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DAdeGroot
13-11-2009, 12:58am
Hi All,

I managed to brick my wife's PC tonight when doing a BIOS update.

It has a Gigabyte EP45-DS4P motherboard, and I grabbed the F8 version bios for it from the Gigabyte website, used QFlash to flash it, which appeared to work, but upon rebooting, it powercycles continuously before any form of POST.

Is there a way to recover from this ? (I suspect not, and have ordered another m/b, but it doesn't hurt to ask).

So far, I've tried plugging in an old 1.44M FDD with a bootable floppy in it to see if it'll attempt to boot from it (if it did, I'd put the bios flash and good bios (backed up from pre-flash), on it and reflash that way) alas it does not. :(
jev
13-11-2009, 1:14am
Can't you find someone with a standalone EPROM programmer?
DAdeGroot
13-11-2009, 1:16am
Can't you find someone with a standalone EPROM programmer?

Nope, but I've solved the problem!

Despite clearing the CMOS with the jumper, and not having it make a fig of difference, pulling the battery on the m/b for 2 mins and putting it back in, did.

It's all working nicely again :)

Phew! Saved myself a couple of hundred $$
ricktas
13-11-2009, 7:18am
good work! Nothing quite like the feeling when you brick something. I have done it a few times over the years and always managed to recover them. But can be stressful.
DAdeGroot
13-11-2009, 8:42am
good work! Nothing quite like the feeling when you brick something. I have done it a few times over the years and always managed to recover them. But can be stressful.

Indeed. Even worse when you brick someone else's kit. But it's all good now :)
ricktas
13-11-2009, 9:31am
I bricked a few iPhones in the past (the ones imported before they were officially available here), but was always able to recover them, even if it took a couple of hours, and get them unlocked and jail-broken. Did quite a few of them for friends and acquaintances.
oldfart
13-11-2009, 9:32am
Indeed. Even worse when you brick someone else's kit. But it's all good now :)

Funny you should say that, I did a bios upgrade on a clients server once on the advice of Adaptec. Server did the whole revolving door failing to post thing, and a new board took 48 hours to arrive, still have the client, but they were seriously pissed off at the time.