WPH Bios with HP NXseries

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JuiCe
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Posts: 2
Joined: Mon Aug 25, 2008 10:40 am

Hello there.

I've came across this forum while searching for information on bios modification for my NX7300 (GM945Express). I was abot to try my new moded bios when I have noticed that the well known Phoenix Crisis Disk recovery method doesn't work on my laptop. Win+B trick turns the recovery mode on but... there are no WPH bioses for NXseries (and some other new HP Notebooks). There was even a thread on official HP forums about a faulty bios for nx7300 (F.0D) which has killed a lot of laptops wihout ANY reaction from HP and without any chance for bios recovery with Phoenix Crisis Disk). The only thing HP would offer to some of those poor users was a motherboar replacement. Now the official thread is gone (at least I can't access it) and its only available thorugh google cache http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:Kd ... ient=opera

So before doing some stupid things I have decided to create a WPH bios by myself.

The F.0D Bios is gone from HP page - so I have downloaded it and after extracting i tried to open ROM.BIN with PBE -

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NO BCPs found!
OK I knew that was comming. So I have tried to backup my bios with winphlash (which requires a WPH bios to dump the current one). I have used a WPH bios file from DV2000t which is the closest model to nx7300 i could find (please let me know If you know about a different model which is more similar to nx7300) Whinphlas has dumped the bios. Upon opening with PBE a new error has appeared

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Invalid ROM length!
- well that is a progress isn't it?

I have also tried a WPH file from DV6000t -

Code: Select all

Invalid ROM length!
I have compared the sizes of dv2000t and dv6000t WPH files with dumped bioses created with the use of them and

dv2000t WPH - 1 083 102 bytes -- dumped bios from nx7300 - 1 083 075 bytes
dv6000t WPH - 1 102 246 bytes -- dumped bios from nx7300 - 1 102 246 bytes

So what's with the Invalid ROM length? Does anyone have an idea If I can fix this error? When I have compared the dumped nx7300 bios with the one from dv2000 or dv6000 with winhex I have seen that the structure of the files is completly different)Is dumping wph bios fron nx series possible at all?
kocoman
BIOS Newbie
Posts: 17
Joined: Sat Sep 17, 2005 4:53 am

This was already written, by "Beautiful vegetable" (translated from Chinese)
http://www.bios.net.cn/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=8546

but since there was no screen shot or translation(??), it is a bit hard to understand. So credits go to that guy.
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(I tried to post the reply to forum.notebookreview.com but they seem to be down (database error), also want to post at the foomagic.org (Hacking the T60p bios) page but don't know how to post to wikis

Fix for "Invalid ROM Length" problem from your own dump that can't open with the phoenix bios editor

I think this can apply for other laptops bios too.

If you go to the address of "100000h" in winhex of a WPH file that you can open (ie: downloaded from company's site), VS a one that you backup with Winphlash.exe (that cannot open). For me there is a 27 byte difference (or 1B in hex as you can see in the lower right hand corner of the screenshot). If you compare it you will notice (see the highlight).

So to fix it, copy that 27 bytes over and INSERT it to the file that you cannot open/your dump.

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