Looking for Vaio VPCF11 bios backup

Hey, I recently purchased a i7920xm for my F series laptop, however it didn't seem to accept it. The 920xm was working in another laptop, so the CPU was working fine. Anyway after some attempts to get my laptop to recognize the new CPU, I accidently caused a bad flash. I've identified the BIOS chip on the motherboard (chip: MX25L3205) and found this website:
MX series BIOS chip

which seems to sell the correct chip. They appear to also flash the BIOS with the firmware that I give them. Since I didn't store a backup of the original BIOS, I'm in need of one if anyone has one on hand.

If someone is aware of another way to fix the bricked board I would be happy to take suggestions on that.

Thanks,
Pabst.

 

Have you tried just using the sony BIOS update utility to flash the updated F11 BIOS instead of the original? You can get it from your Sony eSupport website under drivers or downloads or something else similar depending upon the country. I don't know what country you're in so you can look it up yourself. I'm not sure exactly what you did to your laptop so I don't know if that will work for certain. It may not run if it cannot find a recognized BIOS that it is expecting already on the chip. But it may still work - just depends on how Sony coded it. If you buy a chip, I would suggest using that file as well. If they know what they are doing, they should be able to use that to extract the BIOS even if it is coded to only update a chip with a previous F11 Sony BIOS on it.

Edit: I'm guessing your computer won't boot at all since you used the word brick, so then it's not a possibility to flash with the update file or extracted file yourself. I don't personally know anything other than replacing the chip if you cannot boot at all. Now if it's not actually bricked and that's just the word you used but you can still access a USB stick or the optical drive, different story. Also, if your "bad flash" didn't actually flash a new BIOS and erase the old one but just modified settings in the original or the flash failed before erasing the orignial, you can try resetting the CMOS - unplug laptop, remove the main battery, unplug CMOS battery (I'm sure you've seen it already), hold power button down for a minute and/or leave CMOS battery out for 10 minutes or so, then replace everything. But if it really is bricked, none of that will help.

2nd edit: Just one last thought before I sign off. Hopefully you won't have an issue, but it's possible a replacement chip will not work the way you expect. I'm not sure specifically how Sony is handling these things on the F1 - maybe someone else has tried and knows - but sometimes when replacing a chip, you will encounter issues with installing/updating drivers or installing Windows or using recovery media, etc., because the motherboard serial number, digital signatures, and other information the manufacturer programs are not connected to your new chip. There are some computers that require special utilities to be run to correct these problems or sometimes the only way is by going through a manufacturer authorized repair center (possibly costing significant money) to perform "tatooing." It seems like that chip is cheap enough it wouldn't be much of a loss financially and would be worth a try, but something to keep in mind as far as expectations.

Since you weren't specific about what you meant by "bricked," you should make sure it really is. Besides the CMOS reset, try the usual USB recovery methods to flash a BIOS. I'm assuming you know these since you were flashing an unsupported BIOS in the first place - things like Win+B.... You can extract the files in the update utility I mentioned earlier to get what you need to try that.

 

Agree. I have read something couple days ago about USB BIOS recovery.

You bought CPU on eBay for 256$, right?

What did you try to use for editing BIOS? And how can you know that it would help?

 

@jpride
Hey, sorry I didnt fully explain the state of my laptop. Essentially I was flashing the system with the Chinese bios for the same laptop series on my US laptop, since some people recommended that to fix the fan control. I took a guess in that they might not have had the same bios restrictions on CPUs. Unfortunately the bios seemed to be completely incompatible. Current state of laptop is that it turns on, power light goes on, monitor never starts, fan whirrs for 2 seconds, then stops allowing the processor to heat up to boiling point. I tried looking into the USB bios flashing; there were none regarding the F series. I'll give one of the generic tutorials for USB flashing a go and see if that works.

I tried the CMOS reset for good measure, and left it unplugged for a day. No effect on that.

Do you think that the bios update tool contains the full updated bios, or just the update itself? In the mean time I'll extract the bios from the update and try that with one of the USB flashing tutorials.

Thanks for pointing out the possibility that the replacement bios might not work out. I think in the worse case I can buy a new motherboard off of ebay for 250USD, but I'm trying to avoid that as much as possible.

I had the chance to stop by a Sony repair shop, where they indicated that the motherboard repair would be between 600 and 700USD. I explained that it was only not running because of a corrupted bios, but apparently its the set fee for motherboard repair.

@james D

Yeah, I bought one of the ES versions of the 920xm off ebay. I had read some posts about success with the 820xm so I assumed this one would work. I tested the 920xm in a friends laptop after it didn't work, it ran fine. (EDIT: ) I found the link for the bios I used (although I just noticed it was for the F13 and not F11, which explains my screw up): http://forum.notebookreview.com/son...-series-i5-i7-owners-thread-part-5-a-371.html

Thanks for the help guys.

 

I think it should contain the full bios file. I looked at my F13 one and there are two ROM files inside. Different BIOS flashing methods require different type of files, like .wph .bin. etc. Sometimes you have to convert file types. I didn't see either of those but I may not have extracted everything. There are several .exe flashing files in there too you may be able to run. As you found out, you can't use the F13 BIOS on your laptop - it must be an F11 one. And the F11 updated BIOS I believe already had those options you were looking for by using the F13 BIOS. We (F13 owners) got ours long after everyone else.

Edit: Also, here is my last ditch type of USB recovery, if all the key-combo methods fail -
remove AC power
take out the battery
take out hard drive/SSD
plug in the USB drive
plug in the AC
Turn on power