DeathJr, How can one extract the bins from o740-222? I would like to extract and compare with the Optiplex bioses. Also, why mod 222_4m, why not just flash 222_8m.bin with awdflash?
Does this mean it should activate an oem dell vista already? If not what would be the steps to change it so It can? I dont even know how to extract the bios from the dell.exe
No...He means that there is no slic in bios. Presently, only existing slic can be updated. None added. This needs loader or WOW patch.
My friend extract it ,but he did not want to tell me how he did it. Use the EVEREST , you will find that the correct bios is 512K,512k*8=4M. I backup the bios in DOS, and view the backup bios, find it was SLIC 2.0,so i modify 222_4M.bin ,and flash it in dos, so i get the SLIC 2.1,it was dell bmk 2.1.
Dell Latitude D400 and D600 pre-date Vista; they are so old (~6 years old I'd say) they don't have a SLIC 2.0 entry in their BIOS, so you don't meet the pre-requisites for a hacked BIOS given the current state of ACPI BIOS hacking technology... Check with R/W Everything, but I'd guess you'll need a software based loader (grub4dos) solution instead.
Yes flash Award bioses with Awdflash, may want to use the /F switch if changing SLIC, have you tried backing up your bios with either/both the O740-222.exe and Awdflash? If so can you upload the bios? The other member with the Dimension e521 (also Award) flashed theirs with Awdflash successfully. AndyP's tool worked fine on their bios but seems to fail on the bios uploaded by DeathJr, the bios for the e521 is only 512 kb as well though.. And it would be characteristic of Dell to make their bioses non-standard to prevent modification as well So you have flashed your Optiplex 740 with this bios and it works fine?