Re: Hp 450 G4 rev D
@sebulia - THANK YOU!!!
I tried with 6-7 different BIOS for the 450 G3 that I found on the google and each one failed. The clean BIOS you provided allowed me to boot up and flash to latest (after I setup featurebyte, etc.).
My original issue and story:
For many months my laptop was acting flakey and sometimes when I booted up it would sound 2 long beeps + 2 short beeps, with flashing CAPS/NUM-lock indicating BIOS corruption. I would pull power/battery and restart, after a few attempts, it would boot up all the way. For a few months this got me by until one day all it would do is continue beeping. I was unable to get the BIOS to load from backup via USB key using Windows+B or Windows+V, and a few other recommended combinations. I had downloaded the N78_0151 BIOS (only one available on HP Support at this time), and it wasn't loading.
Before selling on eBay, I was going to attempt to desolder the winbond BIOS chip and put in a new one, but then I found the clip on programmer, CH341a. I did a backup of the 'corrupted' BIOS and tried 6-7 other supposed 450 3G BIOS, but none worked. None of them had the corrupt BIOS beep codes that my original BIOS had, but half of that allowed a power-on would only spin up the fan, no video. The other half would make the power port light blink orange and would not allow power-on. Even flashing the N78_0151 (latest HP BIOS), would not allow power-on; strangely, the HP BIOS contained several empty pages, all 'FF' from 0-5C000. I eventually put my original 'corrupted' BIOS back in and I reproduced the original beeping behavior, which told me the programmer was working properly.
When I found this forum, after flashing the clean factory BIOS you provided, it booted right up and I was able to set featurebyte etc by doing a S/N lookup in HP partsfinder.
It's worth mentioning that I did check on the HP_TOOLS partition on the disk and all folders under Hewlett-Packard/BIOS/* were empty. In retrospect, before attempting to buy a CH341a programmer, I should have mounted the drive on another PC and dropped the N78_0151.bin into those folders to see if the backup system would pick it up. (I suppose I could put my original corrupt BIOS back on and try that, but not worth the effort at this point).
Thanks again! Also, do you know why the new N78_0151.bin file contains several pages of FF at the beginning? Since I have updated to this version and it works when done through the HP utility, I can probably check if it was written as-is to the chip, or if it had to be moved around. The backup in HP_TOOLD/Hewlett-Packard/BIOS/Current contains a ton of FF in it as does the previous N78_133.bin, which I think was saved when I updated (based on the clean factory BIOS?).
@sebulia - THANK YOU!!!
I tried with 6-7 different BIOS for the 450 G3 that I found on the google and each one failed. The clean BIOS you provided allowed me to boot up and flash to latest (after I setup featurebyte, etc.).
My original issue and story:
For many months my laptop was acting flakey and sometimes when I booted up it would sound 2 long beeps + 2 short beeps, with flashing CAPS/NUM-lock indicating BIOS corruption. I would pull power/battery and restart, after a few attempts, it would boot up all the way. For a few months this got me by until one day all it would do is continue beeping. I was unable to get the BIOS to load from backup via USB key using Windows+B or Windows+V, and a few other recommended combinations. I had downloaded the N78_0151 BIOS (only one available on HP Support at this time), and it wasn't loading.
Before selling on eBay, I was going to attempt to desolder the winbond BIOS chip and put in a new one, but then I found the clip on programmer, CH341a. I did a backup of the 'corrupted' BIOS and tried 6-7 other supposed 450 3G BIOS, but none worked. None of them had the corrupt BIOS beep codes that my original BIOS had, but half of that allowed a power-on would only spin up the fan, no video. The other half would make the power port light blink orange and would not allow power-on. Even flashing the N78_0151 (latest HP BIOS), would not allow power-on; strangely, the HP BIOS contained several empty pages, all 'FF' from 0-5C000. I eventually put my original 'corrupted' BIOS back in and I reproduced the original beeping behavior, which told me the programmer was working properly.
When I found this forum, after flashing the clean factory BIOS you provided, it booted right up and I was able to set featurebyte etc by doing a S/N lookup in HP partsfinder.
It's worth mentioning that I did check on the HP_TOOLS partition on the disk and all folders under Hewlett-Packard/BIOS/* were empty. In retrospect, before attempting to buy a CH341a programmer, I should have mounted the drive on another PC and dropped the N78_0151.bin into those folders to see if the backup system would pick it up. (I suppose I could put my original corrupt BIOS back on and try that, but not worth the effort at this point).
Thanks again! Also, do you know why the new N78_0151.bin file contains several pages of FF at the beginning? Since I have updated to this version and it works when done through the HP utility, I can probably check if it was written as-is to the chip, or if it had to be moved around. The backup in HP_TOOLD/Hewlett-Packard/BIOS/Current contains a ton of FF in it as does the previous N78_133.bin, which I think was saved when I updated (based on the clean factory BIOS?).
Comment