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HP BIOS available for bootable CD?

D

DigitalMP

Gawd
Joined
Jun 27, 2004
Messages
861
I already posted this on the HP forums, but no response after 3 days. It's in regards to an HP DV2815NR notebook. A friend came to me with this and said she thought the display might be the issue -- that it boots, there is power and activity, but no display.

When I brought it in, I was able to boot it, and there was a "0251: system cmos checksum bad" error. I F1'd past it, and was able to boot to the Desktop. I figured either the battery or CMOS battery might be going. I restarted without the battery, had some weird display patterns, but ruled out the battery based on the successful boot. The strange display patterns are making me think mobo, but the initial error is pushing me to check the BIOS first. Now it boots, but I'm not getting any display at all.

The only BIOS I can find for this is the sp42186.exe WinFlash utility, but since I can boot to the OS, that's no help. Is there a BIOS file I can burn to a CD in the hope of booting to it? Or some way to extract this file's contents to get the BIOS file to throw onto a CD? If I install it on a Desktop, will it try to replace the BIOS file on my mobo?
 
id say your better off using a bootable flash drive to flash the bios if you can.. but id also agree it looks like the motherboards dying.. same symptoms my old acer laptop had til it finally quit working completely..
 
The old school method was to make a dos boot CD and an autoexec.bat startup file with the winflash command and the bios file. That will work. Lots of tutorials on web. Look up "Dos boot CD" and "flash on boot". You would download that exec and run it which should unzip/extract the winflash.exe and a bios file and include those files on the CD along with the Autoexec.bat you create with text editor .

Bootdisk.com or google "Dos boot disk" (watch out , some malware sites love to use this to sucker people looking for help). Do not surt there running on the admin account on your machine, make a plain user account with no rights. Bootdisk.com is fine but only the basic boot disk is free. Which would be fine if you have a floppy. Boot to Dos anyway you can and then put in floppy with winflash and bios file and run from command prompt. All on the net if you look.

As mentioned the same thing on a USB stick should work as well. Make stick bootable with DOS and put winflash and the raw bios file on it with an autoexec.bat to run it or boot and use dos commands at the prompt on the screen and run it manually.

I dont think a bios is going to help you but hey who really knows.

I would suggest downloading a burning a copy of the Memtest86+ .iso which will make a bootable memory tester. It will test your memory and also be an indication if the video is working properly in 2D. An easy free first thing to try.

I suspect the video chip is having issues.
Video Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce Go 7150M
 
If you open sp42186.exe with something like WinRaR, you'll find the BIOS image inside. It's a .WPH file. You can use PHLASH16 on a dos boot disk to flash it outside of Windows.

I would lean more towards this being a memory or video problem though.
 
Thanks very much for your replies.

The thing about memtest or any other utility boot cd is that if something like memory or the video card is causing the issue, I still won't see anything on the display. So I think I'm kind of screwed there.

I know it's a slim chance that flashing the BIOS will be the fix, but since the display is being killed by whatever the issue is, this may be my only shot...(I didn't mention that I connect an external display in opes of getting something, but nothing.)

And even on this note, I would have to either boot to my bootable USB drive and find a way for it to automatically launch the bios flash, or pray that I end up getting a display at that point in time.
 
ahh most likely the video then.

Yes, format USB as a bootable DOS floppy disk (most can be done this way with windows format)
extract winflash and the bios file from the download and put on USB.

use a text editor like notepad to create a file called autoexec.bat (will automaticlly run after boot)

only need one line in file

./winflash nameofbiosfile.extensionofbiosfile

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source...GzQSgvpjoBgAAAKoEBU_QpvuF&fp=52135eaf1f4ed247

then extract and copy winflash and bios file to USB.

make an autoexec.bat with plain text editor there might even be one already in the .exe you downloaded you will just have to run it and see. Normally there is , if you aready have the USB set up as a dos drive you run the file you downloaded and tell it to install to the drive letter that is the USB.

the ./ just says find the winflash file right here (should be default location but just in case.

you can run winflash with no filename to get a list of the options but usually none are needed. The autoexec.bat file runs automatically so if you get it set up correctly, plug in usb and power up making sure there are no other bootable devices available. You might have to disconnect/remove the HD to make sure it is not trying to boot from that.
 
