Bios Mods -The Best BIOS Update and Modification Source

Hi everyone. 

Apologies if this isn't the right place for this, I know there is a 'Clevo BIOS' sticky on the forum but a lot of that looks to be aimed at the Prema stuff, but doesn't look like he is active these days.


So I have a Clevo P950HR which I purchased from PC Specialist in the UK, all is great however I decided I wanted to update the BIOS from the version they supplied it with, to the latest Clevo release I could find. The laptop came with BIOS 1.05.05TPCS and 1.05.05 EC Firmware, and I have flashed 1.05.06 from here: http://rjtech.com/shop/index.php?dispatch=pages.view&page_id=25 (if anyone knows a better place to find BIOS releases for these Clevo machines, please let me know).

However after flashing, I now have the stupid 'Style Notebook' splash screen on boot and would really like to change it to something else. 

I am booting from USB and using afuefix64 to flash the BIOS which is what comes included with the new release I downloaded (https://www.rjtech.com/Driver/Intel_Fix/...FI_OEM.zip). 

I found a copy of AMI ChangeLogo v5 which was able to open up the BIOS file (there is a BIOS.BIN and an ALL.ROM) extract the existing splash .bmp image and replace it with a different image file, that part seems to work fine. 


The issue is when I then attempt to flash the BIOS back again, using either `Flash` or `FlashMe` which look to just be wrapper scripts, or by invoking the afuefix64 program manually I am then given the following error: 

"18 - Error: Secure Flash Rom Verify fail."

I have tried running: 

Flash (this is just a wrapper for the afuefix64 BIOS.BIN /p /b /n command)
FlashMe (this seems to instead use the ALL.ROM file, which looks to include both the Bios and the Intel ME fw)
manually run afuefix64 BIOS.BIN /p /b /n 

I've noticed with AFUDOS people use the /GAN flag which apparently allows the program to flash the file anyway, however this isn't a thing in afuefix64 I am using (neither is /gan). I'm guessing this is happening because the integrity of the original file has been changed or has modified the files signature. 


This is about were my knowledge of BIOS flashing ends, and was really hoping someone could help me with this. 

Also, the BIOS on these laptops seems very slimmed down with only minimal options - No hyperthreading options.etc is there any possibility of unlocking any extra features in this BIOS image?


Thanks.

Original update package was efi flashing ,do you have test efi flashing???

(02-02-2018, 06:43 AM)genius239 Wrote: [ -> ]Original  update package was efi flashing ,do you have test efi flashing???

Yes when copying all of the files to USB this boots into an EFI shell. I don't know a huge amount UEFI however it looks like it sets up environment options for running 'Flash' 'FlashMe' and also able to run afuefix64. 

This works fine, but will not allow me to flash modified BIOS without "18 - Error: Secure Flash Rom Verify fail." Sorry I hope I understood you properly.

I found "fpt.efi" on update package was version 11.8.50.3399 ,maybe you can use it dump current bios then flashing mod again.
On this package fpt only be use to update ME ,but i think you can try.

Google "fpt 11.8.50.3399" ,you can find the same build fpt(dos version) from Shuttle  website ,it was contained on some bios update packeage.(like:XH110G - XPC ,i checked its fpt.efi version )

So for anyone who is looking to modify the boot logo on their Clevo P950HR and probably the majority of other more recent Clevo/PC Specialist/Saber.etc models, as well as unlocking additional features in an otherwise very minimal BIOS, this is how you do it.

1. Update to the latest Clevo BIOS for your specific Clevo model (https://repo.palkeo.com/clevo-mirror/). Upgrade to the latest BIOS, and corresponding EC and Intel ME firmware respectively following the normal steps. With newer Clevo this is a case of formatting a USB disk to FAT32, then copy all of the files from the BIOS package to the root directory, booting from it and using the afuefix64 program included with the BIOS.

2. Once you are running your chosen BIOS/EC/ME firmware, now we can begin. I chose to just do all this within Windows 10 x64 using the AMI Win64 GUI programs, then using the Windows CLI for Intel FPT, however you can do most of this in a bootable DOS or UEFI environment.

3. Download the required files from here, this includes AMI AFU, BGT, BCPv5, ChangeLogo 5 and Intel FPT. I have also included my own custom splash image on there, as well as the latest P950HR OEM Bios and all drivers:
https://hobbo.co.uk/index.php/s/2mAreZDiLRgYkwH

4. Close any open applications, open network connections and unplug any unecissary USB devices. To be honest I did this with a Chrome window open and whilst downloading something off Steam... but for the purposes of this tutorial, please close things

5. Open up AFUWINGUI.exe ("AMI Bios Aptio Tools\AMI AFU for Aptio V\afu\afuwin\64\AfuWin64"). Click on the 'Setup' tab, tick only 'Main BIOS Image', then click 'Save' this will dump your existing BIOS flash image as a .ROM file. Whilst you can also check the other boxes for a complete dump, for the purposes of what we are doing, only select 'Main BIOS Image' as this is the only file we need to work with.

6. Now that you have a dump of your BIOS image (this was 6MB on my P950HR), now we can change the boot logo. We do this using ChangeLogo_v5.exe in the 'AMI ChangeLogo Tool v5.0.0.2' directory.

- Click 'Load Image' and open up your BIOS image
- Click 'Save Logo' to save your existing logo. If your splash image won't save or is corrupt then Stop Here, something has gone wrong.
- Now we click 'Browse' and find your new splash image. The original on my laptop was a Bitmap file with a resolution of 640x480. I haven't tested to see what happens if you use a larger image in a jpg format for example.
- Click 'Replace Logo' then click 'Save Image As' with will give you a new BIOS file, but with your new splash logo. A quick test of this would be to open the new file, dump the image and ensure that you see your newly created one.

7. (Optional) We can also unlock any otherwise disabled features. We use AMIBCP to do this, there are already several guides on various forums on how to do this. But we basically open the BIOS image in AMIBCP_5, then change from 'DEFAULT' to 'USER' any options we can't already see, then save the BIOS. I followed this guys tutorial: http://voltground.com/haven/threads/102/. Your mileage may vary with this, my P950HR had quite a few locked items, but not all BIOS are the same.

8. Now that we have created a new BIOS image, now it is time to flash it. AFU won't work, at least not on the P950HR, as the BIOS image is signed and AFU will not allow you to flash the modifications (even using the older 4.x release with the /GAN flag). So instead we use Intel FPT (thanks to this post: https://www.win-raid.com/t1805f16-Proble...S-mod.html).

9. I used the command prompt in Windows, so open up the command prompt as administrator then:

cd \\\\WINDOWSX64
FPTW64.EXE
In DOS or in the Windows Command Prompt,
fptw -f -BIOS --> lets you flash your BIOS region
fptw -d -BIOS --> lets you dump your BIOS region
NOTE: DO NOT attempt to flash using fptw -f without -BIOS, you will be flashing ALL firmware files accessible through FPT! Remember to make backups regularly and note what you are flashing.
On Clevo P650RE3 (and P950HR) models, you can also DUMP the ME and FD regions using -ME and -FD command-line flags respectively. More on this later.

Again... I will reiterate. The '-BIOS' flag at the end is very important if you are only flashing BIOS. If you don't specify this, you will most likely corrupt the BIOS, EC and ME regions thus bricking your laptop.


That's pretty much it, just power off, power on, prey it worked then bask in your new splash screen and additional BIOS features =D