Laptops How to update BIOS from USB drive in a Compaq Presario V3000 ?

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Shakensoul

Shakensoul

Forerunner
In a nutshell, one of my friend's laptop is screwed. Its a Compaq Presario V3000 series, he tried to update the BIOS, ended up flashing a incorrect BIOS version. After that when he tried booting up, it gave the error
"104-Unsupported wireless network device detected. System Halted. Remove device and restart."

So I removed the wireless card and the system was able to boot. But windows keeps restarting after the logo, does not boot to any of the safe mode. And the main problem is, it does not boot from any windows bootable disk to try a repair /reinstall. The dvd drive was working fine before this problem.

So how do you update the BIOS from a USB pen drive ?
 
Well, updating the Bios from a pen drive is pretty straightforward and simple.

Things you will need:

1. Appropriate bios from the website.

2. A software called "HP drive key utility".

3. DOS Boot disk files.

You'll easily find both of these through Google.

Now you need to make the pen drive bootable.

1. Just install the HP drive key software at first.

2. Insert the pen drive and wait for it to be recognized by Windows and the HP Drive Key utility. (once recognized it will appear in the first pulldown menu).

3. Choose FAT as the filesystem. Set the volume label to anything you want, doesn't matter. Under "Format Options" check the box next to "Quick Format" and "Create a DOS startup disk" . Choose the button next to "Using DOS system files located at:" and click the little browse button "..." next to the blank and navigate to wherever you kept the DOS boot files. Click OK.

4. Now click "Start" and the HP Drive Key utility will turn your USB device into a bootable DOS disk.

That done, just paste the Bios files on the USB key and you're all set.

Flashing Bios

1. Just insert the pen drive into USB and make sure its set as the first boot device.

It should now boot you into DOS prompt.

Type " DIR" to get a list of files on the pen drive.

2. You'll probably see two files being listed now, one with the .exe extension and other with the bios version extension probably.

3. Now enter the .exe file name first and after a space enter the bios file name, and then this command "/P /B /C".

It should look like this:

Abc.exe xyz.135 /P /B /C

Pressing enter should start the bios update utility.

After the bios is updated successfully you can restart the laptop.

I hope this works for you.
 
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Sorry, I think I did not mention this.

I have a bootable pen drive and have been able to boot to the pen drive. However the BIOS update file available in the HP website for the V3000 is windows based, it cannot be used in DOS mode.

The file that I download is sp36869.exe
 
Oh..looks your your friend is pretty much screwed.
AFAIK the .exe bios's can only be flashed in windows.

The only way you can make this work is extract the .exe file somehow, and get to the ROM file.

Another way is getting support through HP.:P
 
Try to find a DOS based BIOS file? Will prob be available somewhere. Else you can even try contacting HP support to send you a link for it.
 
But I cannot understand why its not booting from the CD. The drive was working fine before, I tried different bootable disk, Windows XP, Vista..all "ahem" copies, none worked, however all CDs are working in my desktop and laptop.
 
^^No clues about that but if you have a recovery partition you can boot into it somehow and then make things work.
 
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