Compaq Presario 4800 Quick Restore CD

Reverse engineering documentation and tools for the Compaq Presario 4800 Quick Restore CD (volume WAN05921Q8, August 1997). This CD shipped with Presario 4808 and 4816 models and restores a factory Windows 95 installation.

Background

The Quick Restore CD boots a minimal DOS environment from a 1.44 MB FAT12 floppy image (BOOTSECT.BIN) embedded as an El Torito boot record. The restore process is orchestrated by two executables:

• QR.EXE -- the main program handling language selection, serial number entry, model verification, and launching the overlay.
• QROVL.EXE -- the overlay that interprets .SCP script files to partition/format the hard disk and extract password-protected ZIP archives containing the Windows 95 image.

Three layers of protection prevent the CD from being used on non-Compaq hardware:

1. Compaq hardware check (CPQZ.EXE) -- verifies the machine is a genuine Compaq via a proprietary INT 15h BIOS call or SMBIOS Type 1 manufacturer string matching.
2. Serial number validation -- requires a 12-character alphanumeric serial and cross-references it against a BOM (Bill of Materials) table.
3. UIA-to-BOMID matching -- compares identity data written to hidden disk sectors at the factory (UIABOMWR.EXE) against the CD's BOMID.TXT configuration.

Documentation

See the Wiki.

Tools

patch-iso.py automates the entire patching process. Given an original ISO, it:

1. Extracts the ISO contents using isoinfo LBA offsets
2. Extracts QR.EXE from BOOTSECT.BIN and unpacks it with deark
3. Applies six binary patches to bypass serial/BOMID validation
4. Recompresses with UPX and replaces QR.EXE in the floppy image
5. Comments out CPQZ.EXE in CPQR.BAT to skip the hardware check
6. Rebuilds the ISO with correct El Torito floppy-emulation boot

python3 patch-iso.py "Compaq Presario 4800_WAN05921Q8.bak.iso" -o patched.iso

Requirements: deark, upx, mtools (mcopy/mdel/mattrib), mkisofs, isoinfo.

Key Findings

• The ZIP password for the recovery archives is SMDCONSUMER, encoded in .SCP script files using a three-step scheme: length prefix in the low 5 bits of the first byte, XOR each payload byte with 0x03, then reverse.
• The serial number screen accepts any 12-character alphanumeric string -- the real access control is the UIA sector written at the factory, not the serial itself.
• All protection-relevant executables are compressed with either PKLITE (QR.EXE, CPQZ.EXE) or DIET (UIABOMWR.EXE) and must be unpacked before patching.

ISO Details

Field	Value
Volume ID	WAN05921Q8
Format	ISO 9660:1999 (level 4), El Torito
Boot media	1.44 MB floppy emulation (BOOTSECT.BIN)
Supported models	Presario 4808, Presario 4816
OS	Windows 95 OEM
Archive	Internet Archive