Does a failed BIOS flash have the possibility of ruining a (soldered-on) graphics card?

Hi everyone!

I was thinking of posting this question specifically in the Sony section, this being a case involving a Sony Vaio CW series laptop with a dedicated NVIDIA card.

So, case in point: A friend got impatient and cut the power to her laptop while she was flashing her Vaio's BIOS (AMI, I believe) and well, when she tried to boot it up again of course it wouldn't anymore. Now when she told me this and asked me to repair it, my first impulse was to scrounge up her BIOS and do a rescue. It doesn't work--the laptop just has a blank screen. ODD spools up, but other than that, nothing.

After all my efforts were exhausted, they had to send it in for repair. I told her that she might have luck looking for an EEPROM programmer that might help her to directly reflash the BIOS chip. Instead, she went to a repair shop which told her her GPU might be fried and/or busted (perhaps due to a vBIOS flash with the BIOS flash gone awry?) and since this model's GPU is soldered onto the MB, I can't help but think this is them trying to rip my friend off.

I know this is unlikely because we both observed the laptop and I know (because of NBR, too!) that if the GPU is fried, we should only not be seeing things. But sound should still be working and therefore, the Windows startup sounds should all be up (she never mutes) but we haven't heard a single click from the laptop.

So is it possible?

 

Short answer: no.

Long answer: by cutting the power, you killed the motherboard's BIOS chip not the GPU. Now, potentially, you could desolder the bad BIOS chip and solder a new one in place (very unlikely it's possible). But as in most situations, you'll have to replace the MB. This is why you never cut the power during a flash.

 

That is a REALLLY dumb friend, pardon me but if she knows how to flash a BIOS but doesn't know or think it's safe to cut the power while flashing, she should seriously be kept away from electronics.
A bad flash shouldn't harm the hardware and since the video card is dedicated, it should not be affected at all since its BIOS is independent from the system BIOS.
However off topic, a video card with a corrupted BIOS would probably make Windows BSOD while starting up and therefore you wouldn't get any startup sound.

 

I've read about some laptops being able to reflash BIOS from a USB memory when they can't boot up after a bad flash.
Anyone know what I'm talking about?

 

Depends on the laptop. Some will let you recover, others won't.

 

Exactly, that's what I meant with "some".

 

If you, uh, I mean your "friend," tried flashing the motherboard's bios, that would have no effect on the separate video bios. And if the video bios was messed up, you could definitely blind flash it if the motherboard's bios was working.

 

No a system bios flash will not affect the GPU. Most bad bios flash can be recovered with a floppy drive and . So you might want to get one. I used the phoenix crisis recovery method when I flashed a corrupt bios on my laptop. Since you said that your friend has a AMI bios the procedure will be slightly different.
bios-repair.co.uk | BIOS Recovery | Crisis Recovery | Flash Recovery

 

Yeah, I told her that. but well, blame's not on her since she does know squat about how these stuff work.

I tried doing that to her NB (wouldn't be the first time I did it, I recovered an HP Mini using the USB Stick method) but no luck.

I tried putting in a USB floppy drive and trying to see if there were any activity happening with it when the laptop starts--well, there isn't any activity. Plus, the .ROM file for the Vaio is 2048kb--floppies are only 1.44MB's so how...?

 

here, let me fix that for you...

Short answer: sometimes.

Graphics chips have BIOS just like system board do.

Depends on the gpu.

 

It depends on if the GPU is integrated or not; if it's integrated it's part of the north bridge and therefore doesn't require it's own BIOS, which is not the case for dedicated ones.
The problem with a corrupted system BIOS is that the system BIOS gives you basic I/O functionality which is required to enter the flashing process let alone booting on USB. Also if for any reason the USB key is not part of the boot order and it's not part of the default configuration (in case you clear CMOS), you won't be able to boot from it.

 

Just to put things into perspective a lot of today's laptops that have soldered in dedicated GPU's also have their Video BIOS as part of main system BIOS.

For instance with Sony Vaio CW series model VPCCW2S1EL which is an AMI BIOS, there exists 9 different Videos BIOSes inside the one system BIOS.

<HTML><STYLE><!-- TABLE { font-family:"Arial"; font-size:x-small } --></STYLE><BODY TEXT="#000000"> <COLGROUP><COL WIDTH=24><COL WIDTH=55><COL WIDTH=115><COL WIDTH=241></COLGROUP><TBODY ALIGN=CENTER>

	DID	BIOS Ver	GPU
1	0A2B	50.31.31.4E.00	GT216 - NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M
2	0A75	39.39.31.20.00	GT218 - NVIDIA GeForce 310M
3	0A2D	50.31.31.4E.00	GT216 - NVIDIA GeForce GT 320M
4	0A74	00.00.01.10.00	GT218 - NVIDIA GeForce G210M
5	0CAD	70.15.01.00.AA	GT215 - NVIDIA N10E-ES
6	0A7D	00.00.01.10.00	GT218 - NVIDIA N11M-ES
7	0A3D	00.00.01.10.FF	GT216 - NVIDIA N11P-ES
8	0A29	00.00.01.10.FF	GT216 - NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M
9	0A75	00.00.01.10.00	GT218 - NVIDIA GeForce 310M

</BODY></HTML>

So if you stuff up the BIOS flash you may not have a video BIOS to use however it is extremely unlikely that the GPU would be "fried" by a bad flash.

IMO your options are...

1. Find a recovery procedure for that notebook and hope the recovery process still works. It is fairly normal that it has to be initiated. That could be having to use a certain key combination while applying power or other method. It would be handy if you had a backup of the BIOS before it was flashed. Might be a slim chance the flashing software did this for you.

2. If the notebook is under warranty see if Sony would be nice enough to fix it for you for free. If not get a quote.

3. Removal of the BIOS chip and re-flashing externally. Back up whats on there before flashing, there's a good chance your serial numbers are still okay.
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??? Mods, why does my post show "vbseo" ? I never put it there.

 

UHUH. This by far is the most extensive I've seen regarding them vBIOS/system BIOS.

Well, my friend's is a CW26 something, but it does have the 310M, and if it did scrunge up the BIOS flash then there might be a possibility of the VGA bios being crapped up as well. One thing though--if I flash using the 2MB BIOS back using, say, AFUDOS (one rescue method I saw uses this), would it flash the GPU as well? And, if I use AMI's built in magic stuff, would it, too?

Geez I just have to figure out what the freakin magic key combination is. I've tried the CTRL + (Fn) + Home (home is an Fn key, you see) and in the HP Mini that I did this too, it accepted the recovery process. I'm just not sure if something is indeed happening since the USB key I was using doesn't light up, therefore I should grab a lighting one somewhere.

So, what do you think? Should I ask the Sony people in the forums about the recovery keypress thingamajig?

 

IMO re-flashing the system BIOS and it should take care of the video BIOS. Ask where you can, particularly BIOS forums, MDL etc. Try searching for Sony & AMI recovery with google. If the boot block isn't corrupted and you figure how to activate the recovery you should hopefully see some indication such as USB or maybe CDROM regular accesses as the BIOS recovery looks for the rescue file.