Just saved a dead BIOS

[PeanutCoins]

Guy brought in a tower that wasn't posting at all. Stripped it right down, can't get the board to make a peep, even without RAM or video while it should be screaming.

So I call him up and tell him his board is dead, and ask if he had done anything recently like a failed BIOS flash. He says no he hasn't, it was working until the power went out last week and hasn't worked since. I tell him it's obsolete (AM2) and he'll probably need a new board/CPU/RAM. Sadface.

I've never heard of a BIOS being corrupted by a power failure, but it's really odd that it won't do anything, so I figure I'll try flashing the chip in another board. Luckily it's socketed, and our test bed has the same socket so I'm not going to toast anyone else's machine trying this.

So I make some bootable floppies and throw AWDFLASH and the BIOS on there (yea floppies, sue me). Boot up our test bed, everything's ready to go..

Carefully pry out the BIOS chip from the running machine and drop the dead one into it. AWDFLASH /F to force it to ignore the wrong board model, and we're off to the races. Success! It flashed!

Now the moment of truth.. I drop the newly flashed BIOS back into the customer's machine and power it up.. Now it's screaming bloody murder about not having RAM or video!

Now I have to call him back and tell him I actually fixed it..

[d2dtk]

Nice save. Surprised that it was a removable chip.

[sana8410]

BIOS are one of those tricky things in a computer that no one ever thinks about, and most would rather replace a MB than to try and reflash it.

Nice Work.

[noviapriani]

I would not even considered this assuming the test bed mobo would have to be the exact same down to the revision. But it makes sense. Really good thinking there.

[bridgeknocker]

It once happend to me when i changed the backup battery.

[zolace]

When you call him back, make it sound like you trekked to mordor and back for him. It may make them think even better of you.