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I have a HP Mini 210 that was installed with Ubuntu 12.04 last year.

I'm lending it out to someone, and need to re-install XP. There is no internal CD drive, and BIOS won't boot from USB.

I'm trying to update the BIOS, but HP only offers downloads for Windows and not for Linux/Ubuntu.

Is there any way to flash the BIOS with the update?

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NOTE: The BIOS installation procedure used in this case is only really necessary when a Windows OS is not available which HP update packages are targeting.

The HP Mini 210 can certainly boot from USB. This can be enabled by going into the existing BIOS. Hit the Esc key when powering the netbook on. Right arrow key navigate tabs over to "System Configuration". Down arrow key to "Boot Options" and hit enter. Down arrow to "Boot Order" and hit enter. Down arrow to highlight/select "USB Diskette on Key/USB Hard Disk" and press the F6 key repeatedly until that row rises to the top of the list. Hit F10 key to exit and save.

Now that the HP Mini is enabled to boot from USB make a bootable USB using Gandalf's Win7PE, 2GB+ download so be ready for that, from which you may install the bios update. Use rufus to push that the downloaded Gandalf's Win7PE ISO file to a USB drive. Make a copy of your HP bios update package to the USB drive somewhere in a folder you can navigate to easily like "Other". Take the newly created bootable USB drive over to your HP Mini 210 and boot from USB. Once WinPE is launched you may navigate to your bios update package, assuming sp55494.exe, and run it.

The update form should look like this: InsydeFlash Bios update form.

Sadly, HP advertises most of their laptops can use this procedure to update the BIOS; See section labeled Recovering the notebook BIOS using an external storage device. However, with the HP Mini 210 I didn't find it functional. The EXE also was not able to run in DOS mode which hasn't been the case in other computer experiences had.

An alternative to this approach would be to install Windows OS first then proceed with installing the HP BIOS update from within the Windows OS.

As for installing a Windows OS to devices lacking a CD/DVD media drive I also recommend rufus. Use this procedure to install from USB without a CD/DVD media drive.

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What you can do is take apart the HP mini and pull the hard drive out, plug the hard drive into another system and format it. once formatted plug the hard drive back into the HP and boot the computer and select the boot menu to boot from the USB drive to flash the drive (remember you will need to extract the bios files onto the flash in order to use it). Once flashed the new bios should allow you now to be able to Boot from the cd Using the cd/dvd drive. Hope that helps you.

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  • This advise doesn't necessarily answer the question and adds a layer of complicated procedures that don't relate to updating the BIOS. For those that seek installing an OS without a CD/DVD media drive try solutions like rufus.akeo.ie, UNetbootin, or Universal USB Installer.
    – Sn3akyP3t3
    Commented Dec 30, 2016 at 16:53
  • you gotta be joking if you consider this a valid answer. I'd have left this as a comment, because it doesn't really answer the OP's question but rather suggests an alternative solution to the problem the OP is trying to fix.
    – kapad
    Commented Sep 28, 2018 at 11:09

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