C700 / CQ40 / CQ45 / DV4 / DV5 / DV6 / HDX18T - Insyde BIOS RECOVERY using a USB THUMBDRIVE

[pongster]

The following is a discription of how I managed to
recover the BIOS on a CQ45-107TX
running the InsydeH2O EFI BIOS
using a USB thumb drive.


IMPORTANT !!!
Obtained the correct BIOS file, HP seem to provide many different BIOS's.
For instance the BIOS for CQ45-107AU is not the same as CQ45-107TX.

For the CQ45-107TX I used the Insyde BIOS version F.04 file 30F7F04.FD then

• Renamed the file 30F7F04.FD to 30F7.BIN and placed it on a USB thumb drive.
  
  Disconnected the AC adapter from the notebook.
  
  Removed the battery from the notebook.
  
  Inserted the USB thumb drive into one of the USB ports on the notebook.
  Didn't seem to matter which one.
  
  Held down the 'Windows' Key and the 'B' key.
  
  Connected the AC adapter.
  
  Pressed the 'Power' button on the notebook.
  
  When the LEDs came on, let go of power button and the two keys held down earlier.
  On the CQ45-107TX the touch pad LED came on as amber (disabled) instead of the normal white (enabled).
  
  After about 10 seconds the notebook started reading the USB thumb drive.
  While searching for the file the notebook beeped once a second.
  The number of beeps varied, depending on how big the thumb drive was and
  the number of files on the thumb drive, from just one beep to many.
  If the file was not found, the notebook would reset itself and try again.
  
  If the file was found then it took about 12 seconds for the notebook to load it.
  No beeping sounds heard during the loading time.
  
  When loaded the notebook started flashing, indicated by beeps every 2 seconds.
  This took about 32 seconds.
  
  About 5 seconds after the beeping had stopped the notebook shutdown.
  BIOS worked normally thereafter.

Some notes:

The BIOS files appear to be in this format

  ????F??.FD
  |  || ||_|_____ EFI BIOS file
  |  ||_|________ Version number
  |__|___________ Model specific

Therefore I would guess if you had a CQ45-115AU and your BIOS flash file was 30FBF21.FD then you would probably rename it to 30FB.BIN for use with the USB thumb drive. But I don't know for sure.

Thumb drive formats.
A 128M thumb drive formatted with FAT16 worked okay.
A 16GB thumb drive formatted with FAT32 worked okay.

No beeping sound
It is possible that you will not hear any beeping at all in which case you should still observe the USB drive LED blinking on and off while loading the BIOS file then, if successful, the computer will shut itself down within 1 minute.

the HP Auto Update borked my BIOS so I turned to your post as I know that the cq45 and hp dv4 share the same exact specs (almost)... downloaded the correct and updated bios from the dv4 driver download site and followed these directions to a T! My PC is alive again! You're a genius! Thanks to everyone who contributed finding this out... I'm keeping my USB and call it my Crisis USB! Woohoo!

[carl8888]

UPDATE: hp have delivered the cq40 121tu back to my friend's house just a few days ago. they did not left any written report as to what was the cause of the problem. they said that they had to replace the mobo twice. after fixing the the boot problem they tried to fix the blue screen error, w/c is kind of odd since that is not their concern anymore since we bought it without an os installed. after getting the laptop back my friend turned it on and found win vista home premium installed w/c is not activated over that internet. we had win xp installed before the problem happened. so that only means that they were not able to fix the blue screen error. Once i was able to get to my friend's house to check what was done i saw that they have upgraded the bios to F.24.

I just want to ask, anybody here was able to install all the drivers for win xp properly with this new bios update (F.24) especially the one for the sound driver, w/c is the only problem i was not able to solve? problem happened when i try other bios version. w/c other bios version works with win xp with all the drivers other than F.11c?

[0.0]

So are you saying it took over 3 months for HP to fix a bad BIOS flash

Probably better off starting a new thread for your question on audio problems, IIRC there is a hack using devcon.exe and MS UAA but that was some time ago and there may be better solutions available since then.

One question I did want to ask you about trying the flash recovery, did you reset the CMOS before trying? The reason being that doing so may be detrimental to the recovery procedure.

[0.0]

the HP Auto Update borked my BIOS so I turned to your post as I know that the cq45 and hp dv4 share the same exact specs (almost)... downloaded the correct and updated bios from the dv4 driver download site and followed these directions to a T! My PC is alive again! You're a genius! Thanks to everyone who contributed finding this out... I'm keeping my USB and call it my Crisis USB! Woohoo!

Thanks for the confirmation with DV4s, happy it worked for you

may be it should be CQ40/CQ45/DV4 BIOS recovery procedure ?

[stinkyjames]

Anyone know what file the HP Compaq C700/A900/G7000 bios recovery is trying to find when you perform the "win + b" command?

My notebook is dead after a winflash failed.

I've tried to rename the 30d9f34.fd file to 30d9.bin but notebook looks like it wants a different file name.

I place the file on a floppy, and the notebook reads it for 10 seconds and stop and retries over and over again.

If anyone knows what file the notebook is looking, please help.

[0.0]

Just a guess, maybe try renaming to HP.BIN and see if that works. Good luck.

[stinkyjames]

Just tried HP.BIN from the 30d9.fd file, same thing not luck.

[kate098]

Can we use this info (from Insyde exe file) to correctly rename the .fd file?



Does it always match your file names? I have the dv5-1040ew and it does match mine. Although, I did not try to actually use the procedure above to update Bios, so I can't be sure if it works.

[0.0]

Just tried HP.BIN from the 30d9.fd file, same thing not luck.

Sorry it didn't work for you. All I can suggest is don't give up too soon. One good thing about using the USB flash drive was that it was possible to try over a hundred file names in one go, do you only have the floppy option? Maybe try using the different extensions like .rom, .bin, .wph, .fd etc with names you might think appropriate such as 30d9 (maybe try 30d8 or 30da) or IBL80 which I think might be the board number for a C700 or perhaps the name C700 itself or do you have the A900? Take your time and if it does not seem to be working have a rest and maybe try again later. I take it that your fairly confident it's looking for a BIOS file and not a bootable floppy with crisis recovery? I don't know why HP don't actually give this information out, you would think they would be happy to not have to receive warranty repairs, maybe try to give them a call.

[stinkyjames]

Post #28, thank you for the image, it made me want to run winflash on my notebook to see what shows up. When I ran the winflash on my Presario C700, the ID shows only as HP, not 30d9, so I'll try the following combinations: HP, HP.BIN, HP.FD, and HP.ROM

Post #29, I'll also try: C700, C700.BIN, C700.FD, and C700.ROM.

Update: Same blank/black screen.