DV6915nr BIOS flash failed, HELP!

Oh boy am I screwed....

My friend gave me her laptop to upgrade so I figured while I'm at it I'll update the BIOS to the latest version.

Well, there are a few places on this laptop that it says it's a DV6700... well, after flashing the BIOS the laptop is dead. After going W-T-F for the last hour or so I noticed a very small spot on the laptop that reads DV6915nr.

Why this little beast says 6700 a few places is beyond me. So of course I've flashed the incorrect BIOS.

I've tried holding Fn+B and Win+B with NO beeps or hints anything is going on.

I can of course turn the laptop on and all the lights shine, but no BIOS, no beeps... no anything. I already have a bootable 512MB USB flash stick I've tried recovering from, but still a not go since there aren't any beeps.

Any tips or help on this one????

as an FYI I do have a EEPROM programmer... but I assume that the BIOS chip is soldered onto the main board?? If not, I'm willing to open this puppy up and reprogram the chip manually... I just need confirmation before I do surgery.

 

dunno, but the dv6700ef [and possibly some others] share the same bios image with the DV6915nr.

Take a look for yourself:
DV6915NR

DV6700EF

Both list "sp52477.exe" as the latest bios for the machine.

 

unfortunately what got flashed was a BIOS for the DV6700 CTO with the sp39862.exe downloaded here:

http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp39501-40000/sp39862.exe

 

Almost all laptop / notebook BIOS chips since 2003 have been soldered to the motherboard.

 

Yep, pretty much figured that... but if I could ID the chip and it's large enough I might be able to de-solder it or at least wire up rig to it so I can re-program it.

Problem is I can't really ID the chip at this point and think I need to remove the case.

Does anyone any pics of the full motherboard or can at least tell me where the BIOS chip is located?

Mostly I just wish someone could confirm the correct BIOS recovery method on this model of HP laptop so I could be certain it's not working before I go digging into the case.

 

If you have a floppy drive handy, you can try the floppy recovery method.

1. Download latest bios from HP and extract to a folder.

2. Extract either NV.cab or ATI.cab depending on your graphics card.

3. Open the ver.txt file and look for the string after '_ROM_' (

4. Rename Rom.bin to (that string you found).BIN. For example 68DVD.BIN

5. Copy the (renamed).BIN file to a freshly formatted (not bootable) floppy.

6. Remove battery from notebook.

7. Plug a USB floppy drive into the notebook and place the floppy with the bios file in it.

8. Hold down Win and B keys and turn on the power.

9. Release keys when floppy is accessed.

10. Sit back and wait about two minutes for your notebook to rise from the dead!

 

Thanks for the tip. I have tried a bootable USB thumb drive and have tried several methods of "Win+B", "Fn+B", etc but none of them have gotten any activity out of the thumb drive... no flashing light to show it's been accessed anyway. I've tried all three USB ports as well with no results. Also, from what I've read I should at least hear the PC "beep", but again... I yet to hear even that while holding any keys down.

I don't have a USB floppy drive though, but from reading up on similar laptop versions (the DV6700 series) those all work with a USB thumb drive.

My other issue is that my BIOS file is a Phoenix "WPH" and not a BIN and I have no ver.txt file to speak of.... or NV.cab or ATI.cab either.

 

at this point I'm certain I'll be doing one of two things... opening up the case for a possible manual flash, or shipping this beast out to someone who can fix it. Right now my only option is a person that wants $180 to reflash the BIOS.

1) Does anyone have a casing removal guide?
2) Anyone able to reflash this BIOS (probably will require it to be removed from PCB) for less than $180?

 

Here are some pics of the main board... can anyone tell me where the BIOS chip is? lol... I can't seem to ID it myself. Hell, I'll even use a JTAG if someone can ID that as well, lol.

If you can't view the pics below, here are the direct links:
http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t297/teknomedic/DV6915nr/IMG_0840-Copy.jpg
http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t297/teknomedic/DV6915nr/IMG_0834-Copy.jpg

 

If they are going to charge you that much, you might as well just get another motherboard. Will cost you ~$100 on eBay.

Here's the service manual: http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01295877.pdf

Might be a slight variation at some parts considering that this is for the DV6500-6700. The DV 6800-6900 were pretty much the same.

As for your pics above, in the first pic, to the right of the silver IC labeled "1R0 0823", that 8 pin IC looks like the BIOS chip.

You can possibly get a new BIOS chip from here: bios-repair.co.uk | Preflashed HP Compaq BIOS Chips-EEPROM. Others have successfully performed the job on an HDX9000.

