Hi, the structure of those bioses is difficult to modify. A SSV3 mod failed!!! If anybody is able to program his chip or is able to do a hotflash and wants to support me trying new mods, please reply! Yen
Hi Yen I have the MSI 35 Neo2-FR which uses the same bios as the P35 Platinum. I also noticed the superstatic v3 mod does not work on these bioses. I was able to find working modded bioses in the oemfans chinese forums but they mostly provide Lenovo XP + Lenovo Vista dual activated bios. I don't know how they do it but they got it working, as I am running the version 1.6 lenovo xp + vista bios. If you need the link I can provide it. I would like to know if you can mod these to be Dell XP + Dell Vista dual activation. Let me know what I can help with. Thanks
I actually flashed in a not so "safe" way according to many. I flashed using Winflash (AFUWIN) 4.22 in Vista. After selecting the modded bios, I left the program flash at its default settings. In the "Setup" tab, the option "Main BIOS image" is the only option checked. And it worked. I had tried the superstatic v3 to mod the bios myself but that wouldn't work. The motherboard wouldn't even post. I was able to recover by following the AMI bios recovery procedures. When you say that other motherboard was bricked after the flash, do you mean you couldn't recover using the AMI bios recovery procedure? Because if that's the case, I'd be a little hesitant before flashing my motherboard Well let me know what else I can help you with. Your work is greatly appreciated!
Thanks again. You've described the AMI procedure which I know as well. I assumed that serael0324 has tried this as well, but I'm not sure anymore. About dual Dell. I will take the time for a mod. By doing I will see if there are some problems which I cannot see at the moment. Only after that I will ask you for a try. The method which is used is very sensitive, so I cannot understand why it should brick. The bootblock of course is not needed to flash, cause there is no change (I always leave it untouched.) Zhaoliang taught me a lot of interesting methods. He is familiar with debugger and programming. I stay in contact to him, but the last few weeks he didn't reply to me anymore, maybe he is too busy, or he doesn't mod anymore. He has got much more knowledge about than me. But at one thing I could help him..that was to remove the ASUS SLP2.0 revision for his mod tool... Yen
Hi, I did a mod. Now I know probably why Zhao said it is difficult. It is difficult to get the size down to the original compressed size of 1b module. To manage it I had to modify other strings as well. This is a unknown factor. But doing a SSV3 mod you have to change much more at the 1b module and it was recoverable.....this sort of bios is picky...... Serael0324 didn't reply so far, and we don't know if he tried that way to recover. Now the question to me is if it is worth to test the mod, because the activation for Vista is no problem using Lenovo cert and key. Also for XP there is no problem to exchange the OEM files to Lenovo. But for educational purposes I'm very curious. I was very surprised as serael0324 said that the board was bricked The bootblock is still original, of course. And you don't have to flash it. You must not. I'm always a bit sad after I've heard about somebody has to send the mobo to repair. I'm careful...... What do you think? If you want it to try I'll upload the mod. Yen
Hi Yen, sorry I didn't reply earlier. But yes, send me the link. I will try tonight, if not, maybe tomorrow, and I'll report. Thanks!
Didn't work Hi Yen, I'm sorry to say it, but it didn't work. Board would not post. I was able to recover with AMIBOOT.ROM but something strange is happening. The board keeps telling me the CMOS checksum is bad. I'm going to try flashing the board with an older version of the modified bios. I'm not sure what could be happening. I'll keep you posted.
It seems that the modified BIOS 1.6 I got from oemfans is somewhat screwed up. When I boot with that BIOS, it keeps saying the checksum is bad, and there maybe something wrong with the NVRAM because it looks like it says update is off?? it goes too quickly for me to see. But version 1.5 works perfectly. Thanks for your work though Yen. If you want to try with some other version other than Dell, let me know!
Thanks a lot for trying. I really appreciate. The most important thing is that you were able to recover. So I must not change the additional characters. Sometimes the CMOS checksum issue disappears after you've loaded the setup defaults and / or clear CMOS. I'm thinking about....and will reply. Thanks again. Yen
So Yen, I did try clearing the CMOS, but it doesn't save the BIOS options that I have set up. It was strange. BIOS 1.5 doesn't suffer from that. But its no big deal. So what are you thinking about? Are you going to try with a different method?
First I thought that this problem is because of a different compressed size of the resulting 1b module. But there must be something else. The size is exactly the same, but my mod didn't work. I have to analyze different things to figure out what is wrong. First thing to check is to see if amimmwin makes some changes that are responsible. Yen
I've read at Chinese forum that MMtool doesn't show the correct size of the 1b module. That's probably the reason why the mod failed, because the 'real' size is still different. I'll reply again as soon as I've got a new mod.
Well that seems strange...I wonder what the differences are between that board and the Neo2....Any ideas?