OEM BIOS logo

[fishybawb]

Hiya.
I'm about to inherit my brother's old HP Pavilion 8715. When you boot it up, the HP logo appears - could this be deleted by flashing the BIOS with a non-OEM rom?
Thanks.

[Sterling_Aug]

No!!!

Never flash a BIOS with another manufacturers code. You can turn a perfectly good computer into a boat anchor.

[fishybawb]

I'm not sure if I understand...
The idea was to find out the motherboard make/model used in the HP, then download a new BIOS from the appropriate manufacturer's website. Why wouldn't this work? Do HP use their own brand mobos?
Cheers for the help.

[Midknyte]

HP uses their own custom bios. I wouldn't mess around with it. You can try, but don't be surprised if you end up with a big metal brick. :(

[BigBlue66]

There might be an option in the existing BIOS to turn the logo off.

HP, Compaq and possibly even Gateway take a perfectly good BIOS and cripple it so the ordinary user cannot make any worthwhile changes. I think one of their favorite tricks is to disable options that would benefit the user, and then hide them so the user can't get to them.

It's possible that the motherboard in that HP is from Asus. Or maybe not. I have an HP VL800 series computer at work with a P4. I had to turn over every rock I could find in order to find out it was an ordinary Asus P4T motherboard. The mobo itself was not labeled as an Asus, nor were there any diagnostics programs that could tell me what the true manufacturer was. I had to find out for myself and that wasn't easy.

Although I have heard of people who have successfully flashed a manufacturer crippled BIOS with an actual BIOS, I would caution against it as well.

[Sterling_Aug]

The HP's at work (older untis from P166 up to 500 MHz) all can have the HP logo turned off in the BIOS.

[fishybawb]

OK, guess I'll give that one a miss :(
With a bit of luck I should be getting it next week - I'll fire up Sandra on it or something and see if it can figure out what mobo it is. Thanks for the help :)