Inspiron 530 BIOS

[Junk Parts]

I think this may be the right place to post this. My brother says he has the Dell Inspiation 530 PC but when I look it up on the Dell site it looks like he has the Inspiron 530. He also says its a Fox Conn board with intel chips. He needs to open up the dumbed down dell BIOS with some sort of third party reflash progie. Who on this forum is the Bios reflash expert??? Please get back to me. I can get all the model numbers that are needed to see if there is a cure for his "Dumb Dell BIOS."

[stevo1210]

Re: Inspiron 530 BIOS

I dunno if we can reflash a Dell bios. I think they change the hardware or put locks on the bios or something like that. Maybe worth a try I guess but I dunno if it will crap out the PC.

[KeriJane]

Re: Inspiron 530 BIOS

Hi Junk Parts!

I studied this a bit.

First, and this is real important.....

Do NOT tamper with an OEM BIOS if you are using the factory installed OS or intend to use the factory-supplied Restore disks.

Doing so WILL break the "System Locked Pre-Activation" (SLP) of Windows XP or Vista. This will result in either a refusal to boot, or more likely a demand to activate.

It will also cause most Restore Disks to cease working at the point where it checks to see if you're installing it on the "correct" system.

That being said, you have two options:

Option one, and this is the best one, is to try to find a "secret" BIOS Menu system. On some older HPs you could hold down F11 instead of F2 (or was it F1?) to access the service menu, which gave you access to many hardware settings. Google is your friend here.

Option two, and this one can break your system, is to find out what motherboard is in there, and try to find a comparable retail board. Often it may be an ASUS, Gigabyte or even an Intel board. If there is a similar Retail board, you might be able to flash it with the BIOS from that system. The flash utility program will probably resist your efforts but there are usually ways to force a flash. Doing this will certainly break your SLP and possibly break the board.

Definitely NOT worth the effort,

Have Fun,
Keri

PS> I learned all of this by studying SLP.

[Junk Parts]

Re: Inspiron 530 BIOS

Thanks! I wasn't even thinking of the SLP. Now I did reflash my Gx180 but it was a bios update from Dell. When I put the real Dell Xp Home on the system from a Dimension 4550 I had not problems at all, and has never asked to be activated. I used that same disk on my Latitude C640 Lap top too. My brothers system is a Vista PC so it may be different for him. Well I said its a Vista PC but he changes the OS on it as often as I change my socks. Just last week alone he had Vista 64 bit, XP 64bit, and Vista 32 bit on the thing at different times. The next time I call him it just may be a Hackintosh.

[KeriJane]

Re: Inspiron 530 BIOS

Ha Ha!

Oh, it's different all right....

XP uses SLP 1.0. Basically, there's just a text string that says HP or Dell, model number, etc.

As time went on, the level of complexity grew with MS's paranoia.
In many newer instances the SLP permanently marks the hard drive in an unformat-able area. Meaning that you can't even replace a Hard Drive without the "tattoo utility"! That's where I ran afoul of SLP.

Vista uses SLP 2.0. You can guess what that means... MS decided that SLP 1.0 was too easy to crack.
So they made it less easy.

Meaning that Branded OEM Vista likely won't work on an XP box and vice-versa. Except for the special "Downgrade" versions of XP that is!

I fixed it all though...... I bought a Mac!
That also uses a simple form of SLP..... Leopard merely checks to see if you are in fact installing it on a suitable Apple product. So did Tiger.

Oh well,
Keri

PS. Just because MS is paranoid about piracy doesn't make them wrong!
Actually, they're 100% right about that! So far EVERYONE that has brought a "built-from-scratch" PC to me for repair or upgrade has been running cracked Windows on it!

Except for the ones I built, that is.

[Junk Parts]

Re: Inspiron 530 BIOS

KeriJane I can tell you that I legally own 98SE, NT 4.0, and XP Home. Well the Xp is legal in one of the places it ended up at here. At least they are all Dells...LOL Now the 95, 98, Win 2k, and all versions of XP are here too. The Xp Pro corp. VLK was so nice until Billy Boy Nuked it. Never trust that Dead o Alive guy. Billy knows his stuff and he will fill you up with nag screens if you are dumb enough to turn on the automatic updates as I did. As far as Win 3.11 goes, I don't even remember if it had a serial number. What I'm saying is that the game was easy to play in the past. Mr. Bill changed the rules so the game isn't even worth playing now.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: Inspiron 530 BIOS

I think MS spends much more money in research, development, programming, lawyers, software 'police', and customer service do to the problems created by it all to prevent pirating than they'd lose by charging a reasonable price for the OS in the first place.
If it was a reasonable price it'd be easier to buy another copy than to hack it.

.

[Junk Parts]

Re: Inspiron 530 BIOS

The only Bitch of it is that you spend all your money to build something nice then before it will go you have to fill the tank. Ok so you pull up to the pump and fill her up with some $200.00 a gallon MS Xp Pro fuel. Six months later Billy says "I'm not selling that MS Xp Pro fuel anymore. We have a new "Vista" fuel now!" So he checks you out, and hands you an upgrade parts list. OK I need another 1.5 GB of ram, and a Vista approved Video card. Then he says now you can run Vista Basic but some of your progies suck too and will not run with vista but don't worry! Its going to be great! Windows Me Too!

[KeriJane]

Re: Inspiron 530 BIOS

LOL, Junk Parts!

Actually, XP has been in production for like seven years now! It's their best and most popular OS ever. And even though it was supposed to be gone by now, popular demand keeps it around.

And Vista? It's the ONLY Microsoft Operating System that has EVER had its price LOWERED!

When it came out, full retail Ultimate was $399 - take it or leave it.
Now it's $329 and frequently on sale!
Isn't that like a 20% markdown?

Glory Be! a markDOWN from Microsoft!

I still haven't gone out and bought one yet

Have Fun!
Keri

[Junk Parts]

Re: Inspiron 530 BIOS

Yes I know that Xp has been around for a few years but let me put this another way. Lets look at the small block V8 GM engine. It came out way back in the fifties, and its still around today. GM knew that they had a good thing and they stuck with it. You can still buy new as well as rebuilt small block V8's directly from GM for many of these cars. Why couldn't Billy see that Windows Xp was his "GM V8!" Now he has a busted V10, fuel drinking engine called Vista that he wants us to use, and the dambed thing will not fit under most of our hoods without upgrades. Xp is a classic. Maybe I should load Windows Me on a drive just to get a feel for how bad it was. I bet it would take me a week to find all the drivers for my stuff on Me.