Flashing bios on a motherboard = death

[laserwanabe]

I bought my computer about 1 year ago and after a recent system upgrade i became aware that my bios was out dated and may have been the cause of some system instability. So my mother board is from MSI what i though was a good company, so I used there update system to find the right updates for my system. I got the bios and installed it, but then my computer stoped dead in its tracks. It does not respond to power buttons once on, i manually went back in to my hardrive from a different computer and deleted the bios file. Still nothing, so my computer turns on and all the fans and every thing go on fine, but my bios dont flash, and my processor being an amd doesnt beep like on normal boot up.

Yeah its alot to read but if anyone knows Bios and may be able to help me i would appreciate it. Im currently contacting MSI but there slow so i was trying to fix it myself...

 

[pseudolobster]

Some BIOSes have a "recovery mode" or "boot block mode" where you can insert a special disk and maybe hold a certain key combination while turning it on.. You'll have to have a disk with a valid BIOS rom file (you backed up the old bios first right?) and some special utilities, for which you'll also need to know what manufacturer your BIOS is, such as award, ami, or phoenix.. usually you can find this out by looking at the sticker on the chip.

http://wimsbios.com has some forums with a ton of info for different recovery options... here's a mini-walkthrough for award and ami: http://www.wimsbios.com/faq/howtorecoveracorruptbios.jsp

If all else fails, if you have no warranty or MSI won't honor your warranty, you can always buy a pre-flashed replacement for like $20-$30... when this happened to me I used http://bios-repair.co.uk - they were very good and it shipped cheaply overseas from the UK in something like 3 days.

 

[MarioMaster]

also if your BIOS is on a removable flash chip you may be able to just toss it and buy a new one from ebay or something

 

[tomcat]

updating your bios = lulz i have a msi and their live bios update tool is crap, i use the floppy with bios rom method

 

[Glaserfan]

Do you have another MSI board that uses the same bios chip(assuming they are not hard-soldered). If so, you can try this....

Start up the other board-with at least a CDrom/floppy and monitor. Boot up the CD or floppy with the flash program, and bios that you need for the "dead" board. Once it is booted, CAREFULLY pry out the bios chip with the system ON-WARNINGo NOT short the pins!!!. Put in your chip from the dead board, and flash. then shut it off by switching off the power supply.

Replace the chips to their original boads, and try the dead board.

This has worked for me on a few occassions, with no failures yet... just remember NOT to short any pins with the system on  :-/

 

[FrothyChimp]

Doing anything with the hard drive will do nothing. The BIOS is on the motherboard in an EEPROM. On most motherboards there is a jumper setting that will allow you to blank the BIOS on startup, then move the jumper back and boot up again. At that point you are operating at the hardware level and you will have to follow the manufacturer instructions on flashing a new BIOS. I have not seen a removable EEPROM BIOS chip on a motherboard in 20 years but then again, I haven't been looking.

 

[laserwanabe]

I solved the problem, it was a driver problem because of MSI's crappy update tool. I has to remove some of my ram and my network card to get my bios up on my screen. After that i ended up setting it to the default and now its running like a champ again.

 

[sk8er4514]

if anyone else has that problem, there is a jumper setting on the motherboard that resets the BIOS back to default. then it will work!

you can find it in the manual for your motherboard, i think it's called JMOS jumper or something like that. it's just like the jumpers on your hard drive to make Master/ Slave/ CS...