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LOL customer flashes his laptop dead.

Locut0s

Locut0s

Lifer
Sold an ASUS N61 laptop to a customer the other day. Very nice all round laptop. Very nice guy too. So he goes home and loads his stuff on the laptop, customizes it a bit and for no real reason decides to flash the BIOS. Boom he now had a $1600 brick. Brings it in today and we have to RMA it, he's going to go get another one. LOL why would you flash the BIOS on a laptop for no reason? On a motherboard I can sort of understand it because you usually have some fail-safes, but not on a laptop.
 
I assume it's a BIOS flash? I would have done it too, get it up to date on the latest ... but he probably mucked it up somehow.
 
You'd flash a laptop for the same reason you'd flash a motherboard...how hard is it to understand that? (and you ARE flashing the motherboard when you flash a laptop...they also have motherboards...)

😛
 
Uh, why wouldn't I want the latest BIOS on my laptop? In my experience, laptop BIOS updates fix more important things than desktop boards because they're so much lower volume and it takes a while to get the bugs worked out.
 
The laptop has a motherboard just like like a desktop does. Was this the Asus "Auto Software" flashing the BIOS for him? Maybe he's a typical PC user and doesnt' know a BiOS from a driver? The program told him to flash, so he did, now it's a brick. Now, if he dicked with it knowingly...is one of those people with "just enough knowledge to be dangerous" then he should foot the bill.
 
why wouldnt i want the best bios? shouldnt the MOTHERBOARD on the laptop be just as safe as a Desktop?
 
I've seen this a handful of times. My brother in law had an Abit Socket 939 board, and we used the Abit software for windows flash to update to the latest bios (added support for X2 chips and some other goodies), and while it said it completed, it never rebooted again. Blank screen, and the floppy rescue didn't work. We verified the bios revision and board model/revision before flashing, but something didn't take. That sort of soured me on the windows-based flashing, I prefer to do it from a command prompt if at all possible, with as many accessories unplugged as possible, and all stock settings for cpu/memory. I think that's the only bad bios flash I've ever seen, the only other failure was a looooong time ago with some generic Intel 430VX board that I was trying to update with a bios from a different mfg. I had done it successfully several times on similar no-name boards, but this one didn't take and it died. The flashes helped add support for K6 along with larger hard drives.
 
BoomerD said:
You'd flash a laptop for the same reason you'd flash a motherboard...how hard is it to understand that? (and you ARE flashing the motherboard when you flash a laptop...they also have motherboards...)

😛
Click to expand...

🙄 ok if one needs to nit pick sure. But the reason you wouldn't do it on a laptop as much as for a desktop motherboard is because most desktop motherboards now have dual bioses or other fail-safes.
 
Power went out once when I was flashing a desktop mobo years ago. Luckily I happened to have another identical one lying around and this was back in the days of removable EEPROMs so I just booted it with the spare and hot swapped the broken one back in then re flashed, bingo bango, fixed.
 
I agree with this a little bit. Desktop MBs have batteries that can be removed. Jumpers that can be easily accessed and SOMETIMES BIOS chips that are socketed so they can be removed and replaced. Laptops have BIOS chips that are soldered to the MB. Their batteries are also soldered to the MB more than half the time. You really gotta know what you're doing. I.E. flash laptop BiOS ONLY in DOS. While ONLY being powered off a UPS-powered AC outlet. AND you triple-checked the files you're flashing with. I.E. ran a checksum against them, etc.

Still...if it ain't broke, don't dick with it. Laptop are expensive!

Locut0s said:
🙄 ok if one needs to nit pick sure. But the reason you wouldn't do it on a laptop as much as for a desktop motherboard is because most desktop motherboards now have dual bioses or other fail-safes.
Click to expand...
 
BoomerD said:
By this line of reasoning, why would anyone ever update drivers or software?
Click to expand...

it obviously does not apply to everything but unless there is a bios update to specifically fix something that is broken there is no reason to flash them

pretty sure im running stock bios on every single comp in my house

hell im still running the same nvidia drivers that came with my GTX 285
 
BoomerD said:
By this line of reasoning, why would anyone ever update drivers or software?
Click to expand...

that's usually the rule, though. if stuff is working and you're not experiencing issues, why would you bring on potential issues by changing something? more often than they should, updates break things.
 
BoomerD said:
By this line of reasoning, why would anyone ever update drivers or software?
Click to expand...

I generally only update my drivers is something is not working as it should, or if there is a chance of marked improvement in something I use that piece of hardware for. Software is a wholly different animal.

KT
 
BoomerD said:
By this line of reasoning, why would anyone ever update drivers or software?
Click to expand...

I update software, especially for security fixes, but I've gotten away from updating drivers. If the devices are working as expected, and newer drivers don't add features, I don't bother.
 
I've flashed bioses on laptops to fix compatibility problems and remove artificial limitations (think older dells that had a whitelist in the bios of mini pcie cards they'd work with, dunno if they still do that) and never had a problem.

That said, I'll never flash a bios from windows or linux or some other complex operating system; that's just asking for trouble IMO.
 
Locut0s said:
Sold an ASUS N61 laptop to a customer the other day. Very nice all round laptop. Very nice guy too. So he goes home and loads his stuff on the laptop, customizes it a bit and for no real reason decides to flash the BIOS. Boom he now had a $1600 brick. Brings it in today and we have to RMA it, he's going to go get another one. LOL why would you flash the BIOS on a laptop for no reason? On a motherboard I can sort of understand it because you usually have some fail-safes, but not on a laptop.
Click to expand...

Wait.

A Laptop has a motherboard.

Is this a revelation to you?
😀
 
I've found that many laptops have fail-safes. I've had to use my Acer Aspire one netbook's alternate flash method after some failed attempts at customizing the BIOS splash screen, but now I have it set up with a full-color pic of my motorcycle and driver's license that your average theif can't just format away.

I've also found that there are often more reasons for BIOS updates on notebooks... correcting fan behavior, fixing battery life issues, etc. They have more complex system-wide issues for their engineers to consider.
 
KeithTalent said:
I generally only update my drivers is something is not working as it should, or if there is a chance of marked improvement in something I use that piece of hardware for. Software is a wholly different animal.

KT
Click to expand...

Also flashing your BIOS is inherently more risky than updating drivers. You aren't likely to brick your computer with a driver update. I wouldn't update the BIOS in anything unless it was to fix something or add new features that I really wanted. I talked with the guy and he said he wasn't updating it for any specific reason like this.
 
CZroe said:
I've found that many laptops have fail-safes. I've had to use my Acer Aspire one netbook's alternate flash method after some failed attempts at customizing the BIOS splash screen, but now I have it set up with a full-color pic of my motorcycle and driver's license that your average theif can't just format away.

I've also found that there are often more reasons for BIOS updates on notebooks... correcting fan behavior, fixing battery life issues, etc. They have more complex system-wide issues for their engineers to consider.
Click to expand...

This wasn't for any reason though. He just wanted "the newest" stuff.
 
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