Help failed BIOS update won't boot

[Wingco1]

During the update process, which was going well, Norton generated a programme alert which interupted the BIOS installer. Now the Laptop won't boot

Any suggestions gratefully accepted. It's a Toshiba with hidden D: partition.

[Rik]

In my limited experience, that's painful. You probably need to talk to Tosh.

[Gary]

I would agree, unless you can clear the cmos and re do it, but as Rik said that's a tosh job sadly not something you can do easily on a laptop I imagine, its not that much fun on a pc  as a note for future reference if you update your bios in the windows environment, always shut down your AV just in case this kind of thing happens, then reboot after bios update, having unplugged from the net first of course

[Sebby]

During the update process, which was going well, Norton generated a programme alert which interupted the BIOS installer. Now the Laptop won't boot

Any suggestions gratefully accepted. It's a Toshiba with hidden D: partition.

Unfortunately, you're not going to be able to fix this.

The BIOS flash utilities delete the old BIOS before writing the new one, so your CMOS will have a partial BIOS on it. You'll need to send this for repair. Toshiba will have the tools available to flash it.

Sorry I can't be of more help. It really does highlight how dangerous flashing a BIOS can be, though sometimes it is necessary.

[D-Dan]

The BIOS flash utilities delete the old BIOS before writing the new one, so your CMOS will have a partial BIOS on it. You'll need to send this for repair. Toshiba will have the tools available to flash it.

That does rather depend on which mainboard is in it. Many mainboards now backup the BIOS prior to erasing to allow recovery in the case of failure. Having said that, I would agree that the first point of contact should be the manufacturer.

Steve

[Rik]

It's very much a case of "don't make things worse..." isn't it, Steve. Hippocrates was pretty good on computer repairs when you think about it.

[Sebby]

I thought it just makes a backup to file, which you can restore later? I didn't think it actually saved a backup to the CMOS...

[Glenn]

What model Tosh?

[Glenn]

This may help http://www.devhacks.com/bios-update-failed-heres-what-you-do

[Rik]

Nice link, thanks Glenn. 

[Glenn]

It's only a nice link if it works, but thanks for the karma

I'm hoping that Toshiba use the same BIOS type for each laptop, in which case the procedure should work

[Sebby]

It's still an interesting link nonetheless. There's some useful info there.

[Wingco1]

Don't know if it makes any difference, but tried with the Toshiba supplied recovery disk. The drive activity light flashed a couple of times but nothing happened. Is it possible to make a bootable disk of some kind to re flash the bios?.

[Rik]

Have you read through the link in Glenn's post?

[Sebby]

Don't know if it makes any difference, but tried with the Toshiba supplied recovery disk. The drive activity light flashed a couple of times but nothing happened. Is it possible to make a bootable disk of some kind to re flash the bios?.

The CD drive will flash regardless of the BIOS. The problem is that your computer doesn't appear to get into a state where it could actually make use of a CD or floppy drive.

[Wingco1]

What model Tosh?

L30-10s

[Wingco1]

This may help http://www.devhacks.com/bios-update-failed-heres-what-you-do

Sounds rather complicated. I did notice it was a "Phoenix" Bios if that's any help. The same as my Sat Pro M50.

[Wingco1]

I've read the info Glenn linked to, but it says download the bios file with a .ROM extension. Unfortunately the Toshiba bios dowloads are .zip and when extracted only show the .exe file 

[Glenn]

Can you post the BIOS update or a link to it, I'll ask one of the packagers at work to take a look at the exe to see if they can extract the .rom image?

[LesD]

Not that this applies to a Laptop but just as a bit of "never say die" encouragement if you are sitting comfortably this thread and others it leads to document a tale of woe that finally came good after a bad flash that I suffered a while ago on a desktop machine.

http://phorums.com.au/showthread.php?t=215427&highlight=Gigabyte+bios

The solution was to send the BIOS chip to Arthur in the Netherlands, who runs a business reflashing them see:
http://www.flashbios.org/

BTW Gigabyte were about as much help to me as it sound like Toshiba were to you despite the BOIS image coming for their download pages and being stated for the particular Mobo it was tagetted into! 

[Steve]

Toshiba download only seem to supply a windows version of bios update. If I extract (uniextract15) my.exe bios file it does not contain any .rom files. The advice on the Toshiba forum is to contact Toshiba as the crisis recovery tool has met with very variable success rates also mentioned the use of third party graphics drivers as a cause of bios update failures due to overheating during this process.

[Danni]

Remind me not to get a Toshiba...

[Sebby]

I don't think Toshiba are any worse than the others, Danni, both in terms of the likelihood of breaking the BIOS and customer support! I had two Sony notebooks before my desktop - who are supposed to be a premium brand - yet their support was terrible.

[Wingco1]

Can you post the BIOS update or a link to it, I'll ask one of the packagers at work to take a look at the exe to see if they can extract the .rom image?

Thanks Glenn, worth a try http://uk.computers.toshiba-europe.com/cgi-bin/ToshibaCSG/download_drivers_bios.jsp?service=UK

Word of warning if the .exe file is clicked it automatically starts to update. No "are you sure you want to prompts" or anything like that, it just launches!

DRAT, that link defaults to an input page

It's a Toshiba Notebook, Satellite L30 PSL33E, Vista,

[Wingco1]

Remind me not to get a Toshiba...

It's not Toshiba it was me I forgot to exit all programmes before trying the flash