T41 BIOS reflash

[Amadeus Amadeus]

I recently flashed my T41 with the latest BIOS upgrade.
After a while I realized I wanted to flash the same BIOS once again, but with some minor modifications.

However, the flashing program tells me that the BIOS version I want to flash is the same as the existing version and refuses to continue. That's a bummer.

Is there a way to get around this limitation?

[RealBlackStuff]

Put in an older BIOS, reboot, then try your new one.

[Amadeus Amadeus]

Thanks RealBlackStuff, that worked.
Let me explain what I did.

Flashed my T41 with the v.3.23 BIOS, which was the latest version. Worked like clockwork. Must say that this is a piece of impressive software from IBM. You run a Windows 32 program which in turn tranforms itself into a DOS program which kicks in after reboot. It flashes the BIOS chip and reboots into Windows again.

So far, so good.

Then I thought that, since I had ordered 2x1GB of RAM for this machine, I might want to run Windows 7 when that memory arrives. In order to do that I needed to patch the BIOS with the SLIC 2.1 binary signature which allows for offline activation of OEM versions of Windows 7. Said and done.

The BIOS in the T41 comes from Phoenix so I fired up RwEverything first. That program produced a file called AcpiTbls.rw which is needed for the Phoenixtool214 program to work properly for that particular BIOS.

Phoenixtool214 then did all the heavy lifting. But before activating Phoenixtool214 some other preparations were needed. Here's what I did:

Extracted the files in the 1ruj37us.exe file from IBM-Lenovo.
One of the files extracted was a floppy image with the same above name. To get into the floppy image I used a program called WinImage. Now, finally, the BIOS flash file was visible.

The first file, named $018f000.fl1, was the real content of the BIOS to be. Next step was to involve Phoenixtool214.


Phoenixtool214 needed three files. First the BIOS file; $018f000.fl1, then its RwEverything report; AcpiTbls.rw and finally the Lenovo SLIC 2.1 signature, which is supplied with the Phoenixtool214 program. After some chewing, the new and patched BIOS file was produced. Easy peasy.

But now there was a problem. The new file was bigger in size and also not approved by the flashing program. After some cul-de-sac ideas, the solution turned out to be Phoenix Winflash, which coul be freely downloaded from various places.
As the name implied, Phoenix Winflash was a Windows program. This program refused to flash the modified file.
A look in the Advanced Settings gave me the answer. The box Verify BIOS Checksum was unchecked and flashing went just fine.

A lot of work for a very small patch, some 350 bytes.
But now Windows 7 Lenovo OEM version can be installed on the T41 provided that the hardware in the computer supports it. I believe it does.