Failed BIOS Update

[mr_electric]

Hi Everyone,
I just updated the BIOS on my '09 ThinkPad T400 (2.53GHz Core2DUO, 2GB RAM) and now it wont pass POST.
I have heard that there any way to reflash the BIOS by using an MS-DOS boot diskette. Can anyone tell me if there is a way of manually restoring the BIOS?

Thanks In Advance!
MR_E

[ThinkRob]

Sad to say, but if you can't get past POST, you're probably SOL.

[richk]

there is no boot block in the bios, so there is no way to fix it.

[mr_electric]

When I plug in the USB FDD I can hear the floppy being accessed and I don't get the error beeps (I get those when I plug in a thumb drive or cd). I have also heard of instances in which failed bios flashes have been repaired.

Thanks,
Mr_E

[Colonel O'Neill]

You may want to give a Phoenix BIOS rescue floppy a go. It's worth a shot.

[mr_electric]

I tried the floppy idea and it read the floppy for about five seconds and then gave white noise and two short beeps. Do you know what the specific bios update file is for the T400?

Thanks,
Mr_E

[redhook]

Try putting the BIOS image on a USB stick and then power the machine up with that plugged in. Many BIOS' have a fail-safe that allows you to re-flash this way. Other than that try contacting Lenovo.

[mr_electric]

I found the Phoenix Crisis Repair Disk and gave it a try, but I can't seem to find the proper wph file for the T400. Does anyone know what the specific ROM file is for the ThinkPad T400?

[Ede_123]

I'm only infrequently on thinkpads.com (mostly I'm active on the German board thinkpad-forum.de) so I didn't read this topic earlier. Nonetheless I've got a solution for the problem if you haven't solved it yet and are still searching.

I allready descriped the procedure in German here but basically it's the same troubadix allready described in this thread for a T43.

The only differences between recovery of a T43 and a T400 are:

1. Instead of a floppy disk you use an usb flash drive.
2. Instead of a plug for parallel port you simply press (and hold) FN+B.

Therefore you can follow the first part of troubadix's step-by-step tutorial ("steps on WinXP machine") using a flash drive. If you do not have a WinXP machine you can run WINCRIS.EXE in compatibility mode for WinXP (tested on Windows 7).

The second part of troubadix's step-by-step needs to be slightly modified:
steps on Thinkpad T400 with faulty BIOS:

1. connect flash drive
2. press (and hold) FN+B
3. push poweron button
4. Thinkpad T400 should start beeping (single and double beeps, sounding differently as normal BIOS error beeps) and activity indicator on flash drive should light up.
5. release FN+B.
6. wait until T400 stops beeping, it should turn off itself.

[/i]


After these steps I was able to normally boot up my own T400 which I flashed with a damaged BIOS file.

[Radioguy]

This should be stickied to every model subforum. Too many still think there is no recourse whatsoever.

[seanmor69]

I just want to add that I was able to recover from a bad flash on a T400 using Ede_123's instructions with the CRISIS recovery. The key is knowing which BIOS image version you need. It's probably best to sort this all out before doing a flash and save a copy of the WPH file to a USB stick or somewhere other than the Laptop that is getting the update.

[kleung21]

Hi there,

Just had a nasty few hours recovering from a bad flash. Was about to give up but finally bungled my way to success. I wanted to add to the knowledge base as this is the best hit when you search for "t400, bios, failed, recovery" in google.

My model

Thinkpad T400 6475-9G4 (14" thinkpad)

I made the classic error of trying to flash the bios under windows and not waiting long enough. Actually, reading the logs, I think I started 2 instances of the flash update program and that bungled things up. The program showed no status update and seemed to freeze at backing up the bios.bak file. It also meant that the bios.bak file was nowhere to be found even after I tried to pull the hard drive out and pull the bios.bak file manually.

So, after the Windows flash update program froze; I powered off the system/but upon restart; it would be 3 times, then do continuous long/short/short beep with nothing on screen.

At this point, I knew it had a bad flash. The panic hormones set in.


What works

1)
EDE123's => wincrisis.1.0.0.4.zip

=> only caveat; could not get this to run properly even when using windows xp compatibility mode. Actually had to do the usb flash install from a real windows xp computer/installation which luckily I had around.

2)
At this point, you need to get a BIOS.WPH file onto the drive. The problem is that the Lenovo downloads don't have wph. files

Anyways, what you do is go into the directory and rename $xxxxxx.fl1 to bios.wph and move it onto the flash drive
C:\drivers\FLASH\7uuj49us\7UET94WW

Problem was, when I did this, the flash would beep and then fail with a buzz/beep/beep

I think that it was a checksum error or those files were compressed or something. The files were only 4116 kb (4 mb)

however, I note that in the past the bios files were 8 mb in size.

I don't know if this is the problem or whether it just wouldn't flash a different bios version or something.

3)

solution was convoluted; found a hacked Lenovo t400 slic2.1 bios that WAS 8 mb

(linked from mydigital life forums)

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/thread ... post544727

http://rghost.net/38017698

downloaded it, renamed the file (the 2nd one mind you called $xxxxxx.fl2) to bios.wph and threw it onto the usb key


finally got a good flash. and I was back up and running



Phew. I know I'm a little incoherent; message me if you need more info but I've spend hours trying to debug this and I'm crashing right now.

Anyways, more information in the knowledgebase to help others.

[Synbios]

Sorry for bumping an old thread, but I've encountered the same problems as above, a bad flash followed by a power pull.

When I tried to boot the system, I get the same 1 long beep followed by 2 short beeps, but when I tried to use the crisis disk instructions from here and many other forums, there is no sound when I tried to boot up the USB drive. Not a single beep. I've also tried multiple versions of BIOS, from the very first to the latest and my old version before I updated it, nothing works.

Was wondering if someone can guide me. So far I've seen guides which say there'll be beeps when booting from the USB drive but when mine has a bootable USB drive in it, there's no sound. I also do not have a battery so I wonder if that might be the case.

Thank you so much.