need help! possibly bricked m17xr2

My cousin brought his laptop over to me two days ago, because it was having an issue with bsoding after installing graphics drivers (finally got that fixed with the vbios update) but then after that... we'd installed some driver updates, and then went to install the latest bios update from Dell (yes, I know, stupid idea... I've been reminded of that about a dozen times) well, it froze up at block 47 out of 70 (counting down from 70) and I gave it about half an hour, before I even tried hitting the power button, which did nothing! So I unplugged it, and popped the battery out (another bad idea!)

Anyways, after trying to turn it back on, all I got was the lights to turn on, but nothing else... i've tried about a dozen times to follow the crisis recovery instructions, but I'm getting nowhere! The usb stick is a sandisk cruzer 2gb... the light does not flash rapidly, its just slowly comes on and off, and after about 20 minutes, the laptop shuts itself off, but nothing seems to have changed. Is there a combination other then FN+B to try, or can someone tell just how long to hold them down... something, anything to help me get this thing working again please!

 

so the keyboard lights turn on and the fans are on but not the LCD? anyway a blind flash is what your most likely going to have to do.
first things first, reset your CMOS coin cell battery

 

actually, I can barely hear the fans at all. Now, doing that... don't I just disconnect all power, and hold the power button for 30 seconds to 2 minutes? or do I need to open it up and find the battery and pop it out?

 

thats a static discharge however yes you need to open it up and disconnect the battery, then wait about a minute and plug it back in

 

I see... well, that's my next step then, thank you for the help... I'll try that, and give an update, now before I try to do the crisis recovery once more, any suggestions on which bios I should use? I've tried with A10, A09, and then I tried to use the first few versions of the bios, A01 and A02... last attempt was A05, so I'm kinda guessing at which one to use.

 

Modified A10 are the ones that I'm using but i've heard A07 are extremely stable

 

ah, that'll be my next try, unplugged the battery for about 15 minutes, then plugged it back in, and tried the FN+B thing today... and still the same as before, keyboard lights up, usb stick just flashes on and off slowly, and nothing else.

 

alright... I'm about to tell my cousin that his only option is to send the laptop in to dell, because I tried with A07, and still nothing. I tried without the cmos battery being connected, and then with it being connected again, no change either way. lights turn on, after a few seconds, the HDD light (the alien head eyes) flash, and then nothing, and the usb drive takes about 10 seconds to start flashing at all, the light flashes like twice, then its a slow on and off, roughly about every second, and it'll do that until the whole thing just shuts itself off, after about 20 minutes, with nothing else happening.

That is, unless someone has a different suggestion for me to try.

 

so... no other suggestions?