Adding the HP PC Hardware Diagnostics 3-in-1 USB Key to E2B

The HP Vision Diagnostics ISO can be added to an E2B Removable USB drive if you use the .ISOPE01 file extension. It will boot straight to WinPE and you should briefly see the blue console shell window which will load the ISO as a virtual drive and allow it to find the drivers and diagnostic programs inside the ISO.

If you have a E2B HDD, you will need to convert the ISO to a FAT32 .imgPTN file (or if you boot it as .isoPE01, you could use the SHIFT+F10 key and run \_ISO\e2b\firadisk\LoadISONP.cmd from the E2B USB drive to load the ISO file as a virtual DVD to allow the diagnostic files to be seen).

The HP PC Hardware Diagnostics 3-in-1 USB Key software however, does not come as an ISO file.

Here is how to add it (or the Vision Diagnostics ISO) to E2B.

Instructions for creating a .imgPTN file

Requirements

• E2B USB drive (NTFS preferably)
• A Windows system with the E2B MPI Tool Kit installed
• sp78883.exe (or whatever is latest version)

Method

1. Download the HP sp78883.exe HP PC Hardware Diagnostics 3-in-1 USB Key from here

2. Run the executable so that it unpacks to the \swsetup\78883 folder of your Windows system (or any folder you like) - then abort the DOS command shell without making a USB drive.
If your source is an ISO file, extract the files using 7Zip.

3. Edit the \swsetup\78883\field\menu.lst file (to allow you to run the DOS memory test)

was:

# GRUB menu file customized to boot HP Vision Field WinPE

color black/cyan yellow/cyan

timeout 0

default /default

#title Load WinPE 2.0

#fallback 1

find --set-root /bootmgr

chainloader /bootmgr

now:

title HP Diagnostics DOS Menu (Memory test)\n Boot to FreeDos Menu

chainloader /kernel.sys

boot

4. Delete the \swsetup\78883\field\sysiden.exe file (optional - allows you to run the memory test on non-HP systems).

5. Drag-and-drop the field folder onto the MPI_FAT32 Windows Desktop shortcut, accept the default size suggested, specify the destination path (use a local hard disk for best speed) and answer Yes to combine \menu.lst files when asked.

The summary shows you where the new .imgPTN file will be found.

6. Now copy the .imgPTN file to your E2B USB drive and run \MAKE_THIS_DRIVE_CONTIGUOUS.cmd

If you have already made a 3-in-1 USB key, you can use that as the source when you make a .imgPTN file, just drag and drop the drive icon onto the MPI_FAT32 shortcut (but don't forget to modify it as in steps 3 and 4 afterwards).

The WinPE application tests for an HP system and will not load the diagnostics if it doesn't find an HP BIOS.

Operation

Switch to the .imgPTN file using the E2B Menu system or \_ISO\SWITCH_E2B.exe in the usual way.

MBR-booting

Choose the bottom CSM menu entry, HP Diagnostics DOS Menu option to get the normal FreeDos menu to perform a memory test,

OR

Use the CSM  1 Boot from this drive  option to boot straight to the HP Vision Diagnostics

UEFI-booting

32 and 64-bit UEFI booting seem to be supported (I could not fully test as I don't have a UEFI HP system, so I had to use Clover to boot in UEFI mode).

When asked for a CSO and Agent ID, I used 1234 for both which it seemed to accept.