Man… Me and my brother were upgrading our computer (new celeron 533 and geforce woo), and we messed up bad. Somehow a password had been set on the BIOS, and we weren’t really thinking straight (my brother was a little drunk), so we decided to flash it instead of just taking out the CMOS battery (which we both knew was the thing to do).
Luckily, while doing so, we were rushing (excited). We were reading the readme and stuff and it had all these warnings in red saying “DON’T HAVE ANYTHING IN THE MEMORY” and suchlike. But we were in a hurry and stuff and dammit, we didn’t even boot from the freaking disk.
We restarted to MS-DOS, and there was all this shit going on and a lot of stuff in the memory, and when we were running the flasher (this is the dumbest part) it actually says file size does not match, but my brother chose “flash anyway”. Way to go Will.
Anyway, now basically we have a totally f***ed BIOS (can’t even turn the damn computer on). Is there ANYTHING we can do apart from buying a new motherboard?
drinking and driving don’t mix
drinking and computing mix
except in your case neighbor. LMAO. sorry, but you’ll look back on this and laugh too. if the BIOS is fried, your CMOS that is, well, so are you. Did you check to see if you could just order a new CMOS though? from the company… maybe they can help you with that, might still be cheaper then getting a whole now board.
God you are a stupid ass but having done this twice myself (blush) I’m apparently one too and as a charter member of the “Oh My GOD What Have I Done Now” Club there is a fix if you have a cooperative vendor.
1: If you are on good terms with your vendor get a duplicate board (you can return) and CAREFULLY pull out the BIOS chip with a chip extraction tool or similar angled tool. Be sure not to touch or damage any adjacent chip wires while pulling it out.
2: Remove the comatose BIOS chip from your board and replace it with the new BIOS. Plug the new BIOS chip in enough to seat it for good contact but don’t push it all the way down into the DIP socket unless absolutely necessary for good contact. Set the system BIOS parameters as you desire and afer re-booting download the CORRECT BIOS flash update and make sure you understand proper update procedure.
3: Here’s the fun part. While the PC is up and running remove CAREFULLY the new BIOS chip and plug in your old confused chip. If you need to be in DOS to do this make sure you are in the mode you need to be in to process the update before you swap chips.
4: Run the flash update and the old BIOS will be re-flashed with a good BIOS read and you should be set to go. Plug the new BIOS back into it’s board and return it to vendor along with a 6 pack of Pete’s Wicked Ale.
I have done this on 3 different PC’s and it worked each time. I make no guarantees for your unit.
If you cannot get a duplicate BIOS you will have to get a generic after market BIOS (not cheap) or trash the board.
GOOD LUCK!
Yes, of the stupid ass thing I need no reminders (hah I was at the shop and I ask “is this the kind of thing that is so stupid that no one has any information on it?” and the guys were like “yes”). I was actually thinking of the exact same thing though, astro. I can probably borrow the motherboard from a friend (NOT on good terms with my vendor heh). Great, thanks man.
astro, great idea! My dad harshed a BIOS a while back, and I thought and thought and couldn’t come with a solution. We ended up sending it back to the factory claiming it was DOA.
You probably don’t need to pull the physical bios chip. When I did a bad flash to a bios not so long ago, I looked through the docs and found that there were a couple of jumpers to set which would activate a nonflashable part of the bios which looks at the floppy for file, and flashes that.
Hey, it worked for me. Check your docs. This was on an old Packard Bell system, so you know that if they got it right everyone else must have too.