Reloading corrupt BIOS on Gateway M-1625

I apologize if this is the wrong forum to post this in, but I have a feeling this would be the place to get an answer on this.

I have an old Gateway M-1625. The battery on it is pretty much dead, as it only holds a charge for maybe 10 minutes. I went into the BIOS and tried to get it to relearn the battery to see if that would help with the battery life, but it was learning for over 24 hours so I powered it down. I started it up later and I got a message about the BIOS, but I hit F2 to continue and the laptop seemed to work without a problem. I shut it down, and later that day I started it up again. Now the power and wi-fi light stay on, the CD-ROM drive light flashes twice, the HDD light flashes once, and the CD-ROM light flashes again. Then it powers down and starts up again and does the same thing. The screen stays black the entire time.

I have a feeling that the BIOS is corrupt. Does anyone have a way that I can update the BIOS without soldiering a new chip in? Any help would be appreciated.

 

do you know what the message was about the bios? if it was a matter of the DSDT resetting then it could have set the resources to where you can not boot. Reloading the bios MAY reset the DSDT but an emergency recovery, if you can find it, should do that as well.

Another option is pull the battery and find and pull the CMOS battery as well. With all power unplugged press and hold the power burtton for 20 seconds. This should reset cmos and might get you too boot. Yet one last thing to try, again if DSDT error, is once you power it on imediately press and hold the power button to shut down. If it shuts down before the HDD does its last flash this might again cause the DSDT table load failure to the system before post. This could again reset the DSDT and let you boot.

Sorry I don't have anything to help further................

 

I believe the message looked similar to this:

hoenix Trusted Core (tm) NB
Copyright 1985-2006 Phoenix Technologies Ltd.
All Rights Reserved

BIOS version 9D.05


632k System RAM Passed
1918 Extended RAM Passed
1024 KB L2 Cache
System BIOS shadowed
Video BIOS shadowed
ATAPI CD-ROM: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-T20F
Fixed Disk 0: WDC WD2500BEVS-22UST0
Mouse Initialized
System Configuration Data updated
ERROR
System Configuration data Read Error

Press F1 to resume, F2 to Setup

 

that is the DSDT updating, did you try booting without a battery at all?

 

I just pulled the battery out, hit the power button for 20 seconds, plugged the laptop back in, and turned it on. The CD light went on three times and then nothing. I powered it down by holding down the power button, then tried to start it again, and the same thing happened. However, I was a little wrong with the lights. Power and wi-fi go on, the CD light goes on three time, the hard drive light once, then it shuts down and restarts and the same thing happens again.

I did try using the Gateway Recovery CD, but it didn't work.

 

for the DST to reset again you must power on and immediately power down with holding the power button. You need to be sure the power down happens before all the normal lights are posted. If all the hardware does not post from the DSDT then the system will think the table failed and on next boot will actually reload the settings by looking at each piece of hardware, not jus initializing them with saved resets and this is where you get that message "System Configuration Data updated".

As far as bios recovery this usually involves placing a specifically named file on a USB stick and powering on with a specific key combo. This is known as crisis recovery..........