I have an OMEN 17 model ck1020nr (i7 12th and 3070ti). (bios version and laptop details)
In December while I was gaming, the laptop turned off while playing Rust. Sent it to repair company, and they told me the BIOS got corrupted. A few days before it happening, HP published a BIOS update, so it is my belief that something went wrong during an automated BIOS update.
HP tried to charge me $600 to replace the whole MB, and since I dont have this money, Im trying to fix it.
The repair company sent me the corrupted BIOS version copy to analyze.
I found a company in Taiwan which provided me a version of the BIOS. (they asked me to provide the corrupted to them, and then they sent me one that they told me is the correct)
And I downloaded the exe file from the website.
So, the corrupted file and the version from Taiwan (from my understanding) are quite similar, I analyzed it using HxD and there are few differences. I am not sure the file provided to me is correct.
I also tried to watch and learn how to extract the BIOS from the exe file, but I just couldnt (I am not a super tech guy).
I am looking for someone who could both analyze the corrupted & that Taiwanese version and provide me the .bin BIOS from the HP website. I will obviously pay for the service.
I don`t really know what to do anymore, I called HP, asked for help in HP website, asked for help in reddit, tried to find repairshops to fix it but no one could help me. I am close to abandon the laptop and admit the loss. Please, someone please help me.
To be fair, I didnt try to flash the Taiwan version since from what I read online, if the file is bad, it may actually fry the whole MB. So thats another concern of mine. (Also, I dont have the equipment to flash it, I`ll have to take it to the repair company so they can do it for me.)
Please and thank you in advance.
Edit by Fernando: Thread moved into the “BIOS Modding Problems” Category and thread title customized
That’s not reasonable, a bios update wouldn’t brick a PC ‘when playing’, it bricks next boot. I addiotion there’s a flash log where several flash initialisations were stopped because of wrong ProjectID, Reported installed version is always F15
There’s two types of firmware for this notebook, 8A17, 8A18 and 8A19, 8A1A. Your’s is the first type, version F15 and the bios regions static parts are identical to a stock image.
The bios from the company in Taiwan is just a dump of another laptop (different serial) with an empty NVRAM.
So there’s no corruption in your dump except for possible corruption in NVRAM or a corrupted ME (very unlikely)
For a single chip it should work, but newer machines tend to have very potent bios recovery / anti tampering mechanisms working with a second chip and (possibly TPM)
Hey!! Thank you for your reply, I really appreciate your time & effort to help me.
Let me further explain what happened on that day. I was playing the game, and the display turned off, but the external monitor worked fine. So it took me 2 or 3 days to take it to the repair company, and I was using the laptop daily (external monitor). I believe that when they got the laptop they tried those reset operations like CMOS, and from that day, the laptop didn`t boot anymore. Also, you mentioned that there is a log with multiple flash initializations because of wrong Project ID? what does that mean in simple terms?
So, this file you uploaded (BPK OMEN O17) how did you fix the corrupted file? If not, how did you find this file? I will take the laptop to a repair company so they can try to flash it to the BIOS chip. Again, thank you! Do you have a paypal?
Didn’t say multiple initializations because of wrong ProjectID I said “multiple initializations which all were stopped because of wrong ProjectID” MIght have been you trying to flash something, might be a repairshop, I don’t know. According to this log no software flashing was done and the dump you linked is still the base version mentioned in this log.
There’s no obviously corrupted file. The thing one can do is to empty NVRAM = replace it with NVRAM from stock bios and to refresh the ME region, set the state back from ‘initialized’ to ‘configured’- either by following this procedure or - if vendor provides a complete firmware image- take ME region from a stock bios.
Sometimes starting with an enpty NVRAM (not the same as CMOS, can’t be erased by deconnecting battery) may help, since quite many people try to ‘mod’ their machines by changing NVRAM variables in an EFI shell with setvar. This can effectively brick or kill a machine. Quite often there’s made up a history around this with a firmware upgrade done by Windows update which went worng. (There were incompatible firmware updates done by Windows update but they are clearly recognizable in the static EFI volumes of the bios region)
So this file is your own firmware but there was no obvious error that can be fixed. This is the ‘no obvious error found, trying kinda universal reset procedure as last try’.
(The Taiwanese shop had done the same two things but ‘in a different way’ by taking a stock firmware and putting in the machine specific data of this other machine into it),
Well, thank you again for the support.
The simple fact that the BIOS file doesnt look corrupted to you, associated with the fact they tried to flash and apparently couldnt (logs) tells me I dont have the appropriate local support for this problem Im facing. It may not even be the BIOS file, and possibly a hardware (It is starting to look like). Anyways Ill try one more time, ask them to flash the file you sent, and also to empty the NVRAM. If it isnt BIOS file, what other component could it be? They allegedly checked hardware and didnt find anything not working. Im thinking they may not have the appropriate components or procedure to actually flash the BIOS. Well, that sucks.
Well, didn’t say who flashed and when, but there’s on valid update from F06 to F15 and then 4 times “This BIOS update is not compatible with this device” with versions F48, F45, F16. A version F16 exists for this board, but latest firmware versions are F21 for your subtype, F19 for the other subtype, so nothing about F4*
You can simply compare, few differences in Flash descriptor, missing logs and machine specific data.
And all the three files (the one I attached, the one from Taiwan and the stock) do already have an empty NVRAM, so no need to ask for that specifically.
No sir, that was not me. But I`ve posted this subject on reddit and HP forum.
This laptop had a problem, sometimes the fans would just not turn on. One day I actually installed one of the earliest BIOS versions availlable, so one of those could be mine…
