[SOLVED] BIOS corrupt after update from Dell website

[khun.freek]

Inspiron 14 N4030 dead after BIOS update
The N4030 is about 8 years old, and runs on Windows 10 Pro.

So I thought it a good idea to go to Dell's website, run an analysis with the provided and downloaded tool. All hardware OK, that is: no issues. BIOS update was recommended, so I did that. I simply followed the instructions provided.

Laptop dead while, or just after 'flashing' the BIOS. Never returned to working.



The laptop doesn't have a battery anymore, always runs on AC. A small white (sorry, the left one, more like orange) LED on the front stays on, whatever I do.

It gives one beep, but many times, that probably means: System Board, covers BIOS corruption or ROM error. Why did this happen?

Can I throw this otherwise good and pleasant laptop away now, or is there a solution? Preferably one that I can do myself.

 

[laviniuc]

sorry mate, bios upgrade fails are almost always fatal.

i'm sorry for your loss...

only thing i can think of for you to try is looking for a usb bios recovery feature that dell MIGHT have put in place (where it would re-install a recovery bios from a usb stick) there should be a tutorial on the dell site... if they have this in place

i did recover one of those once, but it took months and the guys who finally did it had to pull out the bios chip, flash it on a special board designed for writing bioses, it's definitely not something you can do yourself.

 

[khun.freek]

Thanks.
Two things. One, by googling I found that taking out the motherboard battery for a while, and replacing it, could make the BIOS reset. This does involve taking apart almost the whole N4030, which I could try, but don't look forward to. A couple of years ago I did replace the screen though.

The other thing: why does Dell, a big company for all I know, just offer something like that without warning whatsoever? Seems very incompetent to me.

sorry mate, bios upgrade fails are almost always fatal.

i'm sorry for your loss...

only thing i can think of for you to try is looking for a usb bios recovery feature that dell MIGHT have put in place (where it would re-install a recovery bios from a usb stick) there should be a tutorial on the dell site... if they have this in place

i did recover one of those once, but it took months and the guys who finally did it had to pull out the bios chip, flash it on a special board designed for writing bioses, it's definitely not something you can do yourself.

 

[laviniuc]

there should be also a key combo to reset the bios to defaults,

but from what you say, that's NOT the problem. the reset would clean up the editable part of the bios (i.e. settings). what the bios flash fail means is that it wrote the wrong low level drivers or couldn't complete the write...

a bios reset cleans up just the settings part. not the readonly flashable part... that's much much trickier.

bios is 2 parts, you're thinking just the bios menu/settings. but that thing is just the settings part. the menu is presented because there's another "readonly" part that contains also very low level drivers and the interfaces to edit the settings. that is the part that gets written on flashing... and that's why flashing is so dangerous...

what manufacturers sometime blunder is upgrade paths... they make several versions of the same laptop and of course the bios isn't the same, stuff gets forgotten and they put in a fine print that before version 1.6 you need to update to 1.1, the automatic tools they make sometime look at just what's currently supported, you add in some lousy programming on the auto tool and you end up shooting yourself in the leg...

that's why the standard approach should be... if it works, DO NOT flash the bios. they sometime make various tweeks and adjustments but if you reach those it's because you're having a problem.

there's one manufacturer that addressed this: gigabyte. all (or most) their motherboards come with a dual bios. i.e. you write one and internally the motherboard looks on the next start ... can i start? if NOT it will automatically recover the bios "readonly" stuff from the secondary chip.

dell is not alone in this btw, and it's not always the manufactures fault, sometime users just aren't careful when picking the bin file to write or picking the right bios for their hardware (not saying it's your case obviously). sometime thee's a power out while writting, some user aren't patient when it flashes, there's a 1-2 minute period where the system seems stuck, remember it's wrtting low level stuff so for example the mouse shoudl be unresponsibve keybard too... sometime users panic and hit the reset button while it writes. that's fatal. because the process works like:
- delete everything
- write in the new stuff (this takes longer)

 

[khun.freek]

there should be also a key combo to reset the bios to defaults,

but from what you say, that's NOT the problem. the reset would clean up the editable part of the bios (i.e. settings). what the bios flash fail means is that it wrote the wrong low level drivers or couldn't complete the write...

a bios reset cleans up just the settings part. not the readonly flashable part... that's much much trickier.

bios is 2 parts, you're thinking just the bios menu/settings. but that thing is just the settings part. the menu is presented because there's another "readonly" part that contains also very low level drivers and the interfaces to edit the settings. that is the part that gets written on flashing... and that's why flashing is so dangerous...

what manufacturers sometime blunder is upgrade paths... they make several versions of the same laptop and of course the bios isn't the same, stuff gets forgotten and they put in a fine print that before version 1.6 you need to update to 1.1, the automatic tools they make sometime look at just what's currently supported, you add in some lousy programming on the auto tool and you end up shooting yourself in the leg...

that's why the standard approach should be... if it works, DO NOT flash the bios. they sometime make various tweeks and adjustments but if you reach those it's because you're having a problem.

there's one manufacturer that addressed this: gigabyte. all (or most) their motherboards come with a dual bios. i.e. you write one and internally the motherboard looks on the next start ... can i start? if NOT it will automatically recover the bios "readonly" stuff from the secondary chip.

dell is not alone in this btw, and it's not always the manufactures fault, sometime users just aren't careful when picking the bin file to write or picking the right bios for their hardware (not saying it's your case obviously). sometime thee's a power out while writting, some user aren't patient when it flashes, there's a 1-2 minute period where the system seems stuck, remember it's wrtting low level stuff so for example the mouse shoudl be unresponsibve keybard too... sometime users panic and hit the reset button while it writes. that's fatal. because the process works like:
- delete everything
- write in the new stuff (this takes longer)

 

[khun.freek]

Thanks for your answer, it seems you know a lot, and that's good. I don't!

I've just taken the thing apart, took the battery out, will put it back, screw everything back together correctly I hope, and see if it works. Fingers crossed!

 

[laviniuc]

gooood luck