Probook 6560b BIOS issue with update from FLASH drive

[HPuser77]

Hello,

Here is the problem that I've encountered with my laptop HP 6560b. My HDD has crashed and is beyond repair. I've went into the store and bought new HDD-SSD (Samsung 840 pro). I've replaced crashed HDD with new SSD. But to no joy. During WIN7 installation I've came to part where I need to select place where I want to have my new OS. Thing is it's can't be read. So I've dig around the internet and found out that BIOS is issue with these new SSDs. So I've decided to update my BIOS.

BIOS is currently on versio 68SCE Ver. F.08

I've downloaded latest version of BIOS sp62738 from HP Support Center

I've unpacked sp62738.exe and started HPQFlash. Through menu I've setup FLASH for update. 

Folder structure of FLASH

HP_TOOLS\HEWLETT-PACKARD

contains following folder structure

   BIOS

   BiosUpdate

within BIOS folder there are two more folders and some BIN and SIG files

   Current

      .BIN

      .SIG

   New

      .BIN

      .SIG

and within BiosUpdate

   CryptRSA.efi
   CryptRSA32.efi
   HpBiosUpdate.efi
   HpBiosUpdate32.efi
   HpBiosUpdate.log
   HpBiosUpdate.s09
   HpBiosUpdate32.s09
   HpBiosUpdate.s12
   HpBiosUpdate32.s12
   HpBiosUpdate.sig
   HpBiosUpdate32.sig

I've sticked FLASH into Laptop and rebooted. I've got the message 'BIOS update failed to update' (or something like that) and I had option just to reboot.

LOG file on FLASH had this with in.

HpBiosUpdate.txt (logfile from root)

09/01/13 22:44:57 EFI HP BIOS Update 2.7.1.0 Started
09/01/13 22:44:57 Failed init of SMBIOS data

and

HpBiosUpdate.txt (log file from BiosUpdate folder)

09/01/13 22:44:57 HP BIOS Image Interface Protocol Version 1.0
09/01/13 22:44:58 BattInit: Protocol 2010.
09/01/13 22:44:59 All Required Protocols Located
09/01/13 22:44:59 Lang reported as eng.
09/01/13 22:45:00 Language Selected is currently (eng).
09/01/13 22:45:00 Failed Reading BIOS Image Hewlett-Packard\BIOS\New\68SCE.bin

I can see that it can't read 68SCE.bin, but I can't see that file in New as explaned above new folder contains only 

 .BIN
 .SIG

Should I rename these bins and sigs to 68SCE? Has anyone encountered problem like this before with this model and version of BIOS?

Please advise and thanks.

[soccer_dan]

When you executed the download BIOS softpaq, did you create a flash bootable key at that point? i assume you used another computer to do that?

If you created a bootable usb key from the BIOS softpaq, you will see 3 files

68SCF.BIN

eRompaq.exe

gpl2.txt

You can then insert the key no the laptop usb port and reboot to upgrade the BIOS.

Is this what did not work?

[HPuser77]

Problem is that HP software which prepares your usb stick needs to be running on box where it's gonna deploy BIOS.

That is why I had problems with .BIN and .SIG in new folder. They were nameless because software couldn't detect machine on which it was deployed. So, I've rigged WIN OS on usb stick and boot laptop with it, once I had OS just started HP software for update of BIOS and all is good.

[giogziro95]

Renaming those files (keeping the extension) to the appropriate name has solved the problem in my case. The name can be found in the log file inside the BiosUpdate folder as you described (in my case, it was HEWLETT-PACKARD/BiosUpdate/HpBiosUpdate.log).

[frank7d]

In my case today it was Bios F.65 for a probook 6460b running OSX

No .bin file and no .sig file in the extracted softpack. Only a 68SCE.cab archive, containing

2.5M Apr  6 17:45 Rom.bin

64B Apr  6 17:45 Rom.sig

256B Apr  6 16:35 efibios.sig

64B Apr  6 17:45 ver.sig

95B Apr  6 17:45 ver.txt

Copy and rename the .bin and the two .sig files as follows:

Hewlett-Packard/BIOS/New/

2.5M Apr  6 17:45 68SCE.bin

64B Apr  6 17:45 68SCE.s12

256B Apr  6 16:35 68SCE.sig

Do not mess up the .sig and the .s12 files. Check the file length of 64B and 256B

Update Bios via F10 Setup worked ok.

Hope this helps,

Frank

[sbonds]

Here's the process I used in a bit more detail-- it's essentially the same process as frank7d provided, but with some extra details to hopefully help future people figure out why it's not working.

I checked the laptop boot information screen ("F1" on boot) and took a photo of the screen. The patch below contains updates for both BIOS types 68SCE and 68SCF so I needed to know which to use when creating the USB key to perform the update.

