Ciao, lume.
This is for anyone googling around, or binging around as they may be, for information regarding the HP Compaq 6820s laptop.
I've been using the 6820s for a couple of years now, and one thing that's always irked me is the fact that the keys on the right-hand keypad are, well, broken. If you have such a laptop, you probably have to press the num lock key two or three to get them to work. And then, if you use the caps lock key at any time, it actually turns num lock back off, and then you've got to press the num lock key several times to turn it back on again. (Also, there's no LED indicator, so don't expect to know which way it's set until you need to type something.) I eventually learned that this was not just a problem with my own laptop, but all the 6820s, HP had been aware of the program, and that it could be resolved by means of a BIOS upgrade. Sounded scary to me, but in all actuality BIOS upgrades on most mainstream hardware have become rather easy and automated.
Of course, HP didn't explain the steps involved.
Hoping to upgrade my BIOS from version F.05 (10/23/2007) to version F.0D N (4 Nov 2008), I downloaded the according automatic flash executable from HP's website, sp41876.exe. After following all instructions exactly, and rebooting, I received the error "BIOS failed to complete the update, Please ensure that you follow the correct procedures and try again. This may require two sequential BIOS updates to complete the process." No worries, I could still boot, and actually my system ran fine other than greeting me with this message at every boot up. The num lock keys were even fixed.
In order to resolve this, I had to download the executable (sp40490.exe) for the intermediary version, F.0B 06/20/2008, and install that version of BIOS after which I was able to install the newest version F.0D N (4 Nov 2008) without error. Of course, this was not mentioned on HP's website, or in the readmes accompanying either of the ROM flash executables. Nowhere did it say the BIOS had to be upgraded in two steps, nor that there was a minimum BIOS version to have installed before upgrading to the newest version.
No, instead, I had to find out about this from an error message... from my BIOS. That could have gone a lot worse.
Thanks HP.
