I broke the primary rule when flashing a BIOS update. I powered down while the update was in progress…
I now have a bricked laptop.
Let me explain the situation a bit. I’m not a total moron so it’s not as simple as it sounds. I was trying to do something nice for my wife and get her into a new (used) laptop. I’m an IT person so I end up with equipment sometimes that people don’t want to mess with anymore so they just give it to me. In this case it was a Dell Studio 1745. Not the newest of equipment but still a respectable laptop with a nice 17 inch display and physically it looks new. The slot loading (pain-in-the-butt to replace) optical drive had died and it needed to be reloaded. I ordered one and all that went fine as did reloading Windows 7. I noticed the BIOS was 2 versions old and figured I’d update it since it was a fresh OS install. That’s where the trouble started…
I know a lot of people say don’t touch the BIOS unless something is really wrong but I’ve probably BIOS flashed 500 computers and never had an issue until now. The BIOS was supposed to be updating from A02 to A04. It got to something like “writing block 44 of 45” then the screen went black just like before. That is often part of a BIOS update but but typically not for more than a minute or so…after 45 minutes I was still staring at a black screen and fan spinning at maximum. Not wanting to break the “golden rule of BIOS updates I decided to just let it run overnight.
In the morning it was in the same state. Black screen and a whirring fan. I held the power button down but it was unresponsive even held for 30 seconds so I pulled the battery. After putting the battery back in I was happy to see that it booted into Windows though still at BIOS A02. I did some research and tried it again after removing one stick of RAM as several people reported only being able to flash the BIOS if one DIMM slot was empty on this model.
Well, it ended up in the same place again with a black screen and screaming fan. After 45 minutes I tried to power it off and again the power button was unresponsive so I had to pull the battery. This time it did not come back. When I power it on I get a single beep then a few minutes later 3 or 4 beeps and the cycle just repeats like this. I have no output to the display at all. When I power it on the lights across the media bar light up but that’s it.
I’m heartbroken. This was going to be a nice surprise for my wife at a time when we can’t afford a new laptop. If I’d only have left the stupid BIOS alone my wife would be loving her new laptop now. I was almost there and I killed it. :cry:
I know my chances are slim but if there is anyone out there with any ideas on how to get a workable bios back onto this thing short of replacing the motherboard please advise me. I can provide more detailed info if needed. Help me out BLF!!
Yea that would be option 2 usb with bios on it. It may be a pain because you can’t access bios to boot from usb. Read options would be hdd then cd then usb as stock setup.
If the bios didn’t update fully the resetting the bios will work fine.
I spent half a day googling for answers. The one I had/have the most hope for is your first link. I think that is a slight variation of the one I found. It wanted me to format the USB as FAT which I did but then the instructions I found wanted me to install the Phoenix BIOS recovery tool (wincrisis) but you have to install it from a Windows XP machine which I attempted but it doesn’t want to install for some reason. I’ll comb through those links you sent and try them later today. Oh and everydaysurvivalgear, yes I pulled the CMOS battery and left it out for a long time and it had no effect. Thanks for the suggestions.
I read two conflicting articles on that last week. One said compatibility mode would not work and one said it did. Whatever the case I just realzied the one missing step in all the instructions I had read so far. None of them had said to copy the BIOS file to the same folder as wincrisis. I wondered why it kept saying it had no path and closing. I have the BIOS extracted from my trials last week. I renamed the BIOS.ROM file to BIOS.WPH as instructed and put it in the wincrisis folder. I’ve now created the wincrisis boot USB with the three necessary files.
After I ran wincrisis.exe this time I have these three files on the USB.
BIOS.WPH
MINIDOS.SYS
PHLASH16.EXE
I’m going to pull the trigger pretty soon and see what happens. One source said I should pull the laptop battery during the process and hold the end butting while plugging in the power cable to start the recovery. One source may have even said I should pull the CMOS battery during this but I’m not certain. That’s what’s been so frustrating is there were no complete instructions that agreed with each other. I’m unfortunately trying to flash the same BIOS version that hung up/crashed but that was with the Windows installer so I’m praying that this method will bring a workable BIOS back to life on my laptop. I’ll wait a few to see if any of you say “NO DON”T DO THAT!!” LOL
Wish me luck!
