybe F6?") but I really had to resort to all kinds of variations, repetitively. I've lost nothing really, so far as whatever Linux OS and personal files were on the 120GB SSD. I had already migrated those contents to a bigger SSD, which lives on in one of my antique Dell workstations. I'll play with this as is for a few days, even adding stuff, but am not averse to starting over. I haven't taken time to go back to the original HDD to see if I have in any way hosed Win 10. (through my BIOS tinkering) I did receive an "Emergency boot disk- Newest version- compatible with all versions of Windows"- along with the tower. And some speakers. Compared to my old Dell boxes, which are nicely laid out with everything very accessible, this 'new' HP tower is a rats nest. Looks like I would have to remove the metal shroud around the big video card to have enough hand room to even plug a 2nd SATA cable into the mobo. And that is held captive by part of the wiring harness. But cutting a tywrap or two and unplugging the video connector should make room enough to pull that out. Anyway, free is a very nice price! And it comes with a higher CPU speed and double the RAM of my Dells, maxed out at 8GB. Also a much more powerful video card. Former owner mentioned it might be expandable to 32GB RAM. Without reading the manual, I'm not yet sure of that. I do see 4 slots in two colors. But sometimes each color accommodates a slightly different style RAM. So TBD... I did download 'something' from the HP site. I'll have to go over it and see what's in there. Heading straight for Specifications. So now I'll just play, erercise it online with my usual emailing and web surfing, usually with FF bloated with dozens of open tabs- LOL! Very helpful comments above. I'll have to fully digest all that info. Then I can tell better if a redo would be the better path. Clutter Edited October 15, 2024 by Cluttermagnet 1 Quote
securitybreach Posted October 15, 2024 Posted October 15, 2024 It means that the colored pair is a dual channel set and that you should install RAM as a pair to take advantage of it. Basically match the colors if you are only use two slots. 1 Quote
abarbarian Posted October 15, 2024 Posted October 15, 2024 39 minutes ago, securitybreach said: It means that the colored pair is a dual channel set and that you should install RAM as a pair to take advantage of it. Basically match the colors if you are only use two slots. If the mobo has four ram slots and you are only installing two sticks of ram the manual should tell you which slots to populate first. Worth checking up on as some mobos are funny about ram installs. 1 Quote
raymac46 Posted October 16, 2024 Posted October 16, 2024 Late to the party but I have worked with HP for years and generally if secure boot is off they will install LM using a UEFI config and run fine. They also have the capacity to run in Legacy mode but no need. I never use DVD Live setups anymore as USB thumbdrive is faster and easier. Aside from switching off secure boot and making sure the machine will boot first from USB I never mess with the UEFI/BIOS settings. I just take a GPT formatted blank SSD and let Linux Mint do its thing. Lenovo laptops are also pretty good in dealing with either Legacy or UEFI setups. 2 Quote
raymac46 Posted October 16, 2024 Posted October 16, 2024 This post coming from a 2015 HP laptop running an i5 Broadwell processor. Checked BIOS by first pressing <esc> and then <F10>. I have secure boot disabled and UEFI enabled. root@ray-HP-Pavilion-Notebook:~# gdisk -l /dev/sda GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 1.0.10 Partition table scan: MBR: protective BSD: not present APM: not present GPT: present Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT. Disk /dev/sda: 1875385008 sectors, 894.3 GiB Model: Patriot Burst El Sector size (logical/physical): 512/512 bytes Disk identifier (GUID): C48CDD65-7A63-4EF1-A7FA-81312A00DF72 Partition table holds up to 128 entries Main partition table begins at sector 2 and ends at sector 33 First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 1875384974 Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries Total free space is 2669 sectors (1.3 MiB) Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name 1 2048 1050623 512.0 MiB EF00 EFI System Partition 2 1050624 1875384319 893.8 GiB 8300 root@ray-HP-Pavilion-Notebook:~# So obviously running GPT and UEFI. Linux Mint was installed here from a LIve USB just choosing to wipe the disk and allow the defaults. Quote
