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can You "brick" a laptop bios chip?
Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2008 1:03 pm
by dwilsonfl
Was looking at laptops recently on fleabay and a couple of them described a laptop as being totally nonresponsive as a result of a failed bios update.
I've heard of that in other devices like routers, but I didn't know you could do that to a laptop bios chip. is that possible?
What remedy if any would reverse that effect? or is there one?
Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2008 1:29 pm
by Harryc
Dave, yes you can easily brick a laptop(or desktop) computer by having a BIOS flash go wrong. The only conventional remedy on a Thinkpad is systemboard replacement. Although if you can find an actual replacement BIOS chip, get it programmed, and solder it in place of the old one, you can save the board that way as well.
http://bios-repair.co.uk/bios/diysb.htm
Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2008 2:40 pm
by virge
For the longest time, I thought this would never happen to me... then a few months ago I purchased a Compaq TC1000 tablet/slate. I installed the OS and all my programs. It was working great, but I decided to update the bios anyway. It froze in the middle of the update and that was that. It never worked again. Wouldn't even boot up anymore. I replaced it with a TC1100 and haven't done anything with the bios!