Thanks for all your hard work vladman. I know it was a tedious task to enter all those information byte by byte. Too bad it didn't work but all is not lost as another idea popped into my mind from your results. Please try Yen's second idea if you wish and report back. Thanks again, your work will benefit others.
You are welcome!!! It was not tedious . It was funny and reminder of time of asm programming rather. I probably guess the reason of second idea. When fill out all Bios Date by FF and after that to update it by *HP update utility* it is clear to know what part of BIOS still no updated. Ok, but if we’ll know which part of BIOS is not updated, the main question is remaining - the method of how to write down the correct SLIC data to the BIOS permanently.
Hear is another idea based upon the fact that some HP BIOSes cannot be modded nor are able to use Vistaloader due to the fact that it does contain an SLIC but it is empty of SLIC data. Hear it goes. What if someone with programming expertise wrote a program to write the SLIC table and the RSDT table into RAM at the addresses indicated by Everest. Then have this program run at every startup. This should theoretically work due to vladman's research indicating that Vista activated once he/she had modified the RAM to contain the SLIC and the RSDT at the correct address. Being that this program would run after Vista is loaded, you would need to have SP1 installed as it may go into RFM before loading the program (SP1 did away with RFM, it just nags you to death but provides full functionality). So, what do you guys think?? Feedback and criticism are most welcomed.
@vladman : Thanks a lot for your hard work. Now we have a result to go on further. I thought as much, even though I've had a little hope…….. Regina’s idea to write a softmod will work for sure. I think it’s possible to write a batch file using the debug command and execute it at every startup. More comfortable is to write a small program therefore and to compile it. The program should be executed as soon as possible at startup. The softmod solution is the final possibility. But me as ‘Biosmodder’ I’m always looking for a ‘hardcoded’ solution. I will analyse your dump and update the instructions for the second idea later this day. This idea affects the bioscode, not the ACPI tables. I also will explain what’s the concrete idea about. OMG as you can see at your dump of the bios it was altered by the flashtool. BUT my idea cannot work! This is the address of the Bios ROM itself, not of the shadowed area. ROM = read only memory, so we cannot write any changes. This was a stupid idea............ To have a influence at this we need another flashtool e.g. uniflash Please dump again the shadowed area, physical address F0000, size FFFF. And could you backup your current bios using rompaq.exe /B command, please? But I worry that to fool the flashtool isn't possible.....hmmm, at this point of view we have to go for a softmod..... Another idea is to update the original bios by using the rompaq.exe /R 68YVD.BIN command.
I did some more research. Since debug.exe uses the segment : offset addressing, the highest accessible address is FFFF:FFFF = 10FFEFh, so we cannot use it to patch the SLIC. I don't have the skills to write a program, which patches the SLIC. Thanks again for your cooperation. I'll research some more about it.......
Latest news: I'm talking about how to write a patch program with tommiy via PM.......... I'll also do some further researches..... But for now I don't know......To try uniflash is worth to try but IMO a little risk since I don't know how the flash will go......
It should activate after you've corrected the SLIC and the RSDT. The second way cannot work. I've suggested to write into a ROM area this was of course not good...... Tommiy said: To write a softmod, we need to get Vista into protected memory mode so you can access the address above 1M....... The question is how?
yen - is there any movement on how to flash the hp nw8440 type bioses? any help i can offer would be happily contributed.