Hello,
I want to unlock the BIOS for this device. It is an InsydeH2O rev. 3.5, and looks like it has a legacy BIOS only.
BIOS link: https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp52501-53000/sp52598.exe
Can you provide the board ID from BIOS Info page?
148x boards could only be unlocked using a flash programmer, while 142x boards unlocking can be done without this tool.
I thought a 142x, but will check soon.
Oh, it is a 1484, so 148x I suppose…
But because the BIOS is from 2011. Doesn’t that make it moddable? I mean, I can also flash using H2OFFT and it looks like it doesn’t have a secure method for flashing as it does in the OS iteself, then reboots and then it is updated. No flashing tool on boot with secure flash, just directly from the OS.
It has. But it’s different from what is used nowadays. HP proprietary one.
Try modifying any text string inside DXE volume and you’ll see.
What would happen? I don’t really know how I would modify a legacy BIOS, but I know there are some tools thay modify UEFI ones.
Black screen and caps-lock button blinking.
It’s a EFI type bios.
Wait, really? It currently boots in legacy mode, and has no option to boot using UEFI in the BIOS. I see the Compaq logo when it starys up. Just for a second, then the Windoss logo pops up.
EFI, and not UEFI. This way they designate early variants, I guess.
Huh, but can I use it to run EFI-like applications?
You can.
How? Does it both run EFI stuff and BIOS MBR things at the same time? I need to know, so I would be able to upgrade the legacy BIOS version of Windows 10 to GPT partition style for (U)EFI.
By loading an app from the shell.
Nice, can I make it permanent? It is my friend’s laptop and want to give it a little boost. UEFI would allow a little faster loading which is nice. Is there also secretly Secure Boot included or not? Pretty good for a HDD and legacy BIOS, it can already boot under 10-30 seconds! Today I clean installed from Windows 8 x86 to Windows x64 as his laptop has a 64-bit CPU. It came with Windows 7.
And please tell me how with the files and so.
What do you mean by permanent? Shell is also an EFI app. So, one app may be launched using another. Shell just gives a simple ability to specify path.
UEFI boot mode is disabled and thus not available.
This is not included.
How can we enable UEFI, so I can always boot Windows 10 using the UEFI boot mode?
Don’t know what amount of effort it’d take. There’s a hidden switch for UEFI boot in softpaq52604, but I doubt it works.
Could you find out for me how to do it? I would appreciate it if you did. It would be nice to get this thing to boot EFI bootloaders and binaries. And also, I would maybe also need to get to know how to put it back to Legacy, just in case.