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How to upgrade the BIOS in a HP ProBook 6560b via the HP_TOOLS partition?

By John Parsons •

I recently discovered the there is a BIOS Update version F.28 available for my (work) notebook which is a HP ProBook 6560b booting with version F.20. I hope that this might fix the always-running fans in that machine.

The BIOS Update is available as a SoftPaq for download here:

According to the BIOS help I should find a BIN and a SIG file in there with the same name as the BIOS variant (which is 68SCE according to dmidecode). That one should be placed on the HP_TOOLS partition into the directory /Hewlett-Packard/BIOS/New and it can be upgraded through the BIOS (if a HpBiosUpdate.efi module exists in /Hewlett-Packard/BIOSUpdate). It looks like everything is prepared properly:

# mount /dev/disk/by-label/HP_TOOLS /mnt/
# ls -lR /mnt/Hewlett-Packard/BIOS*
/mnt/Hewlett-Packard/BIOS:
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 21 2011 Current
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 21 2011 New
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 21 2011 Previous
/mnt/Hewlett-Packard/BIOS/Current:
total 2564
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2621440 Dec 21 2011 68SCE.BIN
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 256 Dec 21 2011 68SCE.SIG
/mnt/Hewlett-Packard/BIOS/New:
total 0
/mnt/Hewlett-Packard/BIOS/Previous:
total 0
/mnt/Hewlett-Packard/BIOSUpdate:
total 2112
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 259072 Aug 31 2010 CryptRSA32.efi
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 443904 Aug 31 2010 CryptRSA.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 706528 Mar 28 2011 HpBiosUpdate32.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 256 Mar 28 2011 HpBiosUpdate32.s09
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 256 Mar 28 2011 HpBiosUpdate32.sig
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 722848 Mar 28 2011 HpBiosUpdate.efi
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 51 Dec 21 23:59 HpBiosUpdate.log
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 256 Mar 28 2011 HpBiosUpdate.s09
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 256 Mar 28 2011 HpBiosUpdate.sig

Unfortunately are there no BIN and SIG files in the SoftPaq, only a CAB file which contains files which might be the correct ones but are just named Rom.*. There is also a ROM.CAB which contains some Rom-files as well:

# curl -O ftp:// % Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 22.0M 100 22.0M 0 0 529k 0 0:00:42 0:00:42 --:--:-- 355k
# 7za x -osp59012 sp59012.exe
7-Zip (A) [64] 9.20 Copyright (c) 1999-2010 Igor Pavlov 2010-11-18
p7zip Version 9.20 (locale=en_US.UTF-8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,4 CPUs)
Processing archive: sp59012.exe
Extracting /68SCE.CAB
Extracting /68SCF.CAB
Extracting /hpqflash/hpqRun.exe
Extracting /hpqflash/map.ini
Extracting /hpqflash/SP59012_E.exe
Extracting /hpqflash/SP59012_F.exe
Extracting /HPQFlash.exe
Extracting /hpqRun.exe
Extracting /map.ini
Extracting /ROM.CAB
Extracting /WSSP59012.rtf
Everything is Ok
Files: 11
Size: 25651054
Compressed: 23089672
# find sp59012 -name '*.CAB' | xargs -I_ cabextract -d _.d _
Extracting cabinet: sp59012/ROM.CAB extracting sp59012/ROM.CAB.d/Rom.bin extracting sp59012/ROM.CAB.d/Rom.sig extracting sp59012/ROM.CAB.d/ver.txt extracting sp59012/ROM.CAB.d/ver.sig extracting sp59012/ROM.CAB.d/efibios.sig
All done, no errors.
Extracting cabinet: sp59012/68SCF.CAB extracting sp59012/68SCF.CAB.d/Rom.bin extracting sp59012/68SCF.CAB.d/Rom.sig extracting sp59012/68SCF.CAB.d/ver.txt extracting sp59012/68SCF.CAB.d/ver.sig extracting sp59012/68SCF.CAB.d/efibios.sig
All done, no errors.
Extracting cabinet: sp59012/68SCE.CAB extracting sp59012/68SCE.CAB.d/Rom.bin extracting sp59012/68SCE.CAB.d/Rom.sig extracting sp59012/68SCE.CAB.d/ver.txt extracting sp59012/68SCE.CAB.d/ver.sig extracting sp59012/68SCE.CAB.d/efibios.sig
All done, no errors.
# cat sp59012/map.ini
[SYSTEM_ID]
1619=hpqflash.exe -s -a -f68SCE.CAB -phpqssm.bin
1618=hpqflash.exe -s -a -f68SCF.CAB -phpqssm.bin
1621=hpqflash.exe -s -a -f68SCE.CAB -phpqssm.bin
161C=hpqflash.exe -s -a -f68SCF.CAB -phpqssm.bin
161D=hpqflash.exe -s -a -f68SCE.CAB -phpqssm.bin
1620=hpqflash.exe -s -a -f68SCF.CAB -phpqssm.bin
177C=hpqflash.exe -s -a -f68SCE.CAB -phpqssm.bin

The map.ini points to the 68SCE.CAB (1619 is the mainboard's Id according to dmidecode). I could try the files from that file. But I don't want to brick my notebook. Has anybody done this before successfully?

2

2 Answers

The following method works for me with an HP Probook 6460b. I've used Virtualbox (Windows XP guest) with a USB flash drive connected to perform the steps below.

  1. Extract SP60365_E.exe.
  2. I found two files SP60365_E.exe and SP60365_F.exe (depends of your system) in C:\SWSetup\SP60365\hpqflash.
  3. Exactly these files create bootable flash drive.
  4. I created boot flash drive from Virtualbox

You can see my post in this thread on the HP Forums.

3

To update BIOS on ProBook 11 G2

  1. Get last BIOS from hp.com
  2. Format usb drive using mkfs.fat

  3. Create these directories in my usb: 

    /EFI/HP/BIOS/New
/EFI/HP/BIOS/Previous
/EFI/HP/BIOSUpdate
/Hewlett-Packard/BIOS/New
/Hewlett-Packard/BIOS/Previous
/Hewlett-Packard/BIOSUpdate

  4. Extract spXXXX.exe in /EFI/HP/BIOS/New and in /Hewlett-Packard/BIOS/New

  5. Copy /EFI/HP/BIOS/New/BIOSUpdate/* in /EFI/HP/BIOSUpdate and in /Hewlett-Packard/BIOSUpdate
  6. Activate bios option "boot from usb"
  7. Using BIOS menu "Update BIOS from USB"

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