CF-19 Bios Issues

My CF-19 has died.... Probably revivable, I think core windows files are damaged. But that is another thread... I am seriously contemplating a new(er) ride instead.

This "may" tread into that which shouldn't be discussed territory, so I will be clear enough, but not specific. If this is warrantied, can somebody PM me?

There are some MK6 CF-19's on eBay cheap enough to be worth thinking about. With bios locks. Off lease machines by a recycler. So that all looks kosher.

Starting price of $199, with a BIN of $325. I can justify that, if I can get into BIOS.

 

BIOS chip replacement only.
And I have to tell you it's prohibited to discuss bios password questions here. It's better to remove this topic while moderator is sleeping )

 

other than the "yep , it's locked and you aint gettin' in ..." , discussion of any attempts/ways of *end running* bios locks is absolutely prohibited .
Chip replacement is the only way for us mere mortals to make a machine accessible .
and even then ... the gurus at panasonic might be the only ones that can make certain *fixes* happen .

as i see it , if a machine that is for sale has a password protected bios or there are certain items that are "locked out" at the factory (think custom user bios turning off wifi , etc) then the unit is for "parts only" .
accordingly , the price i would pay would reflect this .
(some sellers actually expect someone to pay a big price for a locked machine)


ps ... there are members here that sell machines they have actually gone through and rebuilt ...
virtually every one of them is low priced compared to the time/labor put in .
not to mention ... you know where they live (so to say) .

 

Panasonic replaces the motherboard.

 

Lol they beat me to it and I got edited. Thats cool. I suspected it was heading towards the dark side, so I at least left out specific procedures. Probably why I JUST got an edit...

Well good news! One of my hacker buddies came over today. His car was broke. While I fixed his car, he tried to beat my CF-19 into submission. No luck. After he spent a couple hours on it, I went and disabled everything in BIOS except the HDD. Rebooted. Walked away. Maybe 15 minutes or so went by. We heard noise from the machine and it had finally passed the stuck point. It took a while to finish a full bootup. But it finally did. Then we proceeded to run a bunch of tests. Including another reboot into the Panasonic Diagnostics Utility. That is a SERIOUSLY KILLER UTILITY!!!

Anyways, it gets full health. No idea what the problem was. Going to grab a USB dvd/cd drive and a Windows 7 disc and boot the windows startup repair. Might have a bad file somewhere. But so far it has rebooted a few times now without issues.

I may still consider a newer upgraded machine. But at least I am not forced to replace now. Took almost a week to fix that one...

 

Check your HDD with Victoria or another serious utility. I think it's dying.

 

Is the Panasonic (CTRL F7 on boot) Diagnostic utility good enough? It took 38 minutes to test everything. And gave everything a good pass.

Well I found some better options for upgraded machines anyways for about the same price. I think these were just posted or something. I can't BIN it, but I can try to win it anyways! A CF-19YJC7A1M MK5. Close enough I think to the MK6 specs. And not BIOS locked...

But with my CF-19 at least booting up now, not in as much of a hurry to upgrade to a different machine. We were talking about swapping in a SSD drive though...

As for the likely "cause" the machine had sat for a while with a boot interrupted, and then a dead battery. I am thinking it simply scrambled itself perhaps. But I would love to run a couple more tests to back up the Panasonic Utility.

 

No, you have to use a special HDD utility to be sure HDD is ok. If there are internal problems you have a chance to get non-working laptop when you really need it and lose your info.

 

Ackkkk.... Okay will do then. Currently it is defragmenting, not the best thing to do to a possibly bad HDD... Nothing really super critical on that HDD, except the amount of hell it takes to get W7 and all Panny drivers working on a MK3 (or whatever model it is, didn't have W7 drivers available). So yeah, if I am keeping that machine, then I need to clone the HDD over onto an SSD one soon or something. I don't want to go through that setup again!

 

Opinions on possible upgrade....

CF-191FYAX1M (MK6?) i5 2.60GHz, 4GB memory, 500GB HDD, and no OS

VS

CF-19YJC7A1M MK5 i5-2520M 2.50GHz, 8GB memory, 1TB HDD, and Win 10 Pro

I think both have W7 COA, don't care for W10. So OS not really a factor other than I want to actually use 8GB of memory (and the MK6 has less memory).

 

i recently had to replace/clone a HDD in a business machine that i built a few years ago ...
the complaint was (as in amounted to) the desktop INI file being pooched and causing a black screen .
i have run into this particular scenario with many machines over the years as well as "won't boot" .
i realize that this is a different set of symptoms than is the case for your HDD but the upshot is :
i ran tests on the HDD ... all passed ... with the exception of obviously bad ones .
in the case of the "intermittent boot problem" replacing the HDD effected the solution .
why ? i do not know ... it is above my pay grade .

clone your HDD to a SSD and you have effectively eliminated the possible cause of a boot issue and upgraded your machine in one shot .
(i use the aomei free software ... works well)
used ssd are available at ebay for a reasonable price ... i have bought several and not got a bad one .

 

Sometimes on those you do get lucky. I picked up a Mk3 for a beater awhile back and was lucky enough the wifi was on, had to load windows from another machine and swap it into that one. Got to go back and load a dual boot of Mint and 7 or XP on it.