Question BIOS Recovery for ASUS VivoStick TS10?

[Brother_Hood]

This is a major setback for me. I just got this Mini PC used from eBay (all I can afford). Never had a BIOS update fail on me, and now it has happened under the worst conditions. If it were an old spare system OK, but this way it's really tough on me.

After fresh-installing Windows I updated the drivers and lastly the BIOS. I used the Update utility from the ASUS website. Everything looked fine when it asked me to reboot now or later. I selected later because I wanted to switch rooms before installing the software I was going to use. So what I did was shut it down properly, waited for everything to turn off. Then I unplugged it, and when I powered it back on there was no more video signal. Tried it on a TV and a regular monitor. The Power LED turns on, but I noticed that the fan doesn't anymore. I tried the usual things like holding down power until it shuts off, for 30 seconds etc. I just can't believe how unfortunate I am in this situation. Do you always have to reboot after a BIOS update?

I noticed that there is a BIOS recovery method at least for some ASUS models. Unfortunately I couldn't find anything relating to the VivoStick. There is a built-in BIOS recovery for the similar Intel Compute Stick.

 

[okjak808]

Unfortunately no in your case. As you said, it is
possible to do a bios recovery but It requires a very hard process.

Some motherboard have dual bios on which one fails you can use the back up (2nd one) to boot from there and repair the the 1st one. Other options are like buying a chip for that motherboard, some have chips that can be swapped incase if buying another bios chip, while others require you to desolder the chip off the board which requires soldering skills which I don’t have as well.

While your pc stick clearly doesn’t have removable chip, then it does have a a chip soldered on but for sure it’s smaller due to the pc being in a size as a USB stick in order to save space much as possible. Even so I don’t think you’ll be able to find a chip for your pc stick.

Another thing you could do is to reflash your bios by downloading the bios meant for your motherboard and putting it in a USB stick and so on, but that’s something I can’t do as well some require to do modding as well.

One thing you could do is to reset cmos, I do see that it has a CMOS battery and if it’s removable as it should be, try to remove it and leave it for about 5 minutes, plug it back in and see if it boots.

If that doesn’t work then you have no choice but to find another pc stick like that again.

 

[Brother_Hood]

Thanks for your elaborate reply. Unfortunately even the CMOS battery is soldered on.

Never again in my life will I use a utility to update the BIOS other than through the BIOS itself.