1 Topic by Leymo

  • Registered: 2002-03-24
  • Posts: 959

Topic: I thoroughly killed a laptop

I bricked a laptop while trying to flash the bios.

Long story:

I had this old laptop, and tried to upgrade the bios to make it recognize the 1.8 Ghz processor (it recognized it as a 1.2 Ghz before). I used some windows based bios flasher (winflash) to do so, and it worked. It did see the 1.8Ghz, only, somehow the bigger ram memory stick I had installed before wasnt recognized anymore. I was puzzled, and decided that I should restore the backupped bios.bak file to roll back the bios, to see if it was indeed the new bios that did weird things to my memory.
So I renamed the bios.bak file so it would be picked up by the winflash utility, and ran it. The updating went fine, until the progress bar was full, and then it hanged. I left it on for 5 minutes, but then accidentally touched the power cable and the laptop lost power. This old laptop had a dead battery, and it was on net power all the time, and in addition the power socket on the laptop was a bit wonky.

So, I though, not a big deal, if the bios was corrupted in the progress I could use a floppy to restore it.

Problem is, it seems to be completely bricked. I cant turn it on. Even the power led, which is normally lit when the net power is plugged in, stays off.

The laptop loses power often during usage, so it seems a bit too coincidental that this power failure would make some component burn through - And I always assumed that something like the power light wouldnt be dependant on the bios... In addition, when I plug in the power, the led of the lan socket flashes for a brief moment, so it doesnt seem that the power socket gave up.

Long story short: i'm puzzled. Can the bios govern the power led? Are different components active during bios flashing, so they could be damaged when the power fails?

Anyone who dares to make a guess?

http://staff.science.uva.nl/~aabbo/misc/YummySig.png

Leymo's Website

2 Reply by Aeryx

  • Registered: 2007-03-06
  • Posts: 767

Re: I thoroughly killed a laptop

Most laptops and PCs have power LEDs that only require electricity to light up.  I have additional LEDs that can be controlled via the BIOS.

Its possible you shorted something when you knocked the power plug, which is preventing it from booting up.  I have a dead motherboard that won't boot up (something on the board is fried) but juice still runs through it to light up the power status LED.

Aeryx's Website

3 Reply by Leymo

  • Registered: 2002-03-24
  • Posts: 959

Re: I thoroughly killed a laptop

So, you say that there are laptops which would not give a power light when the bios is corrupted - meaning that there is a chance that I could replace the bios chip and hope for life...

Thanks for the reply btw.

http://staff.science.uva.nl/~aabbo/misc/YummySig.png

Leymo's Website

4 Reply by Aeryx

  • Registered: 2007-03-06
  • Posts: 767

Re: I thoroughly killed a laptop

I'd say its pretty likely BIOS could be corrupted since it died in the process of flashing it.  You could try physically resetting it or getting a new one.  It would be worth a shot.

Aeryx's Website