Modifying a Laptop BIOS…if you Dare!

The disclaimer alone should be enough to scare most people out of even attempting this particular hack. Regardless, the brave blogger over at Open Source Fun has posted a step by step method for altering your laptops bios so that it can include the splash screen of your choice instead of the one forced upon you by the company that manufactured your machine. As the author plainly states in his post, this is not a generic method that will work on all laptops and it is highly dangerous at best even for someone who knows his or her way around a computer.

This little walkthrough is designed more or less just to let folks know what is possible and maybe to entice some poor soul into attempting it on his own. I believe in open source and the spirit of experimentation and community that it fosters, but this hack certainly pushes the limits of usefulness and for some this would certainly end in disaster. If the following disclaimer (taken from the blog Open Source Fun) is not enough to dissuade you from attempting this hack you might need to get your head examined:

DISCLAIMER
Don’t follow this hack! You could destroy your laptop! Only risk what you can afford to lose. As well, don’t be fooled by the success of my hack.. There are probably BIOS’s out there that do their CRC check internally on every boot, and if the value is incorrect it won’t boot up.. and this is something you’d only learn of after flashing the bad image! As well, many BIOS images when downloaded are probably compressed, leading to a much harder chase for something as trivial as changing the splash-screen. You’ve been warned.

The procedure has already made the rounds on the Internet and was picked up by Hack-a-day. Still I wonder how many people have tried it and most importantly when will we hear some first hand accounts from the folks who tried it? I am sure most of us have at one time or another, for whatever reason, experienced a nearly heart stopping boot cycle that had us on the edge of our seats until the moment it was successfully completed. I would imagine that anyone attempting this little trick would be wise to keep a portable defibrillator nearby, because this one’s a real knockout!

Via Open Source Fun

The disclaimer alone should be enough to scare most people out of even attempting this particular hack. Regardless, the brave blogger over at Open Source Fun has posted a step by step method for altering your laptops bios so that it can include the splash screen of your choice instead of the one forced upon you by the company that manufactured your machine. As the author plainly states in his post, this is not a generic method that will work on all laptops and it is highly dangerous at best even for someone who knows his or her way around a computer.

This little walkthrough is designed more or less just to let folks know what is possible and maybe to entice some poor soul into attempting it on his own. I believe in open source and the spirit of experimentation and community that it fosters, but this hack certainly pushes the limits of usefulness and for some this would certainly end in disaster. If the following disclaimer (taken from the blog Open Source Fun) is not enough to dissuade you from attempting this hack you might need to get your head examined:

DISCLAIMER
Don’t follow this hack! You could destroy your laptop! Only risk what you can afford to lose. As well, don’t be fooled by the success of my hack.. There are probably BIOS’s out there that do their CRC check internally on every boot, and if the value is incorrect it won’t boot up.. and this is something you’d only learn of after flashing the bad image! As well, many BIOS images when downloaded are probably compressed, leading to a much harder chase for something as trivial as changing the splash-screen. You’ve been warned.

The procedure has already made the rounds on the Internet and was picked up by Hack-a-day. Still I wonder how many people have tried it and most importantly when will we hear some first hand accounts from the folks who tried it? I am sure most of us have at one time or another, for whatever reason, experienced a nearly heart stopping boot cycle that had us on the edge of our seats until the moment it was successfully completed. I would imagine that anyone attempting this little trick would be wise to keep a portable defibrillator nearby, because this one’s a real knockout!

Via Open Source Fun