HEL80 BIOS Problem on frozen laptop

Ok this use to be my old laptop. Well not old because it's only 4mo old. I sold it to a guy here cause this laptop was not powerful enough to run my FS9 the way I want. Anyway so this guy buys it from me and takes the laptop back to his hooch and tries to enter an Admin password. Now I had never put any kind of password on the laptop. So the Phoenix Technologies BIOS was clean when he did this. However he did not read the owner’s manual first and he entered 2 passwords at the same time. ( Admin Password and User Password ) the owner’s manual tells you not to do this, only one at a time save and go back to add next password. So what happens when he pressed F10 to save an exit lol lol it froze solid on the Phoenix Technologies splash screen and that is where it has been for the last two weeks.

What have I tried, mmmmm
1) F9 on start up phoenix reset key does not work
2) Tried booting from a disk I had made for it but that does not work
3) Tried putting in windows XP and booting to reformat ( it’s not reading the drive at all so that does not work.
4) I thought about shorting the J3 contacts well actually I did but nothing happened, I know this is dangerous you can burn up your MOB
5) Was thinking about pulling the whole laptop apart and looking for the CMOS Battery but I am not sure where it is and I have never done that before.

I was told that the work around for this problem is to load an update BIOS from a USB Floppy drive. Order a floppy drive from Newegg it arrived yesterday. Went to Phoenix web site clicked on UPDATE BIOS found out you have to go to eSupprt.com for that. Ok go there but they need the BIOS string off of the startup screen, can't do that there is no start up screen just the Phoenix Technologies splash screen it is frozen on that no matter how many time you plug unplug restart press F9, or DELETE on start up, or CTRL+ALT+DELETE, or anything that I have read here; it is solid paper weight right now.

However I think if I can get the correct BIOS for this laptop and load it on to the Floppy drive, there is a way to make the BIOS look to the Floppy for an update and replace the frozen BIOS with the new one which should then start the puter? But I need a BIOS where can I get it? eSupport needs information that I don't have cause they do not understand yet that I can't get past the Phoenix splash screen. Any ideas? I am trying to help this guy out, of course the last resort is sending it back to Sandia Computer in Albuquerque, I know they can fix it but we are trying to avoid that, takes a long time from here and it is expensive. We are located in Iraq, Al Asad Airbase, we can Fed-x but that is 500.00 dollars, regular mail is 75.00 dollars but if you use regualr mail there is a very good chance it can be lost/stolen or broken. FED-X will take care of it but that is 500 dollars oooouuuch!

Sorry for the long note but I thought it might be necessary to understand what all I have already tried.

Thanks Ken

 

If the BIOS is stuck at the splash screen, and it does not read a floppy drive or a USB boot drive (try it if you haven't already) then you will probably have to remove the BIOS battery. I BELIEVE it is located somewhere near the enter button (underneath of course), but don't quote me on that. Get the disassembly guide for more information, hopefully someone on this forum will post it for you, as I can't remember where it is located on the net.

Take the battery out for 5 minutes or so (without the 9 cell battery in, or the laptop being plugged in or anything) and put the battery back in. 5 minutes is a bit excessive, but then, the situation is pretty sh*tty too, and you don't want to take the battery out for too little a time, put the computer back together again, and find out it did jack.

It is up to you as to whether you want to try this or not, but personally, I would rather take the whole damn thing apart than spend 1/3rd of its cost to fix it.

 

The problem seems to be that the BIOS has not started loading anything so it is not reading the CD/DVD ROM Drive. I am not sure that that means it won't read the USB but I do not have an Original or update BIOS to put on the Floppy Drive to test that. I do have some instructions I picked up from this forum that tell me what keys to hit when the laptop is started up so it will look to the USB for a new BIOS system. So I was looking to see if someone might be able to tell me where I could get an update or the original that came with it. I guess that I might have to take it apart and in that case maybe someone can tell me where I can get the disassembly guide .... actually either would work so I would be happy to go either way and if I end up taking it apart I will let you know if the battery is under the Enter button.

Thank you,
Ken

 

BIOS version 1.03B

 

There are procedures in at least one or two threads in this forum explaining how to do a "rescue process" with a certain "rescue disk" (from HP I believe) in order to salvage your computer after an unsuccessful BIOS flash. I think it may help you in this case. It involves having the special rescue disk ready and then booting the computer with the disk in, while you press certain Fn key combinations while jumping on one foot and chanting some mysterious ancient invocation... I kid you not... especially the first part
Also a call to your reseller (PowerNotebooks or whoever) could be helpful and cheaper than sending the machine by mail. Do some search in the forum under bios rescue or something like that