Cluttermagnet Posted October 17, 2024 Author Posted October 17, 2024 (edited) More great info, guys. Thanks! I was aware of the RAM socket color coding in terms of 'channels', also RAM type compatibility sometimes differing between the two colors. Thanks for the reminder about GPT. I had reflexively reformatted the drive as MSDOS. Looks like GPT is the better choice. I'll remember that in the future. Just another bad habit I need to change. Same applies to burning DVD .iso images. Just a habit... I did install Mint 22 using an image on a thumb drive. Boy, was it ever faster. This was my first test drive of Mint 22 and I'm favorably impressed. The Mint guys are still doing a great job. I still have one or two boxes with Mint 20, and several more with now obsolete Mint 17. These are infrequently used. Mint 17 is no longer supported. I need to update those towers but had been putting it off because of the time consuming task of preserving all my files. Clutter has accumulated a lot of, ahhh, clutter over the years. Wonderful old photos and such that I want to save... I know already I'm going to be very happy with this gift/windfall. The HP tower is fast, especially with an SSD hooked up. It spent its early years running from an HDD using Windows. That combo must have hobbled an otherwise fast machine. My very positive experience installing from a flash drive has convinced me to go online and buy a bunch or them, probably mostly 32 and 64GB. They have gotten amazingly cheap in recent years. I had to move a bunch of files from one flash drive to another to have an empty media to put the OS image on. Took a lot of time to get that very slow process completed. I had no empty flash drives on hand... Clutter Edited October 17, 2024 by Cluttermagnet 3 Quote
Cluttermagnet Posted October 17, 2024 Author Posted October 17, 2024 (edited) Going through some of the online info on this HP computer, I found instructions for socketing RAM. It says 32GB RAM capacity, the type is DDR4-2133, unbuffered/non-ECC. I guess I'll go shop Ebay and see how expensive this type is, just for grins. Actually, I'm not at all certain I need that much memory. Probably 16GB will be enough for me. I never got into computer gaming... My old Dell workstations max out at 8GB. I was therefore excited to be getting my first ever machine with 16GB installed. And as a 'hand me down'... Edited October 17, 2024 by Cluttermagnet 1 Quote
raymac46 Posted October 17, 2024 Posted October 17, 2024 I would stick with 16GB if you have it. I have never really needed more than 8 GB with Linux Mint on any of my boxes. Unless you plan on heavy-duty video editing or running virtual machines 16 GB will be plenty. I have found that the best upgrade you can do in any machine is an SSD. 2 Quote
raymac46 Posted October 17, 2024 Posted October 17, 2024 According to the spec sheets you have an i7-7700 Kaby Lake processor and an Nvidia 1070 video card. That should be an excellent Linux Machine. 1 Quote
securitybreach Posted October 17, 2024 Posted October 17, 2024 Personally I max out the ram and such on each motherboard I use. Quote
abarbarian Posted October 17, 2024 Posted October 17, 2024 19 hours ago, raymac46 said: I never use DVD Live setups anymore as USB thumbdrive is faster and easier. Agree completely. Ventoy on a usb stick is the way to go as the majority of distros will run just fine from that set up. Easy to set up Ventoy and makes life so much easier once done. There are still some distros that will not boot from a Ventoy + usb set up but not many. 6 hours ago, securitybreach said: Personally I max out the ram and such on each motherboard I use. I would find that pretty expensive on y latest build. Quote Max. capacity of system memory: 256GB 6 hours ago, raymac46 said: I would stick with 16GB if you have it. I have never really needed more than 8 GB with Linux Mint on any of my boxes. Unless you plan on heavy-duty video editing or running virtual machines 16 GB will be plenty. I have found that the best upgrade you can do in any machine is an SSD. Yup 16 GB of ram is sweet any more is just a waste of money unless you plan on heavy-duty video editing or running virtual machines. Only a handful of the very latest games can use more than 16 GB. These days ssd's are so so yesterday. Nvme's are the way to go for speed these days and they are stupidly cheap too. Ssd's will speed up any older pc and very noticeably too. 6 hours ago, raymac46 said: According to the spec sheets you have an i7-7700 Kaby Lake processor and an Nvidia 1070 video card. That should be an excellent Linux Machine. I have just retired a pc running a previous generation i7 Skylake cpu + Nvidaia 1070 gpu + 16 GB of ram and it was brilliant. Coped with every game at almost ultra settings. Upgraded as it was stuttering and struggling a bit with Fallout 76 in very intensive activity scenes. 