If this has already been asked, I apologize in advance. I just found out that HP's Mini 311 is now available (a netbook with the Atom N280 and the nVidia ION chipset). Feature-wise it's excellent. But does anyone know what type of BIOS it uses, and if it can be SLIC 2.1 modded? Thanks to anyone who can find out!
Should have asked in the Bios section since they do all the mods there they would have a better idea.
Actually, I've seen rumors that indicate the Mini 311 will be updated when Win7 is released. It will be running 7 eventually, so I figure that eventually the BIOS will have an SLIC 2.1 if not already. On a side note, later revisions of this netbook will have the full ION platform (not LE) and 2-3GB RAM plus increased HDD space.
I would wait and see if they make another Bios revision and pay attention to the changes. Since it's relatively new i would assume it will have Slic 2.1 already installed. Could always use the SLIC dump tool to see if it has 2.1.
Ok! So I know nothing about HEX editing, but I managed to find those two character and change them. And it wokred! Here is my delema. I purchased my Mini 311 with Windows 7 from factory. I was screwing around with one of the DMI utilities and it deleted Windows 7 from my Factory installed OS field and replaced it with "vista string". I need to get the Windows 7 back in that field. I followed the prompts above but it still says "Vista String". Any suggestions?
Magendanz, great job man, i was going crazy because i couldn't make the HPBQ116.exe to work. I own a HP Mini 311, that was shipped with win XP. and so i went to the hp support and ordered the OEM Win7 Home Premiun recovery discs, but when i do a factory reset, the installation gives me an error, and it tells me that No OS Flag is set on BIOS. So i know that i had to add the win7 flag on bios, but using the method you describe via the HPBQ116.exe, i can't get the win7 flag on the bios either, what i get is a non-win7 flag. any help with that? Thanks
to Magendanz I'd try change 01 to 02 in file and it works fine for me "Factory installed OS Win7" it will be more clear if you post here info from another post there you explain different offsets and bytes Thanks.
Excellent! It's a shame that HPBQ116.exe won't just let you set a value of "02". The offsets I mentioned above for the OS SKU and Win7 SKU settings seem to be consistent with what I put in that other post: OS SKU: 0xF9 [1 byte] [0] System is shipped with Pre-Windows Vista OS [1] System is shipped with Windows Vista OS [2] System is shipped with Windows 7 Win7: 0x86 [1 byte] [0] Starter [1] Home Basic [2] Home Premium [3] Professional [4] Ultimate
OK. Like I said I am not experienced at all in HEX editing. I was able to do the first mod to ignore the model. I am having a hard time with the second one to add a line (2) with Windows 7. If someone has this already done, could you just send me the EXE file? I that is not possible then I will see if I can spot the verbage on the right hand side of the editor.
The 2nd technique isn't a mod to the .EXE. It's just using the export/import functionality in the tool to read the ESCD data, make some manual changes with a hex editor, and then write it back to the EEPROM. You might be able to make an .EXE mod to allow you to set a value of "02" for the OS SKU, but it'd be beyond the scope of a hex edit to allow you to enter the Win7 SKU value too. If you need this, the export/import technique is the best way to go. Personally, I no longer have the Mini 311 I was using before, so I don't have any means to test further mods.
After I figured out what the ESCD file actually was, I starting exploring with the hpbq189 hidden features and found the "L" option reads the current file and "M" writes it to the EEPROM. Once I did that I was able to fix my 311. It now says Win7 in the Bios and the restore discs work! I followed the instructions in the other post and it worked perfect!
Did you try setting the OS SKU to 0x02 using the ECSD import method? I'm guessing that probably gets the BIOS to report Win7, but I never bothered to check myself because the OS install seemed to be satisified with what the modified HPBQ116.exe tool allowed me to change.