Also, did you try disconnecting the hard drive and making sure that the other RAM module you left in is well seated? And/or try booting from any kind of rescue or live Linux USB? Tried mashing all the F-keys?
Greetings oh most helpful and friendly moderator. Yeah, buddy it’s a sad thing. Not to mention feeling like an idiot for not leaving it alone after the first fail. I’ll check all those links before I proceed. I did remove and re-seat the RAM but I haven’t tried disconnecting the hard drive. I’m not too hopeful about the hard drive being the cause since I appear to have destroyed the existing BIOS but it can’t hurt. I’ll try anything at this point. I’m a bit hopeful about the Phoenix recovery tool now that I have a USB created but I’ll try what you suggested and check out the links first. The last thing I want to do is completely destroy it if there’s a chance of recovery. Thank you. I’ll keep you all posted.
Ok I removed the hard drive for giggles but no change. Those links are all ones I came across in my searching. The third link in fact is one I tried to follow but had a few issues with. For one thing when I executed the /writehdrfile command instead of just extracting the files the way the article described it actually launched the BIOS update Windows executable which scared the heck out of me because it was attempting to install the BIOS for a laptop on my very different desktop workstation. I did find though that by noting the temp path it was writing the files to I was able to let it run far enough to give me the. ROM file I needed though there was no .HDR file. I tried getting a USB to boot but no-go. Oh and that is the article I was thinking of that said to also remove the CMOS battery. So, finally I’m back at the point of trying the wincrisis boot USB I’ve created with the BIOS file and see what happens. I think I’ll probably try it without either battery in place first and then with the CMOS battery in stalled if it doesn’t work the first time. Thanks for all your suggestions. I’ll probably take the plunge in the next half hour or so and see if it does anything.
Sorry, no experience here with failed laptops flashes, but some desktop computers do have an emergency flash recovery (on Fujitsu desktops for instance, you have to position the “recovery” jumper on the motherboard so that you can boot an usb drive)
Nail biting here
Thin and light are nice on paper but I swear by my big 17”
She needs it for I am missing her blogs!
Good luck.
Ah the olden days where last gen mobo bios chips could be bought for few $ and a tool to remove the old one on DealeXtreme set you back $1 or less… You know way before fancy ways to update a BIOS were invented.
Only certain high end desktop motherboards support a USB bios flashback feature which allows you to reflash the bios without any installed component.
A laptop most definitely will not have this feature.
Your laptop is bricked and will need to be replaced.
Yeah, I fear I’m looking at a motherboard replacement. :person_facepalming: Hate doing those on laptops. Quite tedious. I was hopeful that since my motherboard has a Phoenix BIOS that the Phoenix BIOS recovery tool would work but so far it’s not happening.
Yeah, buddy it’s a sad thing. 
Not to mention feeling like an idiot for not leaving it alone after the first fail. I’ll check all those links before I proceed. I did remove and re-seat the RAM but I haven’t tried disconnecting the hard drive. I’m not too hopeful about the hard drive being the cause since I appear to have destroyed the existing BIOS but it can’t hurt. I’ll try anything at this point. I’m a bit hopeful about the Phoenix recovery tool now that I have a USB created but I’ll try what you suggested and check out the links first. The last thing I want to do is completely destroy it if there’s a chance of recovery. Thank you. I’ll keep you all posted.
I did find though that by noting the temp path it was writing the files to I was able to let it run far enough to give me the. ROM file I needed though there was no .HDR file. I tried getting a USB to boot but no-go. Oh and that is the article I was thinking of that said to also remove the CMOS battery. So, finally I’m back at the point of trying the wincrisis boot USB I’ve created with the BIOS file and see what happens. I think I’ll probably try it without either battery in place first and then with the CMOS battery in stalled if it doesn’t work the first time. Thanks for all your suggestions. I’ll probably take the plunge in the next half hour or so and see if it does anything.