UBCD4WIN or some other Windows boot LiveCD might also work. Or possibly the Vista/7 boot disks, I'm not sure if they allow you to run stuff off a USB drive or not.

Otherwise you can pull the flash image from the archive and use a BIOS flashing tool in DOS, as mentioned.
 
He said he did and got nothing.

OP, as an absolute last resort before throwing in trash, remove the display portion of the laptop, hard drive and battery most esp. the battery, and anything else easily removend and pop it in the oven on as low as it will go (180F ?) for 30 minutes.

Check this out.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1421792

Last resort only.
 
Alright, I have my bootable USB drive with the bios file on the root of it, along with the autoexec.bat file. My only concern is that, say it boots to the USB drive without any prompts (wish me luck with that) and then it launches the autoexec file that initializes the bios file. I'm still going to be asked if I want to flash the bios, correct?

If I'm prompted for anything at all, this fails, because the small percentage issue that I'm troubleshooting here is that a potentially corrupted bios file is causing the display to not appear, and that the bios flash will resolve that.
 
It depends on the options of the flash program I think. Command like winflash etc. usually allow options to change the way it works - fully auto, ask you, save old bios first before flashing, stuff like that.

You can try running just the flash program with no file or with /h or ? (if vaires) but it should spit out an error msg telling you how to get help which then would show the the options available.

and if you video card is working.
 
OK I downloaded the bios package and ran it and stuck the files in a temp folder so I could look at them.

when you run it it asks where to install too, and you should tell it your USB stick.

you will get files in the root and 2 folders, named winphlash and winphlash64. in both of those folders there is a help file, winphlash.hlp look at that, It appears you can run just the flash program and it will prompt you for all kinds of options (look at the "flags" options/dialouge box" etc. So it is more than likely you will have to modify the .ini file in the root directory with the commands needed to start it all off automatically.

more in a minute.

OK in each subfolder (one folder is for 32 bit machines other is for 64 bit machines - you need to look up your cpu or go to HP site for your lappy and see if it is 64 bit, if new more than liklely it 64 bit) there is a PHLASH.ini. If you open that file with notepad you can see the options set for default. Using the help file you can figure out how it is set from the download/default.

Here is the 64 bit version

[UI]
Advanced=1
DelBios=0
Hideall=1
displayver=1
DisCancel=1

[Main]
Shutdown=2
FormatVersion=2
UpdateFlags=800802
UserFlags=800000
UserMask=d121a4
PSIFlags=60
UserMode=ffffffff
RetryCount=3
UpdateMode=3
ImageFile=
BackupFile=BIOS.BAK

more in a minute, I will try to tell you what each one does and if it needs to be changes, hang on it will take a me a few.


OK if I am reading this right (and you better check me as I assume absolutely NO RESPONSIBILTY AT ALL FOR ANYTHING) if you use the command line mode it will ignore the .ini file. So ignore the .ini above, I got on a wrong track. I am assuing you can see nothing and need a fully automatic procedure.

you will need to run the flash utility in the appropiate sub folder instead of flasher.exe that is in the root. So for a 64 bit CPU/system, inside the autoexec and assuming the subfolder is directly uder the root I would have something LIKE this in the autoexec.bat. To make it easy put the the bios rom file both in the root and down into the subfolder so the program can find it no matter what.

REM (rem is a remark - a non executabile comment)

stuff inbetween the "==============" in autoexec file, REM's do not need to be in there unless you want.

=========
REM go into the sub folder so it becomes the curent working directory.
cd ./winphlash64
REM run the flash progam with options and the name of the rom file. use ./ (meaning this folder right here where we are at in attempt to bullet proof)
./winphlash64.exe /P /C /MFG /MODE0 /S /R=3 ./30D6F27.WPH
==========

Now what you have to do is look at the command precidence help info in the help file and make sure I got those options above in a correct order.

Here are the avaible options and I will color the ones I used above. This is only my best guess, study it all, read it all, triple check me and its all on you. I just trying my best to help and I am NOT saying the above is correct.

