BSOD during BIOS update with Highsun's modded BIOS

[zoltan87]

Let me just start that thankfully I haven't bricked my T61 motherboard. But I almost got a heart attack

So, as I mentioned in an other thread, I am building a T601 frankenpad. I got Highsun's modified bios file, that has all the features of Middleton's bios, plus gpu undervolting. But when I tried to flash it, my laptop had the dreaded "blue screen of death", then restarted. Luckily the BIOS is not corrupted ar anything, but I just cannot seem to do this BIOSs update, tried an other time on same laptop (both the 0.9 volt, and 0.95 volt undervolting versions with ASPM), then an additional time on a second T61, same problem every time.

I am doing this update in Win XP, with a charged battery and psu plugged in. Any idea what could be the problem? I have googled everywhere, but I haven't found any other similar instance to my issue.

Could it be a Windows related problem? I have flashed the bios from this Windows multiple times (with different versions of BIOSes), and never had any issues before.

I know that it's possible to flash BIOS from dos, but I have no idea how to do that (you have to type in dos commands I guess, but I have never used dos, and would rather do this through XP).

Any suggestions? Anyone has flashed Highsun's BIOS from Windows XP with success?

[Screamer]

Was the blue screen of death's error message displaying something similar to 'UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP'? I recall that I had the same error, while trying to use winphlash under Windows 2000. Doubt it works in Windows XP 32-bit, either.

Assuming that you had caught the dreaded kernel mode trap error; I think the problem may be 2000/XP's kernel being incapable of allowing an operation like this, something that Microsoft has mentioned. I suspect winphlash is at fault, considering that you mentioned it works under Windows with different BIOS images.

Due to that, you would have to flash through phlash16.exe in a DOS environment. I suppose that I could write a small .bat file to automate the process for you to flash highsun's modified BIOS in DOS, but that would take some time. First of all though, do you want to go through the DOS method of flashing?

[Raidriar]

Never, ever, ever flash your BIOS from within windows. Make a bootable DOS usb drive and flash from there. override the checksum error when prompted, the modified bios does not have checksum corrected, but no impact on integrity of the BIOS. just make sure the MD5 matches.

[zoltan87]

Great news guys!
I stumbled across a German Frankenpad wiki page, and used google translate, to read the page. It was surprisingly easy to understand, this translate option works a LOT better with German, than translating from Chinese for example. Here is the link for the translated page if anyone is interested, all kinds of useful infos about Frankenpad modding:

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... auto&tl=en

I followed the part, where it describes how to flash the BIOS from DOS with a bootable usb pendrive. And it WORKED!
Now I have the modded Highsun bios with undervolted gpu, and I also used a modded embedded controller firmware (thanks to a forum member here called "lab", who helped me with that file a while ago), so the fan level speeds are a lot lower (1700, 2000 and 2500 rpm the three new levels, instead of the factory defined values, that start from around 2500 rpm, and goes up from there).

So it turns out you can't flash Highsun's modified BIOS from Windows, you need to do it from DOS. To be honest it was extremely easy, my worry of DOS was unwarranted, I literally had to type in like two things, and that was it. By the way the earlier mentioned BSOD screen message didn't mention any KERNEL issues, it just said "A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer", and then quite a few more lines.

So now I have a whitelist free motherboard with SATA 2 speed, that runs the Nvidia gpu at a much lower voltage (hence it will be cooler), and the fan will be pretty much inaudible too. I can't wait to finish the remaining mods on the machine (putting in a T500 heatsink unit, and strengthen the magnesium frame around the exhaust - vga out - left scree hinge part, where it tends to break after prolonged use.

Then I can put everything back together, and see how it works in everyday use. I can't wait!

[Screamer]

Strange, I doubt I have ever heard of a blue screen of death that was a little uninformative in what it is supposed to display. Well, at least you found an easy way to flash it.

Just remember that your undervolt will have some side effects on the graphics chip, such as instability at higher speeds if you do plan to overclock it.

[Cigarguy]

Flashing from Windows or Linux is always risky. Better to flash from a bootable USB/CD drive.

[storm-chaser]

Great information, thanks for posting.

Highsun's bios is going to be the next (and final) mod for my T61p.

I already use throttlestop to undervolt the CPU @ 2.8Ghz to 1.050 volts so temps are as low as I can get without undervolting the GPU.