7 hours ago, Cluttermagnet said: has convinced me to go online and buy a bunch or them, probably mostly 32 and 64GB. Trouble with flash drives is that they are prone to sudden failure. You might find that a dual socket external drive dock will be a cheaper option in the longer term as it will alow you to utilize any SATA drive. Quote StarTech USB 3.0 Dual Hard Drive Docking Station - with UASP The SDOCK2U33 Dual 2.5/3.5" SATA hard drive docking station lets you dock and swap drives from your desktop or laptop computer simultaneously, using a single USB port. Enhanced with UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol), this hard drive docking station lets you get the most out of the fastest drive technologies such as SATA III (6 Gbps), solid state drives (SSD) and hybrid, drives with performance up to 70% faster than conventional USB 3.0 when paired with a UASP-enabled host controller. See our UASP testing results below for further details. The hard drive dock features independent power buttons for each individual drive, ensuring you can operate each hard drive separately. This gives you the freedom to hot-swap one drive while transferring data to another, saving you time. Extend the value of this hard drive docking station further with the addition of our SATA to IDE Hard Drive Adapter (SAT2IDEADP), allowing easy insertion of any 2.5 or 3.5in. IDE hard drive into a SATA hard drive dock. To ensure compatibility with your computer system, the SDOCK2U33 supports all of the leading operating systems, including: Microsoft Windows® (8/7/Vista/XP/Server 2008/Server 2003), Apple® OSX (10.9/10.8/10.7/10.6), Linux, and Google Chrome OS™. SDOCK2U33 is backed by a StarTech.com 2-year warranty and free lifetime technical support. Improved Performance with UASP UASP is supported in Windows 8, Mac OSX (10.8 or above), and Linux. In testing, UASP performs with a 70% faster read speed and 40% faster write speed over traditional USB 3.0 at peak performance. You can pick up second hand 120 GB ssd's here for around £5. Ssd's are pretty bomb proof and have a very long usable life and it is easy to check them to see how much they have been used and how much life they have left in them. This reddit thread is worth a read. https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/ui1fbt/what_to_do_with_old_120gb_ssds/?rdt=63050 You could use a nvme as your mobo supports those, Quote Per the HP website with motherboard specifications- you can put an M key M2 2280 NVMe Pcie 3.0 SSD on the motherboard. https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=used+m+2+nvme+ssd&norover=1&mkrid=710-153696-560033-8&mkcid=2&mkscid=102&keyword=&crlp=714454299254_&MT_ID=&geo_id=&rlsatarget=dsa-764521878616&adpos=&device=c&mktype=&loc=1007460&poi=&abcId=&cmpgn=2033188068&sitelnk=&adgroupid=71572596213&network=s&matchtype=&gad_source=5&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIrPLR-YOViQMVna6DBx0KAyRuEAAYASAAEgLpg_D_BwE&_sop=15&rt=nc&Compatible%20With=PC&_dcat=175669 Slot in a nvme for the os and use the redundant drive for storage. Quote
securitybreach Posted October 17, 2024 Posted October 17, 2024 57 minutes ago, abarbarian said: These days ssd's are so so yesterday. Nvme's are the way to go for speed these days and they are stupidly cheap too. Ssd's will speed up any older pc and very noticeably too. BTW NVMEs are SSDs. NVME is just a connection type like SATA. https://www.pcworld.com/article/558324/nvme-vs-m-2-vs-sata-ssd-whats-the-difference.html All of it is technically flash memory as they do not use platters. 1 1 Quote
raymac46 Posted October 17, 2024 Posted October 17, 2024 Most of the laptops I have inherited are too old for NVMe drives. I have one in my latest desktop. However, just about everything built in the last 15 years can use a SATA SSD. Obviously an NVMe drive is the smarter option if possible. I use the term interchangeably with SSD as both are a huge upgrade over a mechanical drive. 1 1 Quote
raymac46 Posted October 17, 2024 Posted October 17, 2024 I do have 32 GB in my desktop that runs Windows because my train sim games are notorious memory hogs. 2 Quote
raymac46 Posted October 17, 2024 Posted October 17, 2024 Quote I still have one or two boxes with Mint 20, and several more with now obsolete Mint 17. These are infrequently used. Mint 17 is no longer supported. It's quite easy and reliable to upgrade in place from Mint 21 to Mint 22. Anything older you have to nuke and repave. I don't have separate partitions for data so I copy anything important to backup and then reinstall. However I have upgraded my oldest Linux Mint system several times now without a reinstall. 1 Quote
abarbarian Posted October 17, 2024 Posted October 17, 2024 3 hours ago, securitybreach said: BTW NVMEs are SSDs. NVME is just a connection type like SATA. https://www.pcworld.com/article/558324/nvme-vs-m-2-vs-sata-ssd-whats-the-difference.html All of it is technically flash memory as they do not use platters. Yeah but the nvme's are way way faster than ssd's Quote
Bookmem Posted October 17, 2024 Posted October 17, 2024 2 minutes ago, abarbarian said: Yeah but the nvme's are way way faster than ssd's I'm assuming you meant SATA SSDs. Actually there are NGFF SSDs too. Like NVMEs they fit an .M2 slot with either B keys or B + M keys. But they are much slower than NVMEs 1 Quote