I downloaded the patch from HP here: ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp79501-80000/sp79709.exe

Here are the checksums for this file. If these don't match, your results may vary from mine. 🙂

Name: sp79709.exe
Size: 12976888 bytes (12 MB)
CRC32: A5EC0C91
CRC64: AA9CD2BF81D58114
SHA256: 2CEB20D62D9CB6819368A6FAC6DEB53A3907F83E79D4B21EC028CF79A6670281
SHA1: 8FFAA1D6D4D2D5FF1F9CF68048E056F521725552
MD5: B2A8C827E8847B30CD84B5BA3DB24861

I ran sp79709.exe on my Windows 10 PC (not the laptop I'm updating) and it extracted the following to C:\SWSetup\SP79709

C:\SWSetup\SP79709>dir

Directory of C:\SWSetup\SP79709
09/18/2017 10:58 AM <DIR> .
09/18/2017 10:58 AM <DIR> ..
04/06/2017 05:45 PM 1,862,868 68SCE.CAB
04/06/2017 05:52 PM 1,868,924 68SCF.CAB
09/18/2017 10:05 AM <DIR> BIOSUpdate
09/18/2017 10:05 AM <DIR> hpqflash
12/07/2012 01:32 AM 4,856,704 HPQFlash.exe
09/18/2017 10:59 AM 7,814 hpqFlash.log
05/15/2013 11:19 AM 294,616 hpqRun.exe
02/22/2012 08:48 PM 77,824 Installer.exe
01/07/2013 02:55 PM 291 map.ini
04/12/2017 05:02 PM 3,704 WSSP79709.rtf

I put in a USB drive and ran "HPQFlash.exe". It failed with an error "ROM.CAB" not found-- probably another symptom of being unable to detect the BIOS variation (SCE/SCF) since the update isn't being run on the same PC as the BIOS is getting updated. This is where you need to know which variation your laptop will use.

In my case, I had the SCE variation, so I renamed 68SCE.CAB to ROM.CAB and re-ran "HPQFlash.exe". One of the options was to create a USB key, and I chose that option.

It created a key with the following files:

Directory of F:\
09/18/2017 10:59 AM <DIR> HEWLETT-PACKARD

Directory of F:\HEWLETT-PACKARD
09/18/2017 10:59 AM <DIR> .
09/18/2017 10:59 AM <DIR> ..
09/18/2017 10:59 AM <DIR> BiosUpdate
09/18/2017 10:59 AM <DIR> BIOS

Directory of F:\HEWLETT-PACKARD\BiosUpdate
09/18/2017 10:59 AM <DIR> .
09/18/2017 10:59 AM <DIR> ..
12/12/2012 02:14 PM 806,952 HpBiosUpdate.efi
12/12/2012 02:35 PM 256 HpBiosUpdate.sig
12/12/2012 02:26 PM 256 HpBiosUpdate.s09
12/12/2012 02:14 PM 781,704 HpBiosUpdate32.efi
12/12/2012 02:35 PM 256 HpBiosUpdate32.sig
12/12/2012 02:28 PM 256 HpBiosUpdate32.s09
02/23/2012 02:36 PM 443,904 CryptRSA.efi
02/23/2012 02:36 PM 259,072 CryptRSA32.efi
12/12/2012 02:26 PM 256 HpBiosUpdate.s12
12/12/2012 02:28 PM 256 HpBiosUpdate32.s12

Directory of F:\HEWLETT-PACKARD\BIOS
09/18/2017 10:59 AM <DIR> .
09/18/2017 10:59 AM <DIR> ..
09/18/2017 10:59 AM <DIR> Current
09/18/2017 10:59 AM <DIR> New

Directory of F:\HEWLETT-PACKARD\BIOS\Current
09/18/2017 10:59 AM <DIR> .
09/18/2017 10:59 AM <DIR> ..
09/18/2017 10:59 AM 2,621,440 .BIN
09/18/2017 10:59 AM 256 .SIG

Directory of F:\HEWLETT-PACKARD\BIOS\New
09/18/2017 10:59 AM <DIR> .
09/18/2017 10:59 AM <DIR> ..
09/18/2017 10:59 AM 2,621,440 .BIN
09/18/2017 10:59 AM 256 .SIG

I used 7-zip and extracted 68SCE.CAB to C:\SWSetup\SP79709\68SCE and copied the following files with new names.

efibios.sig -> 68SCE.sig
Rom.sig -> 68SCE.s12
Rom.bin -> 68SCE.bin

04/06/2017 05:45 PM 2,621,440 68SCE.bin
04/06/2017 04:35 PM 256 68SCE.sig
04/06/2017 05:45 PM 64 68SCE.s12

I copied those files to F:\HEWLETT-PACKARD\BIOS\New and deleted the .BIN and .SIG files. This is the most important step and what all that other stuff has led up to.

Here are some more checksums to verify that the right things are in the right spots:

Name: 68SCE.bin
Size: 2621440 bytes (2 MB)
CRC32: E9064F04
CRC64: 474C636003F28D52
SHA256: 2C9408D49D3D6A1DB51C817C45BF5B2858E4C76D99D0FC1AE05EA7A42B3AEAEB
SHA1: EC63F01BD7AA0601EAD95E82B7D98BD7CDE0C61B

Name: 68SCE.s12
Size: 64 bytes (0 MB)
CRC32: E1A4D46E
CRC64: CC976F7AAD8E5217
SHA256: AA8C6C6D33AC704DAE1FB1CF21AF9B7FC7BFBA1A6FF9E15979315EFF3F5D12BC
SHA1: 43D0B5B54C195FDFCDBAC42EDADA22AE5FC1F2D4

Name: 68SCE.sig
Size: 256 bytes (0 MB)
CRC32: DAACD0CE
CRC64: 7975725254F7201F
SHA256: A02FCCEF285CEBB9DB8CDAD8255080951F89C130CA0ED95283723088CFF4B1B3
SHA1: 77D5A3B3263390FB341B9D3A13CC1148F0643B33

Once there, I booted to the BIOS setup, chose "update BIOS", then save/exit. The laptop restarted to a BIOS update confirmation screen. It was hard to tell whether light or dark was the highlight color on the confirmation screen, but hitting enter from the default started the BIOS update process.

I got another photo of the F1 information after the update was completed, just in case I need it later.