HP BIOS unlock tool

[peste]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

Finally do you suggest to use the clip or desoldering?

1. Can I try to read 3 or 4 times the .bin BIOS file and compare them to check they are the same so be sure my SOP16 clip had worked well ?

2. Can I refer to this video to plug the clip on the chip?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7esVtVwiGI

or do you have better video reference?

Thanks in advance

throw away the clip .... remove the chip from the board and read it

[Ap78]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

throw away the clip .... remove the chip from the board and read it

Oh no! I've just bought a clip, and I've not soldering hot gun. I've only a soldering iron, but I'm not enough skill ed on it... Have you some advice to suggest in case of clip or is it really impossible to do?

[Ap78]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

I always use clip because I know how to do it with no issues. But unsoldering has less issues if you don't know everything yet.

I know this is very particular request, could you say us some tricks to have succes using the clip on 16pin chip. My chip is MX25L12845EMI-10G. I'm not so confident in myself using soldering hot iron, because I've not hot gun. Thanks

[RethoricalCheese]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

Method depends on what you use for programming. With some programmers it works differently. I am not sure there is a reliable method for Ch341A.

But on most of my programmers I do this.
Remove battery, attach charger, turn on laptop, go to F1 or F10 or whatever screen. Turn off laptop using power button (do not remove charger). Attach programmer, read, VERIFY.

Only continue if verification passes. If there is an error, do not continue, it WILL NOT work. Check that file is not empty. Maybe even check using uefi tool and ME analyzer. If they don't display information, file is corrupted.

[RethoricalCheese]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

Andrews, could you post your files? I found one low end model which had totally different bios and it might be the one you have. My unlocker won't work on that. I could check that if you upload something.

Besides.. Isn't 310 a Pavilion? Thus it does not fit the Elitebook, Probook and Zbook category.

[Ap78]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

Remove battery, attach charger, turn on laptop, go to F1 or F10 or whatever screen. Turn off laptop using power button (do not remove charger). Attach programmer, read, VERIFY.

Only continue if verification passes. If there is an error, do not continue, it WILL NOT work. Check that file is not empty. Maybe even check using uefi tool and ME analyzer. If they don't display information, file is corrupted.

1. Remove battery: do you mean only power battery or CMOS battery as well?
2. So, is the VERIFY command passed after the reading the key point to understand if the reading has been succesful?
3. When do you mean to check with Uefi tool and Me analyzer? After the rewriting the bios?

[RethoricalCheese]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

Only battery. Cmos battery is not related.

Verify means that chip is read twice and content is compared. If they match, it passed. Usually software has verify built in but you may need to do it manually. Just be sure that you have it verified.

Check with uefitool/meanalyzer after reading. Just open the file using one or both of them. Better safe than sorry.

[Andrewsd]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

Andrews, could you post your files? I found one low end model which had totally different bios and it might be the one you have. My unlocker won't work on that. I could check that if you upload something.

Besides.. Isn't 310 a Pavilion? Thus it does not fit the Elitebook, Probook and Zbook category.

Hi,
Ok - yea you are right.. Its not an elitebook, probook or Zbook... I got a little trigger happy there. I have some 40 x HP laptops with BIOS pass (mostly elitebooks) that have been sitting around and saw this as a godsend heh.

Attaching a copy of the BIOS (locked). I checked it and verified it several times without error. The weird thing is, when I tried to re-flash the original locked BIOS to the board, it still gave no-response (flashing AC light).


Any help greatly appreciated.


Finally - I am not particularly skilled with soldering, so would prefer to avoid removing the chips from the board whenever possible, but I know it won´t be possible in all cases. I read above, for example that 820 G3 does not work with clips. How can I know if a certain chip is impossible to flash with clips?

Thanks,
Andrew

[rtho782]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

I have an Elitebook 840 G2 with a bios password, there seem to be two flash chips near the BIOS battery, the Winbond one I can read, it has a 2mbyte bios and putting it through the unlock tool results in a file with an identical MD5 sum.

The other is a Macronix 16mbyte chip and I just can't get a good read from it (no two md5 sums match). Is there anything else I can do or does it need to be desoldered? (in which case I will likely just bin it)

[RethoricalCheese]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

Flashing with a clip depends on package type. If it is soic8, it is possible (but you have to know what you are doing). If it is wson8.. you just cant attach soic8 clip to it. That easy.

rtho782, it is always the largest chip, so 16MB, not 2MB.