 

awesome, thanks much... I'll take a look at the manual and investigate that chip a bit and see if I can confirm.

BTW You're the second person to say that... It says...
"K181
G966-25"
on the chip...

I'm still trying to confirm... why do you say that one and not the one just above the battery holder and just to the right of the black "100"??

 

Well... so far I've only been able to find one place online that lists "Phoenix tech" as a distributor of a G966-25 chip, but that's very little to go on if I'm going to try and re-write a chip. If we're wrong that's the BIOS chip then I'll be messing up an unknown chip and making things much worse.

 

wow... my day just keeps getting better.

So I had previously tried to create a USB crisis recovery thumb drive so I could try the recovery on the laptop.

Well, I restarted my desktop that I created said USB drive on and it appears that their wonderful recovery program auto changed my HDD's bootup files. Now I get a "Flash crisis recovery" when I boot my PC... and if I don't have that USB stick in my PC I get a "disk boot failure" error... with the USB stick in place I get an inf. loop of "Flash crisis recovery" message. Before trying the USB stick I did remove the BIOS file I had setup for the laptop so as not to have this crap program auto flash my desktop's BIOS... this is crazy

It's been a long time since I modded or edited boot files on an HDD.... I'm talking like back during Windows 98 and early WinXP (pre sp1) days. I can't even remember the correct terms to search for.

Doen't suppose anyone knows how to re-create the boot text that tells the HDD to load Windows again?

I've tried using my Windows 7 disk to "repair" my computer, but when it brings up the "system recovery options" it's not even listing my Windows install as an option... just a blank screen.

I seem to recall being able to edit the bootup sequence via Recovery Console before, but again... it's been a long time.

 

The only two ideas I have ATM is to...
fix or re-edit my HDD's boot section so that it "knows" it's a bootable system disk and can load windows...

or to download my desktops BIOS and place that on the USB stick and see what happens....

My concern their is that even doing the BIOS method won't fix my HDD boot section... the only way that would work is if the Crisis recovery program would re-write that to the HDD.... but I don't see that happening.

 

wow... so I've gained some limited access via recovery console and "diskpart".

From what I can see my NTFS HDD has been changed to a non-lable FAT (that's right.... FAT... not FAT32) partition that's 400GB, lmao.

I can't believe this is happening.

I know the HDD wasn't formatted as all my files are there so it appears that only the MBR was changed to a FAT system... or something. I'm at a loss here.

This is insane.

 

So here's my best guess... that little program did a "quick format" of my main HDD and changed it from an NTFS to a FAT so my entire directory structure is gone.

Since it was a quick format all my files are still there, but the HDD has no clue about them.

At this point I'm stuck as far as I know, because I don't think there's anyway for me to restore my directory structure after a quick format.

I think I didn't notice this happen right away because everything I was doing was running from my 4GB of RAM and didn't call for any HDD access of the C drive. What's odd is that during this time I was downloading files to the HDD from the net while I tried to fix the issues of the laptop... so figure that one out.

I think my only hope is to use one of my HDD recovery programs to at least recover my needed saved files and then re-install windows.

Unless someone else knows of a way to "reconvert" my HDD from a FAT to an NTFS and still retain my directory structure, lol.

 

My only other hope is that this program simply added new partition to my HDD... but at this point I can only see one main FAT partition so it appears my NTFS partition is simply gone. lame.

and before anyone even asks... yes, when I was using that program I always selected my USB drive as the drive for it to change... in fact my HDDs were never an option to select so why this happened is WAY beyond me.

 

Nope... just one partition... a 500MB FAT partition... when I use disk managment it sees the full 400GB, but the FAT parition is only 500MB.

Guess it's time to start scanning my HDD for my files... so very lame.

 

Well, there are tools for that. I usually go for TestDisk.

 

Not heard of Test Disk... can that restore a quick formatted partition complete with directory structure? In the past I've used programs to at least scan the surface of the disk and then recover any available data.. my favorite ATM is "Active File Recovery", but I'm certainly open to other or better programs.

I'll check it out.

In the mean time I could still use any help to confirm that IC is for sure the BIOS chip... it would also be very helpful if anyone can track down the correct Pin numbering for that chip so I can create my "wire rig" to reflash it.

 

OMG!!! You are a life saver... that program did the trick. I was able to find my original partition tables and restore the drive to it's old structure.

That little program just got placed in my little PC repair bag, lol.

The only test now is to put it back into my PC and let it boot up... crossing fingers... but this is the first thing to go correctly today it seems.

