BIOS Flash Q&A White Paper

images found can be viewed and a background color and a foreground color can
be chosen from the colors in the image's palette. The utility also has a command
line option to quickly flash a new image.
The image stored in the BIOS will be compressed with RLE4. If the image being
flashed is already in RLE4, the image flashed will be identical to the original except
the second byte in the Bitmap Header will be a checksum. If an uncompressed
bitmap is flashed, the Image Flash Utility will encode it using RLE4 and save it.
Therefore, when using the save (/s) feature to get the current image, the newly
saved image will be in RLE4 format, regardless of the format of the original image.
Usage to Flash Image:
Normal: Flashi.exe
Command Line Mode: Flashi.exe [Image_File] [Foreground_Color]
[Background_Color]
The normal execution method will provide the user with additional interaction so
that the image can be selected from various files and a preview can be seen before
the image is committed to the BIOS.
There is only a command line mode to save the current image. You cannot save
the current image under an existing file name.
Usage to Save Current Splash Image (command line only):
Command Line Mode: Flashi.exe /s name
How do I update the ME firmware in Windows 7, Vista, or
Windows XP?
FWUpdLcl.exe utility in the ME Flash\Local-Win directory is designed to update the
ME firmware within a local Windows environment. For more information and utility
options, view the readme.txt file located in the ME Flash\Local-Win folder. The ME
can be updated by executing the following command "FWUpdLcl.exe
<XXX_bbbb.bin> -generic". The ME Flash folder contains a binary update image
for the ME. The binary image file is named XXX_bbbb.bin where "XXX" is the
abbreviated ME firmware version and "bbbb" is the build version number. For
example, 210_1028.bin is the ME update file version 2.1.0 with the build number of
1028. The update binary image and the Local-Win folder contents can be copied
to any Windows accessible media such as a CD/DVD or USB flash media device,
including HP Drive Key and M-Systems DiskOnKey.
The following image shows the successful completion of the ME FW update process
in a Windows XP environment. The update process will stay at the “Performing
Update…” step for most of the time.