How do you change default BIOS / UEFI values on old motherboards?

[c627627]

I asked this ten years ago and didn't get an answer.

It sure would be useful set default BIOS / UEFI values in cases of a dead CMOS battery, it's a pain to get to a dead battery on some older laptops and I have mine setup to only boot with certain default BIOS / UEFI values changed.

 

[EarthDog]

There are jumpers that can do it, but I'd imagine those are in just as difficult locations to reach too.

You mentioned 10 years ago (did you do that here? Link?), but I think even then one of the function buttons sets 'optimized defaults' in the BIOS. Which one that is, I have no idea as it varies from vendor to vendor. That's the first thing I would do though is start cycling through the function keys while in the BIOS and see if one sets defaults.

 

[don256us]

There is no way that I know of. The idea behind the battery is that the settings are held in volatile memory. The eprom(sp?) is write once read many. It's designed to poll or ask each peice of equipment for information. Do I have an HHD? What size? Do I have a video card? What port? The answers to those questions is saved into volatile RAM and kept alive by the battery. When the battery goes out, so to does the settings.

 

[c627627]

... years ago (did you do that here? Link?)

Yes, not a year goes by that I don't think about how my thread was nuked even though I was legitimately asking my fellow Senior Members about this, it is one of the few issues that I never got an answer to, I even wrote you a legit letter about it in 2014:
https://www.overclockers.com/forums...-file-values?p=7655291&viewfull=1#post7655291

How about restoring that thread you nuked in the Blue Room, even if I don't get any answers from Senior Members?
It would mean a lot to me personally.

 

[EarthDog]

Kind of disconcerting you still think about that...

Thanks for the reminder. Nothing has changed since that thread. Duplicate threads aren't allowed.

 

[Mr.Scott]

There is. You have to mod the bios changing the default setting to what you actually want them to default to. Old school bios modding.
Problem is, most OEM bios's are proprietary or encrypted in some way making them almost impossible to take apart to mod.
Still, there are always exceptions.

 

[c627627]

I would be interested in doing this even on twenty year old machines.
My original interest was for those machines actually.
If anyone posts specifics, I can test.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Need to dump the bios on the machine you want to mod. Hopefully it is a .bin or .rom file. Need to know who made the bios (EG. Award, Phoenix, AMI, etc.).
The modding tools are different pending vendor. I have the tools, or at least most of them.
We'll go from there.

 

[freeagent]

How awesome is that?

You guys are great.

 

[c627627]

Two contenders:

nForce2 Shuttle AN35N Ultra v1.1 BIOS .bin file. This board is from a couple of decades ago:
View attachment nForce2Shuttle AN35N Ultra v1.1.zip


hp Pavilion g6-2237us laptop, the file is .exe because it installs from Windows. Perhaps BIOS files can be extracted from it? :
View attachment hp Pavilion g6-2237us.zip

 

[Mr.Scott]

HP bios is encrypted. Cannot unpack the .bin from the executable. You'll find most OEM's with executable bios's are like that.

The Shuttle is easy. Unpack the attached file to your Root (C )drive. Unpack the bios .bin file to the same C drive. Open Modbin and load the .bin file.
You'll use all keyboard controls in Modbin. Scroll down to 'edit setup screen', hit enter.
You'll now see the bios structure tree. Find the item you want to change and hit enter. As you look down the item string you will see 'bios default', and 'setup default'. You will change both of these to what you want your personal default to be. You can use plus or minus keys or hit enter and scroll through the menu. After you select hit enter. Esc to back out and move on. When you're all done. back all the way out and hit 'F' to open the file options so you can save your modded bios. Make sure you name it something other than the original bios name. Find your saved new bios bin file in the C drive where you put the other stuff and flash it to your board.
Easy. This is about as easy as it gets for old school bios modding.
Advice: practice getting around in Modbin. You'll F*ck up more than once until you get used to it.

- - - Auto-Merged Double Post - - -

BTW, W7 or XP is probably required. I do not know if any of these tools are supported in W10.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Also,
I have a modded performance bios for that board if you'd like to start with that one. I've also enclosed the proper version of AWDflash.

 

[PolRoger]

The Shuttle AN35N Ultra v1.1 has this setting in BIOS:

Enable/Disable Write Protect BIOS... With default set to enable. You will need to change to disable to flash the BIOS.

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

The CMOS ram is where the Real Time Clock and settings are stored like HDD/SSD, GPU, system ram....ect ect ect. The BIOS/UEFI is the program in a flash eprom that is loaded in system ram and runs there to boot the PC and get everything going.
The BIOS/UEFI does not need a battery, it is the CMOS ram and RTC (Real Time Clock) that needs the battery.

Now if you don't want to have to remember what the CMOS ram setting were, you can save the settings to a profile in the BIOS/UEFI. (see attached example pic)

I had to correct a IT instructor on this.


p.s. In most cases, using the page up and page down keys or the - and + keys would be what you use the change the settings.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Most old school boards do not have the provisions to save profiles.

 

[c627627]

Yes. And when they reset BIOS to original settings they include insane things like, prevent boot, they black screen if floppy drive has not been detected (!)

Or if you make any kinds of modifications, like make custom partitions for easier reimaging of the OS, it won't boot at default settings.


Mr.Scott, thank you for posting, I will get my old machines and get to this project eventually, thank you very much.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Not a problem. Lemme know how you make out.

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

There is software you can d/l to save the cmos settings to a file so the next time you have to change the battery or for any other reason, you can load the settings from the file.

example: https://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Miscellaneous/CMOS-save-CMOSrest.shtml

 

[Mr.Scott]

[FONT=museo_sans]All three tools work properly on DOS and older versions of Windows, up to NT. Higher editions are compatible with CMOSsave and CMOSChk only and restoring the CMOS configuration is not possible. Since it has not received an update in a very long time, it might not work on all machines.[/FONT]

So......Windows 2000 and older OS.

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

So......Windows 2000 and older OS.

Make a bootable MSDOS USB flash drive and it won't make any difference what OS is used
Also a USB floppy drive can be used as well, just make sure it has MSDOS, Win 9X or NT 4.0 bootable OS on it.