On set 17 8:55, Vincent DEFERT wrote: > You could try opening the firmware update's executable as an archive > (they are often SFX - self-extracting ZIP archives), > extract its contents to a FAT-formatted USB pen drive, > reboot the laptop with the pen drive attached > and enter the BIOS firmware flash utility (often the F7 key).
This is a good advice, which can be useful for similar cases. As regards my laptop, the file is https://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp66501-67000/sp66770.exe (yes, the Compaq BIOS update is distributed by HP, it sounded weird to me, too). I tried to extract it with GUI `Ark' on Linux, with CLI `unrar' and by executing the file itself, after renaming it as `sfx', as suggested here: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/79074 https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/115655 It didn't work, so maybe it's a different format. > If you found a firmware update from 2014, your laptop may not be > so old it can't update from a USB stick. :) No, in fact IIRC it should also be able to boot from a USB stick (maybe just for one of the external connectors, not all of them). If the NIC never worked, a BIOS update could be meaningful. But this is a different case. If with 8.1 the NIC worked, it should also work with 9.0. Of course, a driver design requires a massive work I can't imagine and I understand that simple needs of the user are not that much simple from the developer's perspective. Rocky
