BIOS Recovery

[BlueBoy19]

I have a SL510 2847 54G laptop, I tried updating the BIOS with 6juj28us.exe update utililty, but it hung the laptop half way through. Now all I get is a black screen and a couple of beeps when I try to turn it on.

I am trying to create a wincrisis recovery usb disk to recover the bios. How do I get the BIOS.WPH file the 6juj28us.exe installer?

[jayton4]

Run the .exe file and at the last step, uncheck the box to install the update utility. Then navigate to C:\Drivers\Flash\ directory. All the BIOS files are there.

[BlueBoy19]

Which specific file do I need to copy to the wincrisis folder? I have read it's not always called BIOS.WPH. Sometimes you need to the rename the specific file to that you need to BIOS.WPH, and then copy it to the folder.

[twistero]

Most likely you need the .FL1 file. It's compressed, so you'll probably also need to decompress it. See here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=100075

[BlueBoy19]

OK, there are 2 FL1 files - $0A6J000.FL1 & $0A8K000.FL1. Which is the correct compressed file that I need to extract the .WPH from?

Also, I don't see the e_bcpvpw.exe that you need to extract the file. Is there a similar .exe in the C:\Drivers\Flash\ that I need to extract the file?

[twistero]

The extraction tool should be downloadable from that page I linked.
As for which file to use, I have no idea.

[BlueBoy19]

When I have tried to decompress the files I receive the following error:

Source file format not acceptable - missing header!

This is because the files are not actually compressed (see link below). Renaming the .FL1 files to BIOS.WPH should be fine. Because I don't know which file is the correct one to use, I will have to try both.

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/thread ... ad/page232

[BlueBoy19]

Actually, I think I have found which one I need to use. Before I ran the BIOS update, I took a note of the previous BIOS version - LENOVO 6JET72WW (1.30).

A quick google of the $0A6J000.FL1 named file brought up the following information (see link for full post)

$0A6J000.FL1 - for Thinkpad SL510 with bios ID TP-6J
$0A8K000.FL1 for Thinkpad SL510 with bios ID TP-8K

So by the looks of it the $0A6J000.FL1 file is the one I need.

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/thread ... ad/page412

[BlueBoy19]

Fixed the laptop with the Wincrisis tool. Thanks for all your help guys, it's appreciated.

I have put the steps down on how I fixed the laptop. I hate it when people post that they have fixed a problem, but then don't give the steps on how they have resolved it.

Here's how I fixed it.

1. Installed Windows XP as a virtual machine. I couldn't get the version of Wincrisis that I had to run on Windows 7.

2. Downloaded the 6juj28us.exe update utility from the Lenovo drivers and downloads site.

3. Ran the 6juj28us.exe update utility and at the last step, uncheck the box to install the update utility.

4. Downloaded the Wincrisis recovery tools and associated files from http://www.staff.uni-marburg.de/~schmit ... covery.zip.

5. Unzipped the T43_recovery folder to my desktop.

6. I took a copy of the $0A6J000.FL1 from the directory C:\DRIVERS\FLASH\6juj28us, that was created in the last step. I then put it in the T43_recovery folder with Wincrisis, and renamed $0A6J000.FL1 to BIOS.WPH.

7. I then copied the T43-Recovery folder the XP virtual machine.

8. Then I formatted a 60MB USB flash drive to FAT16.

9. I then loaded the USB flash drive in the XP machine, and then ran WINCRIS.EXE to create the recovery drive.

10. I then put the USB flash drive into the laptop with the faulty BIOS. I made sure that I still had the battery and the power cable plugged into the laptop.

11. Can't remember which key combinations that I pressed, it was FN+R or FN+B. Hold the key combination down, and then press the power button.

12. I held the keys down for about a minute. If it's successful you should see the USB Flash drive light start flashing. It only took about 3 minutes to complete, the laptop then restarted itself.

13. It kept booting into the BIOS, so I had to the press the blue ThinkPad button when prompted to boot into Windows.