 

spoke a little too soon... my disk won't boot... but I think in my excitement that I forgot to also restore the MBR... so right now it's just a data disk, but not bootable... should be fixable at least more than it was before.

 

As with most data recovery stuff, it always depends on what got clobbered. Testdisk usually does a good job at finding deleted stuff [as you might expect from a forensic tool], but obviously it can't repair overwritten windows system files. Maybe you can get away with fixmbr & fixboot [if such a tool is available for your windows system], Otherwise you probably need to look for a windows dvd/cd and try "repair".

 

for sure... I just repaired the Boot sector with test disk... but if that doesn't work I'll just have the Windows DVD repair the startup. I was going to use the Windows DVD for that before, but decided to try Test Disk on the boot sectore before letting the DVD try.

 

Well, TestDisk failed to get the HDD bootable and so did the Windows DVD. The startup repair at first found a problem and then did an edit to fix the issue, but after the restart I still can't get Windows to load, and now with the Windows DVD repair it find no problems.

It almost looks like my drive is no longer "C", but "H". I suspect that since everything else in my Windows install is based on the "C" drive, having the boot stuff looking for "H" is causing the issue.

Now I just need a way to edit or change my drive in the boot files from H to C.

 

Well, I'm moving forward at least... I found a random post online that helped... I'm reposting here for reference...

--1. Boot from the Windows 7 CD and gain access to the Recovery Console Command Prompt (internet searches can help with details)

--2a. Type Bootrec /RebuildBcd , and then press ENTER. (If the Bootrec.exe tool runs successfully, it presents you with an installation path of a Windows directory. To add the entry to the BCD store, type Yes. A confirmation message appears that indicates the entry was added successfully.)

--2b. If the Bootrec.exe tool cannot locate any missing Windows installations, you must remove the BCD store, and then you must re-create it...
...To do this, type the following commands in the order in which they are presented. Press ENTER after each command.
-- Bcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup
-- ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old
-- Bootrec /rebuildbcd

3. Restart the computer
----------------------------

In my case I couldn't find the BCD file in the "default" directory above so I had to change the command to search in the correct HDD.

Once I did all that and restarted my computer is now back to it's old self... whew.... now to fix that laptop... but ATM I have to attend a funeral for a fallen police officer.

 

Glad you got that HDD issue sorted out. That was a close one.

And of course, my condolences for the Officer's family and friends.

As for the BIOS; the chip I'm guessing as being the right one looks quite similiar to the others used on HP notebooks. Usually in that spot on that side of the mobo. The exception being the Inventec motherboard models. The BIOS chip for those is located on the opposite side of the board from the RTC battery and near about the PLL area.

I could be wrong though. I'm guessing that the DV series from those years is a Quanta board. They (BIOS chips) are often in that area.

BTW, have you tried all the various other key combos to get it to load the BIOS from USB flash?

 

I've tried all the combos I've seen on line with the USB stick in all three available ports with no change.
Fn+B, Fn+F, Fn+Esc, Win+B, Win+F, Win+Esc, Fn+Win.

My only concern is that not one of those combos were specific to the DV6915nr, but since they were for models around this laptop I can only assume that this laptop would use one of them.

So for trying to reprogram this chip... should I solder Pin 1 to Pin 1 etc... or will I need to do something strange like Pin 1 to Pin 4 of the programmer?

 

Not sure if anyone would care to read it, but here's some about that officer... also kttc.com has a couple of videos along with the MPLS Star:
At Lake City officer's funeral, everyone feels like family | StarTribune.com

 

Actually, there's one more. Hold down all four arrow keys.
post

 

I've just completed half of my wire rig... If I can't manually reprogram I'll try that next

 

There was doubt on another forum that was the correct chip... so I'm now trying to access a chip on the other side of the PCB

EON F80-75HCP... I have wired up my rig and when reading data all I get is "FF" in all data points... which is more than the other one gave me... all "00"

Can anyone else confirm that this may be the BIOS chip?

 

Prolly it considering that model code belongs to a flash RAM module.

 

Sure hope so.. I've since de-soldered it from the board... have just finished reflashing it and am just starting to get it back onto the board...

If this isn't it, I just made this a whole lot worse, lol.

 

Ordeal is over!! The laptop lives once more.

Thanks for all the help, it's really appreciated.

For reference, the BIOS chip on the DV6915nr is on the keyboard side of the mainboard PCB (opposite side of the motherboard battery). It's an 8pin surface mount that sites just below a large 144pin "ENE" chip.

 

Excellent work, my friend.