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    Flashing new BIOS sr290 froze, now it won't boot at all

    Discussion in 'VAIO / Sony' started by Bilybobjef, Apr 1, 2009.

  1. Bilybobjef

    Bilybobjef Newbie

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    So I was flashing the newest BIOS to my SR290 last night and in the middle of flashing it froze. I waited quite a while to make sure it wasn't just taking its sweet time but eventually had to pull the battery as holding the power button didn't even do anything. So I wait a few and then try to boot it back up and it won't power up at all. I plug it in and the charging light won't turn on. Any suggestions at this point or should I just go down the warranty road? Thanks for the help!

    Jeff
     
    Bilybobjef, Apr 1, 2009
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  2. Reaper05

    Reaper05 Notebook Evangelist

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    im not sure if lappys have it but i know the old fall back is to switch the cmos jumper.
     
    Reaper05, Apr 1, 2009
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  3. Bilybobjef

    Bilybobjef Newbie

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    Yeah I was hoping to not have to pull it apart to check on the CMOS but I know it may come down to that. Does anyone have the schematic or instructions on how to disasemble to get to it.
     
    Bilybobjef, Apr 1, 2009
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  4. euchrid_eucrow

    euchrid_eucrow Notebook Consultant

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    You might have to go the warranty road. I just had a bad flash on my Z, happened to have the schematics for that model, took the thing apart unfortunately no jumper though i wasn't expecting to find one. (i've gone through 5 sony laptops and none of them have had a jumper or at last nothing resembling a jumper.) I DID try disconnecting the CMOS batt and restarting with it disconnected, though no luck. I'm assuming there's some sort of emergency recovery procedure, since my dvd drive would spin up on boot up and was the only sign of life on the machine, i was assuming it might be looking for a rom to flash or some sort of custom autoexec.bat that does nothing but flash the BIOS. When i got it back from being repaired the work order/BOM showed them replacing my motherboard, so maybe they just remove the flashed chip and physically reprogram them divorced from the board.

    There has been a lot of work done in trying to enable VT in the BIOS on the FW's/SR's elsewhere in this forum, so maybe someone in that thread might be able to help you recover from a bricked flash. The thread is mostly about the FW's but i think both the FW's and SR's have an AMI bios as opposed to the older Pheonix based models and the Z/BZ which use an Insyde H2O Bios.

    http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=350209&page=1

    Also you can purchase the schematics directly from sony, it comes out to about $12 but it can be really informative.
     
    euchrid_eucrow, Apr 1, 2009
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  5. ngvuanh

    ngvuanh Notebook Deity

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    Contact Sony for warranty is the only way for you. Nothing else would help.
     
    ngvuanh, Apr 2, 2009
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  6. Bilybobjef

    Bilybobjef Newbie

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    Yeah I'm heading to a SonyStyle store near me tonight, thanks for the help everyone!
     
    Bilybobjef, Apr 2, 2009
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