[Ap78]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

Verify means that chip is read twice and content is compared. If they match, it passed.

Check with uefitool/meanalyzer after reading. Just open the file using one or both of them. Better safe than sorry.

Thank you, always because "better safe than sorry" I've extra question, because now I cannot only virtualize... but the risk is to brick the system...
1. if the twice reading doesn't match or uefitool and meanalyzer fail, can I use this dump bios
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...86&postcount=1

2. or even writing is risky

3. in this case I need to do something more after the flash, or it should work in my pc without any modification to adapt the new bios to the pc?

[Needpass]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

Do you have a recommendation on a programmer? I need to reflash a G5 Zbook.

[RethoricalCheese]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

As I said.. If you get an error reading, Do Not Continue!! (no modifying, no writing)

Needpass, since G5 is quite new, it should be wson8 so you need to desolder it. And because it should be 256MB, you need a programmer which has it in support list. And be warned that you might have to modify two chips on this model. I have not seen such new laptop yet so I do not know for sure.

[mkvsbs]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

I'd like to thank the moderators and all the contributors of this thread and forum.
I achieved the goal: the BIOS of the Probook 5320 was fixed.
Hoping it can be helpful for new beginners, here are the steps:
0) I took a photo of the system information of the BIOS (UUID, MAC, Serial and so on)
1) I checked the version of the BIOS chip (in that case MX25L3205D).
2) I retrieved the datasheet to verify that it was NOT a 1,8V chip (it is a 3V)
3) I received my CH341A programmer, black version, with the caps on the left disaligned (and named C1,C2 and C4 just to be clear on the version of the black programmer I used)
4) I downloaded: CH341A programmer v.18, v1.29,1.30, 1.31Free and the drivers
5) Installed the Parallel drivers
6) I wondered whether apply or not the 3,3V fix to the black programmer. Verifying how small was the path of the wire I opted to avoid applying the patch.
7) I realized that another hardware bug is affecting the Black programmer: it is not able to reset a special flag of some chips for the Quad mode (that can be indentified by the Q letter instead of the L of my chip). As my chip was not affected I did not need that fix
8) I removed the battery and the PSU cable,left in the CMOS battery and applied the clip to the BIOS chip
9) after step 8 I inserted the USB programmer into a USB2 port of the laptop and plugged in the PSU cable (not the battery, paying attention that the laptop was not switching on.. in case I switched it off). As soon as the PSU is plugged in, the two red leds on the CH341A light up: one for the 5V, the second confirming a good clip contact with the BIOS
10) launched the program V1.29, asked for the autodetection of the chip, choose the correct chip type and asked for the reading of the chip content.
11) asked for the verification and the result was ok (buffer and memory the same)
12) i tried the same with all the other versions of the programmer programs. Everytime the read was succesful and the verification as well BUT the files produced (4MB) were different for each version of the program
13) at that stage I modified the parameters of the program: unchecked "Allows to skip empty data", unchecked "Use fast read mode", checked "Main Memory + Secured OTP (this option is not available in the 1.31 free but from the config.ini it is clear these values are already defaulted in that version!)
14) to compare the bin files I used Total Commander (free version). The files were all verified and equal but per version of the program. It sounds like each version reads the chip in a different way.
15) i downloaded also Colibri version 1.0.1.61 and 1.0.1.62 (choose hardware as CH341A and set the frequency to 100Khz, applied the latest ChipList.dat) Unfortunately with Colibri it was never possible to get a read with succesfull verification. Also with AsProgrammer it was not possible to have a verified read.
16) I downloaded UEFITool, MEAnalyzer and HPUnlocker. UEFITool was showing some inconsistencies in the bin (but on the other hand it is doing like that also with cleared BIOS shared in the forum)
17) MEAnalyzer was able to extract the blocks (I don't know what they are for.. but to me that was meaning that my bin file was somehow well built)
18) HPUnlocker worked like a charm. Drag and drop of my 1.31Free bin BIOS and the program created the unlocked version
19) Comparing with TotalCommandr I appreciated the section where UPUnlocker applied the change wiping the content
20) Using the patched by HPUnlocker BIOS, launched 1.31Free, erased the chip, verified that it was really empty (blank check), opened the patched file, asked for the write. Everything was ok. Asked for the verification. Ok.
21) unplugged the PSU cable, unplugged the clip, removed the USB programmer
22) switched on the laptop and the BIOS was unlocked and all the UUID, MAC and so on were still there

So, yes. Another confirmation that the 3,3V mod is not strictly necessary (at least for this chip). Another confirmation that wihtout PSU plugged in, the chip was neither detected (too heavy voltage drop without the PSU).

