I rescued a couple of old HP Elitebook laptops from being destroyed
>Elitebook 8740w
>Elitebook 8760w
They're fucking awesome, the build quality is better than anything you'd see today
But I cant install Pop OS Linux on them. It simply wont even load the live version. Debian works but it complains about "the TPM chip".
This same thing happens on both laptops so they're definitely not broken, it's that Linux struggles with HP firmware.
What should I change in the BIOS?

>>1533755 (OP)
Try searching up "TPM chip" and "Debian", go through the results which seem relevant. If you find something, look into that further.
https://4.nboeck.de/web?s=%22TPM+chip%22+and+%22Debian%22

>>1533766
Anyhow, I would try disabling secure boot.

Old laptops, without an SSD drive, seem unusable no matter how great they were 10 years ago

>>1533766
>>1533767

OP here.
The BIOS doesnt have a secure boot option.

When Pop OS live fucks up, it fucks up where it's doing something like
>a start job is running for casper live ISO checksums
After that the screen starts flashing and I can distinguish an HP boot selection screen popping up in the background
I disabled TPM but it didant help

>>1533845
Rooting for you and the laptops, anon. You could try installing some different Linux distributions, e. g. Q4OS.

I seriously doubt that it lacks secure boot, afaik that is part of UEFI and cant be stripped out, try googling for info on your models, maybe they are named differently.

Have you tried asking on the distro's forum? also >>>/g/fglt

>>1533851

I'm OP and this laptop is a nightmare. I tried installing Linux Mint instead, but after installing it, I get an error saying boot device not found.
IT wont even let me go to BIOS anymore. I press F10 and get "system diagnostics" instead of BIOS
There's literally nothing I can do anymore, like it bricked itself just installing Linux Mint

Fucking hell man. I can tell these things were designed for one purpose alone and that is Windows 7, factory installed.

>>1533881
>afaik that is part of UEFI

I'm using Legacy instead of UEFI. UEFI has weird boot options like "notebook harddrive" instead of discrete options

>>1533755 (OP)
puppy linux or easyos if you all you do is web browsing

>>1533776
I watch FHD HEVC on core 2 duo

get gud

debian is the worst shit to deal with to install. use ubuntu lts if u want debian. or something better altogether.

>>1533888
I wasnt talking about CPUS but HDDs you retard
CPUs dont slow down over time the same way HDDs do
I have Core 2 Duo as well

>>1533901
use ram as hdd retard
git gud

>>1533755 (OP)
Found a video of someone using Ubuntu on it, so it should work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzlSwxPx9X4

Maybe try some non-apt distros, like:
Ultramarine linux
Opensuse
EndevourOS

>>1533884
It may be some secure boot thing, I remember I had to make an exemption to allow booting linux from bios on an acer laptop. System diagnostics sounds like it's trying to boot to windows, you should be able to still entrr bios somehow. Try booting fatdog64 maybe.

>>1533885
You should use UEFI if you can. Keep in mind that mint and popOS don't have secure boot supoort by default.

>>1533903
That's fuckin tarded

>>1533906
Isn't Ubuntu like proprietary? It says that it will be free for 5 years after which you need a license.

>>1533884
>system diagnostics
Did you completely format the HDD? Sounds like something to quickly recover broken OS installs for offices.

>>1533908
Some shit is proprietary, but I think what you've hit upon is that LTS distros are supported for 6 years only. So just upgrade, LTS releases are in April every even year.

>>1533908
No, only snap is proprietary. 6 years is extended support if you want to stay on the same stable version for a long time, it's mostly useful for corporate use, not relevant to home users.

>>1533906
I literally cant find anything saying "secure boot" in the HP bios menu

>>1533916
It might be old enought to not have it. If it doesn't then forget about it, but TPM is related to secure boot, so I don't know why you were getting that error.
Does debian actually boot to desktop or does the error prevent you?

>>1533919
>Does debian actually boot to desktop or does the error prevent you?
Yeah, it does boot to desktop. Win10 too.

Someone had the same exact problem as me:
https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=383191
It's always related to HP laptops.
They're saying switc to UEFI without cms. I'll try that

>>1533948
>>1533919

OP here again. I got Linux MInt to work when I switched to "UEFI boot" instead of Legacy.