HP hides BIOS options

Berga · Sat Oct 04, 2003 12:58 am

I've bought an HP a115.it pc recently just to find out that they have hidden the most important options in it. It's a Phoenix AwardBIOS but their BIOSes doesn't works. The right ones should be the ones present in the MB manufacturer site, that is FIC (www.fic.com.tw) and the model is AM37. I've contacted HP for this problem but they keep saying something like: "this is for your safety, so no one can change dangerous options" and "we cannot provide you with another flasher".

What I'm asking here is:
1) someone knows how to modify the original BIOS to get back the hidden options? I'm a programmer and so an advanced user, I need only to know the offsets for the changes and the new values.
2) alternatively can I change in some manner to the FIC BIOS? Because their flasher doesn't let me flash it, because they are different in sizes (the HP one is double in size). If I use a flasher that forces this flashing, I'm risking to broke it? And which flasher to use?

I thank you all in advance!

Berga · Sat Oct 04, 2003 2:14 am

Just found out that i should use modbin6. But how? I don't want to get my bios broken. I need only to unhide the hidden options.

Sun Oct 05, 2003 10:52 am

put modbin and the .bin flash file in the same directory, start modbin, open flash file and have a look around. Once you have unhidden the options, save the file and flash it with the HP flash utility.

Berga · Sun Oct 05, 2003 6:08 pm

I've already tried that but modbin (modbin6 v1.00.38, the only one that seems to work here) gives me some errors when saving (e.g. "2MBIOS.BIN can't open") and it saves the bios like it was before. The good thing is that it also saves the bios file inside the bin (the first part that should be the bios itself without the "add-ons") in packed and unpacked forms, so now I've got it ready to put it in my 512k .bin file with cbrom. But I can't find a way to release the "System BIOS" file from it nor add/replace it with the new one.
Another thing that is not so clear for me is this:
it's normal that inside modbin I can see all options already unhidden even if in my real bios they are hidden? What I mean is if modbin loads the current bios options (like hidden options) and shows them right. Because when I load my bios file with it, it shows all options unhidden, but when I boot up my pc most of them are hidden.

Thanks

sulbert · Tue Oct 07, 2003 11:48 am

Maybe you will find some useful information from this topic:
MODBIN & MD8000 (MoBo: Medion MD5000 aka MSI MS-6701)

Berga · Tue Oct 07, 2003 5:38 pm

Thanks for that link. I've found interesting infos about my problem, like it is not solved yet

I'll try to make something about it myself, and if I will find a solution I will post it for mittern8 and all other guys with my problem.
Thanks again for reply and for this great forum!

Bye,
Berga

Tue Oct 07, 2003 8:18 pm

question: are you running mdbin from within XP? That's not going to work, you need a pure DOS environment like a windows 95 or 98 machine boot in safe mode command prompt only.

Berga · Thu Oct 09, 2003 2:53 am

Yes I'm running WinXP but I've also tried to run it from a boot floppy. The floppy was created with the win95 bootdisk as basis, then modified a little by me. Maybe I need to disable emm and other memory managers too? I will try with everything disabled, a clean boot. But my doubt remains (as with the doubt of the person, I can't remember his name now, with the same problem of mine in the link posted above): why modbin doesn't shows my actual bios setup? The hidden options should be there, but they aren't. They are all enabled (how much I wish they are!

) in modbin. It is possible that there are only 2 of us here with this problem? Sure you're lucky...

Oh, if you are interested I can send to whoever wants my bios to try to solve the problem. You know that talking about a thing isn't the same as doing it in person...