securitybreach Posted October 17, 2024 Posted October 17, 2024 37 minutes ago, abarbarian said: Yeah but the nvme's are way way faster than ssd's That really depends as some nvmes are slower than some SATA SSDs. You get what you pay for when it comes SSDs. Quote
abarbarian Posted October 17, 2024 Posted October 17, 2024 1 hour ago, Bookmem said: I'm assuming you meant SATA SSDs. Actually there are NGFF SSDs too. Like NVMEs they fit an .M2 slot with either B keys or B + M keys. But they are much slower than NVMEs 37 minutes ago, securitybreach said: That really depends as some nvmes are slower than some SATA SSDs. You get what you pay for when it comes SSDs. Yeah I meant SATA (SATA drives are the larger, 2.5-inch drives that most resemble classic laptop hard drives.) and NVME (NVMe is primarily seen on PCIe-based SSDs that are built in the M.2 size. Those are the stick drives that are a few inches long and around an inch wide.). Between NVMe and SATA, NVMe SSDs are always much faster. These are quite a neat explanations, NVMe vs. M.2 vs. SATA SSD: What’s the difference? SSD buying guide: how to pick the right SSD for your needs in 2024 Quote NVMe drives operate over the PCIe interface, which provides multiple lanes for data transmission. That makes them significantly faster than SATA drives, which is the main takeaway here. A typical SATA SSD may have read/write speeds of around 500MB/s, but new NVMe SSDs operating on the PCIe 5.0 interface can hit 14,500MB/s. That’s huge, and you will absolutely notice the difference in day-to-day use. Quote
Cluttermagnet Posted October 17, 2024 Author Posted October 17, 2024 Quite the interesting topic, faster solid state drives in general. Even I, not at all a 'power user', have started to accumulate smaller SSD's. I had two on hand for this recent event. And I do sort of think of them as being just a bigger, klunkier sort of 'USB stick', although there is really no comparison to a SATA interface's speed. Hey, you can actually install an OS into a thumb drive. I never have. Seems to me that OS would be fairly machine specific, anyway. But my recent experience means I now have an appreciation of how much better it is to install an OS from a thumb drive image. Now I'm thinking about CD/DVD as more of a media storage sort of thing. I do love to ply the used market for the occasional music album or movie. Clutter loves a bargain... I understand SSD's do have a wearout mechanism. That gives me pause when contemplating the used market for these drives. Gamers probably beat the living carp out of this type drive. NVMe is an intriguing new topic for me. I was at least aware that some users have various super fast little modules plugged directly into mobos. I will have to learn more about this tech. I suppose we all do owe a lot to gamers. Those guys may be mostly responsible for the tremendous growth in PC capabilities- although there are plenty of other 'super user' types in the mix. Here am I at the opposite end of the PC user continuum, just an emailer/web surfer LOL! But even I do see and appreciate such obvious gains in speed coming from solid state drives. I do think my new HP box was quite the windfall. Fastest box I have ever owned to date. Has a silly dual vertical LED light bar running up the front panel. It slowly changes colors... If I get tired of the light show I can strategically cover this 'amazing spectacle', making due allowance for a horizontal slit at the base of the vertical DVD drive and a cutout for the eject button. Also making note that the upper part of this cover cannot be tape, since the drive occasionally needs to pop out the top 40% of any such cover... Clutter 1 Quote
Cluttermagnet Posted October 17, 2024 Author Posted October 17, 2024 (edited) Quote StarTech USB 3.0 Dual Hard Drive Docking Station - with UASP This is most intriguing. I will look into this sort of thing. It would be great to have a way to hot plug a SATA SSD externally on a desktop tower. But it uses a USB pipeline? Anyway I will work on understanding what these can do. Way more convenient than having to remove all the clutter from the top of the tower (books, CD, DVD, etc.) and pulling the side cover off. My new HP tower has four USB ports on top, in the front. Thumb drives plug down into those jacks at a slight angle. Two of the USB symbols say "SS". I am assuming that's 'solid state' as in SSD? And one of the SS ports has a lightning bolt symbol as well... BTW the tower also has beaucoup USB ports on the rear panel. Edited October 17, 2024 by Cluttermagnet 1 Quote
raymac46 Posted October 17, 2024 Posted October 17, 2024 SS identifies the port as USB 3 (faster data transfer). I think the lightning bolt means it's also a Thunderbolt port but I haven't used that technology. 1 Quote
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