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    Compal FL90 Boot problem

    Discussion in 'Other Manufacturers' started by manuelcmg, Dec 2, 2011.

  1. manuelcmg

    manuelcmg Newbie

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    Hi There

    I have a strange issue with my FL90.

    My situation regardind the FL90 is:

    The problem at First was the already Know dead of the graphics card 8800m GT.
    I had a new under warrantly that lasted 8months, then I did a Rebal in a company here that does it, and lasted 1year, This time i've decided to swap it for an ati hd3650, so before I bought the ati I did reflow the 8800GT.

    The problem starts now:

    The FL90 on boot shows the compal Logo, and the message to press F2 to enter setup and F12 to select boot device.

    If I press F2 it goes to the bios configuration, so far so good. The problem is that it don't goes nowhere post this. The bios detects everything, like HDD, DVD drive, even my bootable USB stick.

    If I press F12 only a grey screens stays on, and the Select device menu does not appear. The same Happens if I don't press anything

    This problem happens both with the 8800mGT and the HD3650.

    Resuming, Graphics seem to be OK, I can enter The BIOS, But I cannot boot my system.

    Anyone can help me find where this problem is coming from?




    In the meantime I've found this on the service manual (Chapter 2):
    "2.4 Boot Block
    The Flash ROM used in many systems today offer the customer the advantage of electronically reprogramming the BIOS without physically replacing the BIOS
    ROM. This advantage, however, does create a possible hazard: power failures or fluctuations that occur during updating the Flash ROM can damage the BIOS code, making the system unbootable. To prevent this possible hazard, many Flash ROM include a special non-volatile region that can never be erased. This region, called the boot block, contains a fail-safe recovery routine. If the boot block finds corrupted BIOS, it prompts the end user to insert a diskette, from which it loads several files that replace the corrupted BIOS on the Flash ROM with an uncorrupted one"

    Could it be a BIOS problem? and as far I've found the only solution seems to be this:
    "8.4 Crisis Recovery
    This feature provides an opportunity for system that cannot boot up. With a crisis floppy diskette, the system can perform crisis recovery by using internal PS2 keyboard.
    To perform crisis recovery using keyboard, do the following:
    Power off the system.
    Plug-in the USB floppy drive with crisis floppy diskette inserted.
    Hold down Fn + B keys.
    Plug-in AC adapter and make sure it is powered.
    Power on the system from off state (i.e. cold boot) while holding down <Fn+B> key.
    After POST, release <Fn+B> key. The system should boot from floppy and
    perform crisis recovery action. "

    But where do I find the crisis floppy diskette??

    I know I'm answering my questions, but maybe someone went through this and can help me.
     
    manuelcmg, Dec 2, 2011
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  2. manuelcmg

    manuelcmg Newbie

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    Hi there again

    Thank You for all the Help (or Not! :( )

    But because I don't Stop, then I must say problem solved.

    First of all thanks to this guys, because their post here in the forúm helped me a lot:
    Dr.Colossos - How to: Replace your broken (8600M GT) graphics card (in the FL90)
    zfactor - in case you kill your phoenix bios: bios recovery methods


    So, after some search I've found out the zfactor post talking about the crisis recovery diskette, and I did gave it a try. And it worked after a few frustrating tries

    Things I've learned with this for the Compal FL90
    1-The method don't work with the USB flash drive
    2-It works with the USB diskette drive, but with some precautions:
    2.1-When using the "Phoenix_Crisis_Recovery" program you need to select the "Formating" Option, if not it won't work
    2.2-This won't work if you try to do it on a 64bit operating system, I've spent much time trying to format my diskette on a 64bit system, and when I got to the real thing, it didn't load the bios. When I tried it on my other PC (32bit) it worked straight way.

    Both my graphics work, the Nvidia 8800mGT (reballed and reflowed and baked twice) and the ATI HD3650

    I hope with this post I can help someone else that cross with a similar issue.

    And finally, thank you to this great community for sharing your experiences and thank Google Search because it really helped me out
     
    manuelcmg, Dec 3, 2011
    #2