Bios Recovery Procedures

Bricked my Thinkpad R40 with bad bios last night. Screen turns on but nothing shows, lights flash, usb floppy drive whirrs a few times but I can't get it to actually boot one of the provided methods.

 

When you format the USB Flash Drive do you use FAT or FAT32?

 

Tried both

 

I tried both FAT and FAT32.

 

I've got my USB Floppy which came with a driver cd.

But it will not boot. It makes a sound like it been read for 5 secs. But after that nothing happens. I use winkey+b, that does swich my laptop into the right mode.

Can anyone help? I don't know what to do now.

 

Just curious but does your computer start to boot into windows
before or after it tries reading from the floppy?

 

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Well, the problem is the mobo now REFUSED to be flashed with bios original version (GA-8i945gzme-rh) which i downloaded from gigabyte. It only accept the wrong one (GA-8i945gmf).
I am going to try hot-flash (i got my hand on a working GA-8i945gzme-rh mobo) and my only problem is the bios chip is soldered directly to the board. Going to buy a socket for the bios chip tomorrow and try hot-flash it.
Wish me luck!

 

Is there a way to test Crisis Disk on Thinkpad (G40)?

Would like to know that it works before I flash my BIOS (in case it bricks the laptop)

sebus

 

If anyone with an award bios is getting an error saying "CMOS checksum
error defaults loaded" when booting and "Onboard bios not award bios" when
trying to flash with winflash use awdflash and try keeping the file name as
you had received it and try using /qi in the switches as it makes awdflash
use the file to determine if it's the correct one or not. I had that problem
on my evga 7100/630i and it seemed to have solved my problem.

 

Can't boot: Tablet pc w/o keyboard

To anyone who can help me,
I tried the method suggested in the first post to rescue my computer but no matter what I try I cannot get the floppy to start, or anything for that matter. The problem is that this computer is a tablet w/o a keyboard (a M1400 by motion computing) except for a usb keyboard.
I also tried to disconnect the cmos battery but to no success either.
any ideas?

Let me know if any info could help,
thanks

 

Dell Studio 1537

Looks like I bricked my computer. Dell Studio 1537 notebook. Phoenix BIOS.

When I boot it now, it doesn't do anything. Doesn't beep and the screen doesn't turn on. Just the touch panel lights flash.

It will stay on and then turn off a short while later. Tried doing the fixes in the first post but I don't have access to a floppy drive so it looks like I'm out of luck with trying a flash drive.

Just a quick question - given how "dead" my computer is i.e. it doesn't even beep error codes, is it worth it to try buying a USB floppy drive to attempt to fix it? I'm technically still under warranty for a motherboard replacement but I'm traveling and out of the US for the next 3 weeks.

 

Harry015 in the other thread reports that it does access the usb floppy on failed boot, I suspect that bios recovery is possible based on that, just gotta figure out which of the 4 methods on the first page of this thread works..
(hopefully)

 

Thanks. Just saw that. Unfortunately, as I said in the other thread, no access to a USB floppy at the moment and I'm stuck in a place where I can't get one. So will have to wait a few weeks until I get back to the US.

Harry brings up a valid point about the floppy drive as well. The disk will only be 1.44 MB vs a 2 MB BIOS ROM.

 

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acer 7630g Recovery nightmare

Hi everybody....
I am trying to recover an acer 7630g (phoenix)
I have used floppy recovery a few times on my compal fl92, (1mb bios)
and i works every time.
BUT, the acer 7630g has a 2mb bios, I can get the floppy to boot, but no way to fit the bios. Flashing from usb stick does not work.

any ideas?

would it be possible to flash somekind of default phoenix bios (1mb)
I mean the acer 7630g clearly has recovery function, so I guess there must be a way.....

Regards Jubaz

 

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i had a lot of problems with BIOS updates when using my SONY VAIO, the blue screen always pooped out and was having a lot of problems, later i stopped automatic downloads on windows and now its okay

 

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