A3E brainwashed?

Hi all,

A friend asked me to take a look at his Asus A3E since it's almost lifelles. I searched and searched for a solution (if there is one) but couldn't find anything to get me started.

I asked what happened and he said he was whiping the dust off and apparently turn it on and got in the BIOS setting somehow and got the message that the BIOS was being erased.. he got scared and turn it off

Now i can't imagine that there's an option in the BIOs settings that lets you erase the BIOS that easily (with some random keys being pushed). I guess it was some sort of BIOS recovery and it was first erasing to bios with the intention to flash it again, but it got shutdown.

Anyway.. at start up there is no display no beeps.. listening to the HDD and it doesnt seem like its starting stuff up. AND the fan is spinning like crazy. I guess there is nothing that controlling the fan and its on max.

I read about some cases where the BIOS could be fixed in the forum. Is there a possibility in this case and how? Or is it really a new mobo issue?

Thnx in advance for your time &help.

 

There is a crisis recovery process you can do if it is a Phoenix bios, you need the bios on a floppy disk and an internal or external 3.5 floppy drive. If its not Phoenix then I am unsure what the process is.

I saw several posts wondering if it worked with a usb stick or cd drive, but found noone that had any success without the floppy drive. Here's the link:

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service...447626+1242227375335+28353475&threadId=974719

 

first of all thnx for your reply!

I really don't know if it is a Phoenix BIOS and since i have no display i can't check it on the notebook. I'll search the asus manual maybe i'm lucky and there's some info in there somewhere.

I took a quick look at the link you provided but sadly most of the info indeed assumes i have a floppy drive, which i sadly don't have (its funny that in general ppl think a floppy is obsolete, but it's still the easiest way to fix things)

I'll read some more in that forum to see if there is a solution with a CD/ or USB flashdrive. btw is there an easy way nowadays to make a bootable usb flash drive? I googled a bit and most of the things i find are from 2006/2007. I hope there has been some progress meanwhile to make life a bit easier

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=246530

 

I've seen this quite a few times, it's F4 key, some older Asus model can access BIOS flash program by just press F4 at start up and the BIOS flash program will start to look for new BIOS, and if it can't find anything it'll start to erase BIOS and recover BIOS, most of the time people got scared and just turn it off when they see "no BIOS found, erasing BIOS...", therefore, the BIOS is gone and computer no longer post.

 

well I've been trying and trying but sadly no progress.. I've made a bootable USB Flash drive, but it isn't booting from it. I see the USB drive blink for a sec when I power on, but that's it. So it seems its not booting from it. I removed the HDD and CDdrive just in case no changes. I read something about boot block jumper on the thread you linked, but since the thread is for HP laptops I don't want to make jumpers without knowing for sure i connect the right jumpers. I even haven't confirmed its a Phoenix BIOS...

@GenTechPC: Really? just F4? What rocketscientist came up with that idea? I mean probably 70/80% of laptop users don't know what they are doing and if they see something like BIOS being erased they'll get scared and shut it down.. (even if it probably warns not to shut down or reboot )
NEway were you able to revive the notebooks in those cases? Cause I clearly am not able to (yet).

 

Blind flash only work if the BIOS still working and detects all the devices.

Q: What rocketscientist came up with that idea?
A: Asus R&D.


Yeah that F4 was weird, the model I remembered was Z92T.

You can try ALT+F4 to see if it can recover the BIOS.

 

Ken, do you know if or how to find out if the Asus he's got has the Phoenix bios? My Sager 2090 has Phoenix and I know that using a floppy drive does work. I did see many posts stating that they couldnt get the USB stick to work at all with it.

 

A3E uses AMI BIOS.

 

..oh I remember the good old days where you post with a good bios chip then take it off put the bad one in then copy the good one into the bad one ..but now I guess it's harder ...........(yeah I did that few times but that was when the bios was still unplugable ..)

 

Yeah and the 33Mhz/40Mhz crystal too, you tight it with cable tight.

 

Would and external USB floppy drive work or does it have to be a floppy drive bay? I've read on Biosman that CTRL+HOME can force a BIOS flash with AMI BIOS. It's worth a shot..

 

I'll give it a try, it doesn't hurt to try anything now.