Hi there, everyone. I've gotten my self into a bit of a dilemma. In my attempt to flash a modded BIOS onto my friend's GA-M61SME-S2 (rev. 2.x) mobo, I seem to have bricked the thing. I turn it on and the fans spin, the LEDs shine, but there is no display output or hard drive access. Strangely, I did not make the mistake of using Windows to flash the BIOS, I used the built-in flashing tool, and it still bricked the machine. I've tried a variety of recovery methods, and none have worked successfully. I've tried recovering from CDs and DVDs, and I even went out and bought a pack of floppies to use, and none of the methods involving those things worked either. It's an Award BIOS, and unfortunately, it seems as though it's not removable, so I can't attempt a hot-flash or send it somewhere to have it flashed. Does anybody out there have any recommendations? Thanks, Drew Carey Buglione
I've been searching the Internet, and I may have stumbled upon a clue, if anyone's willing to help me. I'd really appreciate it. I used a hex editor to search through the BIOS file from Gigabyte's site, and I found the string inside of it. Upon further searching, I found this forum thread at (sorry, I can't post links yet ). Although it's for a different motherboard, the two seem to have similar BIOSes. From there, I found a link to a Russian forum where someone seems to have figured it out. Unfortunately, much of it is still beyond my level of skill. If anyone can point me in the right direction, I'd be very grateful. -Drew Carey Buglione
Upon further searching, I found out that a backup of the BIOS is stored on the hard drive in a special area called the HPA (Hidden Protected Area). It seems as though if I could get someone who has the same (or similar) motherboard as me to send me a copy of their HPA, I might be able to recover the BIOS Perhaps I could use the original CD that came with the motherboard and extract the HPA from there? Or is that too far-fetched? Thanks in advance, to anyone who helps me -Drew Carey Buglione
new chip and flash from dos with flashspi.exe. Qflash and @ bios are not recommended. Winflash is a better idea than either IMO.. There have been successes shorting pins on bios to force dual bios reset (if it is true dual bios). Virtual dual bios has a backup on the driver disc I believe. Out of curiosity what method of mod did you use???
Some more useful info that may help:- If you are trying the bios recovery methods use the bios on the CD or from gigabytes website. Please note that the latest bios on gigabytes website is a beta bios. I advise not to use the beta one as i had problems with that one sometime ago. Use the bios prior to the beta which is the working one i used. I was very grateful to medic911 and yen who came along to help me at that time. Very grateful to them in helping me.