Hel-80 Bios......died....

I downloaded the new 110B bios from http://www.bizcom-us.com/support/TechSupportDriversDownloadPage.htm#EL80 .
(I needed the newer bios to support the Core2Duo that I was buying. )

My touchpad accidentally hit the "phlash16.exe" and freaking started up all by itself in windows and starting to flash itself. (Was going to use a floppy disk)

Half way through it bombs out and I got a BSOD. Now when I power my laptop on it spins up my CD-Rom drive and reads the whole CD then my USB Floppy drive.

Is there any hope in recovering my bios with a floppy or CD, or is my bios just corrupt.

(Someone needs to lets Bizcom know that their stupid "phlash16.exe" AUTO flashes the bios upon any opening of it by mistake. NO warning!)

 

try to flash it again using a floppy or cd, if the CD boots then your in luck.

The only other way to reset the BIOS is on the motherboard somewhere, and thats for desktops, I don't know if this applies to notebooks.

 

Aye, sadly nothing shows up on my monitor......I can Just hear the CD try to, "Boot Up"

 

There's a reason that BIOS file downloads always come with those dire warnings. If you've indeed misflashed the BIOS, you're notebook is now essentially a paperweight. I'm afraid the only way to fix it is to send it in and either have the BIOS chip re-flashed or the chip physically replaced by the support technicians.

A good rule of thumb is to only flash a new BIOS if it corrects a problem you're already experiencing. Otherwise, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

The problem was that the crappy WINDOWS flash appliction kicked off with out my approval! I intended to flash the bios, but only using the proper way via DOS.

This is totally bad form for bizcom to add a self flashing application that runs with out a warning when its misclicked.

 

I did the same thing, except that it was more my fault and didn't brick my notebook. I'd like to flash it properly sometime just to make sure it's right though... ah, anyways, I'm thinking you can still reflash your bios. There was a thread in here a bit ago about that.

this one: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=68237

 

I really appreciate the comment l33t_c0w. (What happned to that guy is exactally what happened to me.) I will test this out in the morning when I find a working USB Floppy drive. I will report back my results. Thanks again man.

Were you able to save you computer out of a similar situation?


Edit: I am about 90% sure I can recover my Bios now. This is just a heads up for anyone else in my posision. (Gotta buy a usb floppy drive tomorrow)
It turns out most laptops with a Phoenix Bios, (Hel-80 being one), has a special bios recovery mode. If you follow these exact steps you will be able to access it.

1) Take your battery fully out.
2) Press and HOLD Fn+B or Win+B. (It just depends on which combo works on your laptop) WHILE holding one of the combos plug your laptop's AC power in AND then press the power button on. (All while you are holding the button combo down)
3) If you built the Floppy disk right then it will fix its self. (It will take several minutes to finish up) (Refer to l33t_c0w's link for proper Crisis Recovery Image)

I was able to confirm that my laptop has such a feature. You can tell by when using the above settings your laptop will turn on with the power LED off and the Fan on FULL. (I was just so happy that I had this mild success that I had to share this as soon as I figured it out. Will follow up tomorrow when I buy my USB Floppy drive)

Good reference post here explaining lots of what I just posted.

I hope you Mods read this and make your own sticky post about it or something! This is a good bit of info to know. Might keep some folks from having to RMA their laptops.

 

Exactly same happened to me, but i never managed to get taht recovery mode to work, and had to have entire motherboard replaced.

 

Yikes, are you sure you were holding the button combo down before and durring while you plugged in your AC power and turned the laptop on?

It took me a few tries to figure out the right order to do the steps in to make the recovery mode pop up. (The order does make the difference)

 

I don't know where you bought your laptop, but Donald (paladin44) from powernotebooks has, a couple times, recommended contacting your laptop reseller about getting bios flashing related files and instructions. It's on my kind of ethereal, sometimes-there todo list to email powernotebooks and ask for new bios files.

What happened in my case is that I clicked "setup" thinking it would install something, as files named setup so often do... I just wanted to get more of a feel for what I was looking at. By the time I realized it was actually flashing my bios, there was no way I was going to interrupt it. So I just glared, instead.