Thank you. It was a nice study, with a good result.
bye.

P.S. I did not see the mod for the Quad mode in this forum. If someone needs it just drop a message (I took a pdf of the mod... as everything else that was pdf'ed)

[Ap78]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

Hi guys, I read 3 times my bios file, it is the same compared with HxD. UEFI tool and ME Analizer look good as well.
HPUnlocker also worked well modifing the bin file close to the string "BIOS administrator..." like the other unlocked file posted in the forum.

But now I've a problem, I unplugged and plugged again the clip and I did more 3 readings, they still are the same, and look good with UEFI tool and MEanalizer

but they are different than the ones before the unplugging ...

What's the correct one?

I stopped and wait for your support. Some picture at these links:
https://postimg.cc/gallery/D1Zz7DS
https://postimg.cc/gallery/pydDDpn

[Ap78]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

I've seen, that at first the led of the PC power doesn't blink, after 10min it starts to blink. When I've to do the reading of the chip?

[mkvsbs]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

I've seen, that at first the led of the PC power doesn't blink, after 10min it starts to blink. When I've to do the reading of the chip?

As far as I was able to verify on the field.. the content of the BIOS image can definetely vary from time to time and from Windows program to Windows program.
The basic concept, yet, is that the BIOS should be read when the machine is in a stable status (not working, power switched off even if with the mobo with voltage).

So if the PC led blinks... to me that's not a right moment to take the snapshot of the BIOS.
Plug the PSU , verify that the PC is off, plug the clip, insert the programmer in the USB and take the read and verify it. Take it twice and verify it again.
Check the image with the available tools. What I also realized is that there are segments (at specified offsets of the BIOS) ALWAYS equal. Most likely these are the important parts of the BIOS.
Did you get succesfull reading (and verifications) via different Windows program ?

[Ap78]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

Did you get succesfull reading (and verifications) via different Windows program ?

Do you mean Win10, win7, xp... Tried only Win10 up to now, i can try win xp. Or do you mean dirrerent version of ch341 programmer. I've only used V1.18 up to now. The V1.13 has not my chip, and 1.39 looks for ch341 blue series, not the black one we have, because the scatch of the zif in the program a is the opposite. Can you post a link of newer version than 1.18? Thanks in advance.

[Ap78]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

Finally had succes! Password removed on my 2570p. Thank you to all the members for the support and mainly @RethoricalCheese & @mkvsbs, you're great! I Finally used win10, CH341A programmer software 1.18 (the only one that has worked for my CH341A miniprogrammer Black edition and my chip MX25L12845EMI-10G. I would finish with some notes; I tried also V1.13, but my chip is not available,in the list, V1.29 crashes at saving file after reading, 1.31free doesn't detect my chip correctly. I've also read the chip with V1.18 on winXP and it works fine as well, but in xp don't work HPunlocker, uefitool and MEanalyzer.

[HobbyElectronicDude]

Re: HP BIOS unlock tool

Hello everyone,
I bought a second-hand HP Elitebook 850 G1. After a while I wanted to make a few changes, including in the BIOS. I then found that the previous owner had not removed the administrator password. Unfortunately he also no longer replies to my attempts to contact him. After some research I came across this thread, got the necessary equipment and started.

1. Attempt to read out the Winbond W25Q128FVSQ-1442 on the board using a clip and CH341a (black) -> all attempts have failed

2. desolder the chip and try to read -> this time it worked as expected. One version each with "CH341 Programmer 1.18" and "ASProgrammer" read, verified, saved and compared. both versions are exactly the same.

3. HPUnlocker used -> looks good

4. reflashed the chip and soldered back to the board

5. Powered the laptop and... BLACK -> Fans Spin, Keyboard and Led's light up but no startup to OS or BIOS just a blink code from the capslock and Numlock key frequency approx. 1Hz 3 times then pause and again 3 times, this sequence repeats itself 5 times, so a total of 15 times then it stops. According to the HP manual, this indicates defective RAM, I tried to replace it -> no success.

I have attached a few files maybe one of you can do something with it. UEFITool worked but have no idea what the expenses mean.
With the MEAnalizer, a CMD window pops up briefly and then closes again.

I hope someone can lead me to a Solution

Thanks in Advance

Ruedi