Bios Virus? MS-6377 rev 4.1

[kmesse]

Working on a friend's system. They have the above mobo in an HP Pavilion A708N. At first they were having trouble with popups and junk, then lost control of the puter. They had a virus. By then it had taken over the admin on the computer, so I couldn't get far with it. Eventually it would not boot at all.

I had taken the drive out and scanned it in another computer and removed whatever worms etc it found using avast, spybot, and adaware. Avast would never finish. When it still wouldn't boot, I scanned and saved off their documents, and reloaded windows XP. Ran ok. This is using my computer (with my drive removed, hopefully bios protected). When I put it back into their hammered computer, I could never get past the blue HP screen telling me to hit keys to get into bios. No keys would work. I used the PWD jumper and cleared the password. It told me I did that, but that's it.

Is there any way to re-write the bios when the computer won't boot?? It won't even get to the point of recognizing the drives if there were any. At this point I'm thinking of just buying a new mobo, it's only $20.

Quick help appreciated!
Kevin

 

[einstein4pres]

Have you tried flashing the BIOS? Check the instructions for the mobo, you should be able to reset everything to the factory default settings. If that doesn't work, then something is wrong in the hardware, and you should double check connections, and consider removing or replacing parts to see if anything is bad.

Of course, if this is a HP, flashing the BIOS might not be so easy, as you probably won't have a manual.

 

[kmesse]

I can't flash if it won't boot. I managed to find the manual online, hard to find. I tried the jumper resets, didn't work. So I'll try taking all the plugs and peripherals off, reseating cables, etc and check hardware. Thanks.

 

[bobjmoran]

Just boot from a floppy ---

Once you download this file, running it will extract the files on your hard drive. Make a bootable disk, reboot with that disk, then run the file BIOSupdt.bat from the location you extracted the files to.

"IF YOUR FILE SYSTEM IS NTFS, you MUST copy all the files it unzipped to a Floppy drive, and run the update directly from the floppy."
Sounds like a pain, but it's a snap.

http://www.bios-drivers.com/drivers/49/49645.htm


Just copy the files to a floppy, boot to the floppy and run update.

 

[kmesse]

Thank you!! I'm desperate. I'll try that tonight. It doesn't have a floppy so I'll have to add one in.
I notice the pavilion mentioned is a different model than mine (8765C vs 6377). I assume the mobo/bios is the same? It's hard to get info on these things.

I took the hard drive out and unneeded peripherals and "rebooted" with windows xp cd. I can hit ESC now and get the boot menu (couldn't before, it'd lock up) but when I put the bootable cd in, it says "remove all media and reboot" or something like that. Ugh.

Roadblock: The bios is soldered to the board, not socketed. Yesterday at work they said the techs could flash it for me, but I can't desolder an fpga. So glad MSI saved 20 cents not putting the bios in a socket.

 

[bobjmoran]

"They have the above mobo in an HP Pavilion A708N"

That's the bios for the A708N, I diddn't see a model 6377.