Reason being, intel's wireless profiling software has occasionally been unable to recognize my profile ever since, though a reboot solves that. It could be that the bios flash was unrelated. I just don't like the idea of having a half-baked bios in my motherboard. heheh.

 

I experienced the same...while doing some video rendering and some other stuff, I started the winphlash (and the window got hidden behind some other) and everything lagged big time...I didn't start anything on purpose, and I was just lucky that nothing crashed...

 

My Hel-80 WORKS AGAIN after following the steps! It works 100%!

 

If you look at the README/changelog included with the BIOS zip files, you'll see that this Fn-B option was mentions in version 002, and then explained in detail in version 008.
They mention the Crisis diskette, but there's no link to it

 

I wish that it was clearly out lined somewhere else. I never thought to look through the annals of the Bios Change log, thats just kinda silly. I am just glad it fixed my laptop. ^.^

 

Sweet! Glad to hear it. Many times people are not nearly so lucky. Never heard of this Winphlash app, but it does sound dangerous considering the number of people that have had unfavorable run-ins with it.

 

Heh thanks mate. But someone really needs to contact the website thats posting the bioses and change that application. There is no way in hell it should auto start flashing by double clicking a setup.exe file.

 

This is good news indeed. I'm glad you got your machine back in working order.

Donald of Powernotebooks actually tries to keep people away from using Winphlash. Because if something goes wrong with your BIOS, it could spell disaster.

I will reiterate that you shouldn't play around with your BIOS unless there's a specific problem that you need fixed. And even then, only go with one that is known to be safe to use and please check with your reseller's tech support to make sure you're doing it right if you're not sure.

 

Hi, i'm one of those guys who clicked this setup.exe file and got welcomed by the blue screen of death. The problem is that my system has sometimes hung up for about 5-10 secs (BIOS 105B, any solution?) so i was wondering if a bios update could help and out of curiosity clicked the setup.exe and so it started updating the bios until it crashed.

I read through the tutorials how to fix the problem but i was still wondering if it's possible to use the inbuilt dvd drive instead of the usb floppy drive (haven't tried) or there's no other option except the usb floppy drive to repair the bios?

 

You should be able to use a cd or usb flash drive as well, provided you can set one up to boot dos. I think that ratflail guy made a good post about using a flash drive a little while ago. (I can't for the life of me remember his handle at the moment)

edit: Here we go. Thank Pitabred: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=83939

 

Hi,

I've flashed my bios to the latest version, 112b, using the USB KEY method. It was very easy to create the bootable key using these instructions. This was the easiest way to get it to work, but the only change i made was to choose FAT instead of fat32. Only the USB ports on the DVD tray side are bootable.
The only thing that was messed up after the bios update was the Wi-Fi software that didn't connect to my router but nothing that a reinstall didn't resolve..

 

Too late, bought an usb floppy drive already, it fortunately worked . But another question, how to properly flash a bios via usb floppy (haven't found out yet so i ask).

..and have you had such problems that your notebook (hel80, bios 105b << it's the one i flashed back) freezes at a random time for about 5-10 secs and then works fine again.?

 

The USB floppy BIOS flash instructions were posted by Paladin44 at Powernotebooks a while back. Here it is.

Can you isolate the conditions your random freezes occur under a little bit (i.e. with a certain application running or after a certain operation)?

 

hmm, they have happened when watching movies and also when playing games (quake 3, quake 4). I should also mention that it once happened to a friend also. (has the same laptop, except that i have core 2 duo t7200, he t2400)

More detailed specs.
C2D T7200
2x1 GB DDR2 667MHz A-Data
HDD Samsung HM120JI 120GB
7600Go (def clock)
BIOS 105B

And about paladin's instruction. Which files exactly need to be copied on to the floppy? I assume i don't need the readmes and the setup.exe file!? And he refers to a bootable floppy disc also. Does he mean just a regular formatted floppy disc or there is a way to make the so called _bootable_?

 

You can get the files you need to make it bootable at http://www.bootdisk.com/

 

ok, there was actually a much easier way to do so . right-click->format->create ms-dos startup disc.
I had actually to use 2 discs, one for ms-dos, the other for the bios, it just didn't fit on one.

Everythin went well, the bios got flashed to 112b and everything seems normal