Syntax:WINPHLASH64 [options] [romfile]Arguments:
romfile Override the default BIOS image file, e.g., "BIOS.WPH," with romfile.
options /BU[=filename] Backup flash memory into filename before programming. Default filename=BIOS.BAK.
/BBL Program boot block
/A Not supported.
/C Clear CMOS checksum after programming, causing an update of CMOS with the default BIOS values.
/CS Checksum the BIOS image in the BIOS image file. If checksum fails, the operation is terminated with an error message.
/DSS:[string] Specifies the system serial number string. [DMI].
/DMS:[string] Specifies the system manufacturer’s name string.
/DVS:[string] Specifies the system version string.
/DPS:[string] Specifies the system product (model) identification string.
/DSM:[string] Specifies the motherboard serial number string.
/DMM:[string] Specifies the motherboard manufacturer’s name string.
/DPM:[string] Specifies the motherboard product (model) identification string.
/DVM:[string] Specifies the motherboard version string.
/DSC:[string] Specifies the chassis serial number string.
/DMC:[string] Specifies the chassis manufacturer’s name string.
/DPC:[string] Specifies the chassis Asset Tag string.
/DUS:[string] Program/update the UUID.
/DVC:[string] Specifies the chassis version string.
/DOxx:[string] Specify OEM DMI string number xx
/MFG Manufacturing mode - Automatically reboot without waiting for a key press after flash to reboot the system.
/MODE=n Specifies how the DMI strings should be updated. Valid numbers are 0,1,2,3.
/N Program only if the new BIOS is different than system BIOS.
/NOB Do not allow an older bios to be flashed to the platform.
/P Production mode (minimize messages and delays). The main window of WinPhlash64 is not displayed if WinPhlash64 is run on the command line with this option.
/PN Program only if same BIOS part number.
/RO[=name] Read contents of flash part and save to name. No flash performed. Default name = BIOS.BAK
/R=n Retry flashing a block n times if flash fails.
/S Disables the Start Screen. To override the StartScreen=1 in the Phlash.ini file, run WinPhlash64 from the command line with this option.
/SWAP=NO Disable Axx autodetection (The default enables Axx autodetection).

Phoenix WinFlash64 (c) 2006 Phoenix Technologies Ltd. All rights reserved



I have no more time atm. Hope that helps.
 
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Those commands will only run in Windows. He needs to be able to flash from a USB flash drive. That's why I said use Phlash16 (he'll have to download it). The file he needs to flash is the .WPH file.
 
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Yeah your right, its a Dos based boot USB stick, oops. well the procedure is the same as far as the autoexec and selecting options just adjust for the specifics of the 16 bit flash program.
 
Bill, you're truly an asset...thanks for all of your time, it makes a lot of sense procedurally.

And Ryan, thanks to you as well...I'll jump on flash16 and adjust and report back.
 
OP I think I might have some bad news for you.

I see you have the nvidia 7-series videocard on your laptop. I am not sure you are aware of the defect mobile nvidia chips that lasted from the nvidia 6150 to the early 9-series.

Early symptoms are the wifi going out and the display not booting up everytime. During boot up the laptop might do 1 long beep and 2 short beeps indicating a videocard problem.

I had 3 laptops in my family that die and they range from 7 months to 1.5 yr old. I had dozens of friends who suffer the same problem and countless people I met as well doing my side job as a local PC fixer guy.

Nvidia never admitted to it but blame others (i.e. HP, Dell, etc). Companies like HP, Dell, Sony, Apple, and etc had to pay out their pockets and fix this problem which was to replace the entire motherboard. Though even then it wasn't a real fix. The replacement motherboards still carry the fail nvidia chips which was a ticking time bomb. The only "fix" they had so far is to update the bios to crank the fan to run at 24/7 in loud or super loud mode. This was just to get the customer to last long enough till they reach out of the warranty period and the 1yr videocard extended warranty period.

For HP though... their 1yr extension warranty on the videocard is pretty much over now as of around March '10. To replace the motherboard even for this defect it will cost $450 flat.

I suggest your friend to start looking for a new laptop. One that does not have the nvidia 6150 to 9-series gpu.

The only other option is to hit up ebay. There are few people who will take the motherboard from you and reflow the solder to get the board back up and running again for around $50~80. Though in time again the board will suffer the same problems. You can try taking this route and then perhaps resell the laptop at a higher value.

Here is a link to many customers who suffer this problem on the HP forum. HP mods have remove many post and edited them.

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service...47626+1275972920506+28353475&threadId=1191277
 
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