Sometime some stupid or innocent act makes our life miserable. This happened with everybody and will happen in future also. Some people who are a little more curious about their daily gadgets frequently run into such freaking problems.
I was exploring my friend’s brand new DELL STUDIO 1558 and started system update. I did not notice all. I was simply clicking on “Yes” and pressing “Enter”. It asked me to update the bios. I simply clicked “Yes”. And on next reboot the laptop was bricked. I was freaking out. What to do next? After searching a lot, I found some light to live the laptop again. I am going to tell that story here. But before I begin let me tell you something that I learned and understood.
Everyone who's really into knowing their computer has at one point wanted to update the BIOS for the simple reason of possibly just wanting the latest features, sometimes it proves to be a necessity to get stability for your system or even recognize a CPU it otherwise wouldn't be able to. Now, generally the manufacturers tell you to NOT flash the BIOS unless otherwise absolutely needed, but come on, with the age of over clocking and everybody wanting to push their computers to the limits our curiosity gets the better of us and just possibly that latest version will give you the stability or features you absolutely have to have. Any sane person will tell you that flashing the BIOS is definitely not a fun process. One screw up here and you could turn your nice motherboard into a lovely little paperweight. This can be caused by flashing the BIOS with the incorrect BIOS Version for your board or perhaps power was disrupted to your computer during BIOS Flashing. Either way this leads to catastrophe and now the question remains. What do we do now? Like my case…
But before that let us see the basics of flashing the BIOS. Your BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) is a tiny little chip on your motherboard. Most newer boards this chip can actually be removed and this is needed for hot flashing. I will discuss hot flashing at the end of this discussion. The BIOS contains all the basic information for the computer at start up. Without this information your computer can no longer POST and is basically useless. So when dealing with a BIOS flash make sure you READ READ READ because nothing will make your day sour than flashing with the wrong BIOS. Most newer boards today come with programs that can flash your BIOS within windows. ABit has what’s simply called ABit Flash Menu. The One click update has been known to accidentally select the wrong BIOS and then you're S.O.L. So generally if you're going to do windows based BIOS Flash you should find the correct BIOS yourself and use the 'Update from File' Function. MSI Boards also have a live utility update to update the BIOS within windows. But personally, I feel flashing BIOS within windows is not a full proof process still now. So I would suggest to flash BIOS in DOS mode.
My problem occurred when I flashed BIOS in windows. But it is not the obvious. After that I have flashed several other PCs in windows. To flash BIOS in windows you must have the flashing utility from the BIOS manufacturer. (In my case it was Phoenix) and the BIOS information file usually in .bin or .rom format.
FLASHING IN DOS: First you will need to create a boot disk. Simply insert a floppy and right click on the Floppy Drive and choose Format. Now towards the bottom you should see a box that can be checked that says "Create MS-DOS Boot Disk" Check this box then hit start and that's all you have to do. Once that is done you now have a bootable disk. The next thing is to put on the appropriate bios rom image and flash utility. You HAVE to have a flash utility and then the actual file that contains the BIOS information that is a .bin or .rom file. Copy the flash utility and BIOS files to the floppy disk. If the files contain an Autoexec.bat and it asks you to overwrite it when you go to copy the files to the floppy you want to hit YES-OVERWRITE EXISTING FILE. The autoexec that you will be adding to the floppy will initiate the flash program. If you want the floppy to load and start the flash utility yourself, then simply do not add the autoexec.bat. Restart your computer and make sure within the BIOS menu that the Floppy drive is the first in the boot sequence. So with the floppy loaded as the first boot device and your disk with the flash utility on it in your floppy drive you boot up your computer as normal. If you overwrote the autoexec bat that was on the floppy that was created when you formatted it to an MS-DOS Boot disk, then the flashing program will start up and immediately start flashing your BIOS. So at this point you want to make sure there will be NO power interruptions. Usually it will ask you if you want to save your old BIOS. This is up to you if you want to or not. I personally usually don't save it, but I guess I could be considered a risk taker like that. If you're a little paranoid and its possibly your first time then I would suggest saving it just in case. If you didn't overwrite the autoexec file then you will just be brought to an A:\ prompt. You can type in dir to see what the contents of the disk are. You then will want to type in the name of your flash utility and hit enter. Then it will ask you what file to FLASH the bios with. Putting the autoexec on the floppy starts the flash utility, types in the file name, and begins the process for you so that's the easiest as long as you indeed have the right BIOS type. You will see a message of success or failure and hopefully it's success, then all you'll need to do is restart and your new BIOS is in place, but remember it'll be set to defaults so you will need to go back in and reset your CPU FSB and any other timings you might have had once before.
You can use a usb flash drive also if you do not have a floopy drive in your system. In that case you must use a special utility to make your flash drive bootable. Google it you will find them easily. HP hosts an application called HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool.
Flashing in Windows:
Now a days most of the manufacturer provides windows utility to update bios. Such a popular utility is Winflash for phoenix bios. But to use windows base utility you must have working windows. And it has less importance with our topic because when the bios itself is dead, there is no question of working Windows.
Recover your dead BIOS:
This example is for strictly Phoenix BIOS. Do not follow this guide for other BIOS.
STEP 1: Download Phoneix Crisis Recovery tool from http://rapidshare.com/files/105952250/Metod_2.rar or Download HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool from http://rapidshare.com/files/113917960/HP_USB_Disk_Storage_Format_Tool.rar
STEP 2: If you have a floppy drive then a floppy disk or alternatively a small capacity usb flash drive (less than 2 GB; I will suggest 512 MB flash drive) and make it bootable with HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool or Phoneix Crisis Recovery tool . Actually you need a bootable dos disk.When creating the boot Floppy, select from Folder Options to view the hiden and system files and delete or rename the file config.sys if present because we need DOS with no additional programs that are loaded, which could interfere with the operation of the BIOS flash application.
STEP 3: Download the achieve from http://www.box.net/shared/j2u98ci67f
And extract all the files in a folder say Rescue.
STEP 4 : Copy all the files from Rescue to your: Flopy, USB Stick, USB Flopy.
STEP 5: Rename your BIOS file to bios.wph and copy it to your: Flopy, USB Stick, USB Flopy.
STEP 6: Remove the battery, unplug the computer from the power.
STEP 7: Hold down: Fn+B or WinKey+B (On some new Acer Laptop's Fn+Esc and on some new Fujitsu Siemens Laptop's Fn+F) and while holding plug the computer in to power (do not plug the battery) and pres the power button.
STEP 8: Now you should hear the flopy drive working, hold the keys for a while and then let go.
STEP 9: Leave the computer for at least 10 min. and if the computer does not restart it self turn the power down.
STEP 10: Plug the battery and the power sorce and if everything went OK the computer shold start normaly.
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