Removing ‘Manufacture Programming Mode is in Unlock’ on HP Laptop

After replacing the motherboard or updating BIOS firmware (flashing) on HP laptops using the HP BIOS Configuration Utility, a message may appear each time the computer boots after the POST stage:

Manufacture Programming Mode is in Unlock Mode

System is booting in manufacturing program mode

or

Manufacturing programming mode is set to unlocked

The user must press the function key on the keyboard to continue booting the operating system. Without it, the operating system will not boot.

Manufacturing Mode is a special BIOS mode on HP and Dell machines used by manufacturers to quickly upload/update firmware. For devices to be shipped to consumers, the production mode is set to Lock. Therefore, if you have flashed the BIOS or replaced the motherboard, this could reset the manufacturing mode back to unlocked mode.

Let’s look at how to disable manufacturing mode on HP devices using the HP BIOS Configuration Utility (BCU).

The latest HP BIOS Configuration Utility for Windows is available for download from this link: https://ftp.ext.hp.com/pub/caps-softpaq/cmit/HP_BCU.html

The current release of BCU is 4.0.33.1 for Windows 11, 10, 8.1, and 7 (XP not supported) from 12.08.2022 (sp143621.exe).

Download, run, and extract sp143621.exe to a local directory the default directory is C:\SWSetup\SP143621).

To remove this annoying message from your HP device, follow these steps:

1. Open a command prompt as Administrator and change to the directory where you extracted the BCU files. In our example, this is C:\SWSetup\SP143621 (Previous versions of BCU were installed by default to the “C:\Program Files (x86)\Hewlett-Packard\BIOS Configuration Utility”)

   cd c:\SWSetup\SP143621

2. I will use BiosConfigUtility64.exe to configure the BIOS because my computer is running Windows 10 x64;
3. To get the current HP BIOS configuration and export it to a text file, run the command:

   BiosConfigUtility64.exe/getconfig:config.txt

   A message should appear:
   SUCCESS msg='No errors occurred'
   

4. Don’t close the CMD prompt window;
5. Open the config.txt file with Notepad:

   notepad.exe config.txt

6. Replace the strings:

   Manufacturing Programming Mode
       *Unlock
        Lock

   with

   Manufacturing Programming Mode
       Unlock
       *Lock

   

7. Save the file and apply the changes to the BIOS:

   BiosConfigUtility64.exe/setconfig:config.txt

   A message will appear in the console that the value of the Manufacturing Programming Mode parameter will be changed from Unlock (OLDVALUE) to Lock (NEWVALUE).
   

You will need to restart your HP device for the new settings to take effect.

Production programming mode unlock no longer appears on the HP laptop screen when booting.