Dave, my wife’s pitching a fit… help me please! We have separate ‘putes ,and which one do I mess up? Hers…. I was updating the BIOS from emachines. That worked without a problem. Rebooted, and had an HP logo on my screen. I pressed F1 and F10, then the screen went black. All that was showing was a blinking “-” in the top left hand corner of screen. I can control-alt-del to get into the BIOS. The machine is running Windows XP… emachines wants it for about three weeks roundtrip to fix it. I’m going to keep it. Any ideas how I can fix it?
First off, run, don’t walk, and get your wife some flowers. Give them to her contritely and apologize for monkeying with her computer. Promise that you’ll do whatever it takes to fix it. Okay, that should buy us a some time to fix things!
Some basics to ensure we’re talking about the same thing: The Basic Input / Output System — the BIOS — is the part of your computer that runs the basic power-on tests, searches for – and hopefully finds – a bootable operating system, and hands off control of the hardware to that operating system, all in the first few seconds after the power has been turned on. The BIOS is typically stored in firmware on the computer, but can be updated through “flashing”, overwriting an existing BIOS with a newer version of the BIOS.
Now, on to your specific problem. If you can get into the BIOS configuration area, you should be able to find a setting in the BIOS called “reset to factory options” or “reset to factory defaults”. I surmise that’s all you need to do for things to be working properly.
I also have an eMachines PC running WinXP and I don’t see any HP logos upon bootup, so I’m wondering if you somehow tried to apply a BIOS update for eMachines with some HP hardware within on a computer that doesn’t actually have any HP parts?
If that doesn’t help you proceed because you can’t get into the BIOS in the first place, well, bad news. It’s darn tricky, and often impossible to fix a bad BIOS without simply replacing the BIOS chip. If that’s the case, well, you might be doing the dishes and laundry for a few weeks while your wife tries not to retaliate by destroying your computer since hers will have to go back to eMachines for the fix after all.
Before you call a divorce lawyer, though, it’s worth checking out some of the different online BIOS sources because some of them offer a “flash recovery” utility for damaged BIOS systems. Not sure about Emachines, but exploring Freebyte is good place to start.
If all else fails, you might pop over to Ask Leo and read his article on Flashing my BIOS failed, how can I recover?. Pay particular attention to the comments from other readers with their different suggestions for how to resolve the problem.
And good luck! Let us know how it all went…
pavilion g6 hp laptop:All(3) usb ports not working,network led wont turn off(always on). i tryed formating but result was the same. the divices for usb controlers are uptodate in control panal. what shall i do dave? with tanks.
need to repad a bios chip
for this g41m-p23
need how to wire it up and lost a surface mount device labled r474
the bios chip is a7592 need pinouts to wire the pads
so right now its in its third trying to find this info
hope is added to this and i gain skills to ah not loose any parts
and not figured how thier labled and now need that part wired up
up had nice discussion here and new ideas to be applied so things elsewhere may work here in these cases you just talked were thier chip was on board and whent to parts dept and now its updated
this case here its welded on
so chip is no problem the lost part and no schematic two wires
go underneath on test pads then inch7 southbrige that guess
two pins two wires out of the way rest is off jspi1 were they go online factory programed this is rest the new pads rewire to get part from factory and have as advertised plugnplay bios so on the box people wonder whats this usb flash drive and here this is and i cant do what i am suppose to were was it in the box for this day here right now
tcochranrd2industypa
teeceefly@live.com
If someone messes up their bios why don’t you just tell them to pull the battery ? Power off. If they know what a watch battery looks like, they release the clip on it, set it down somewhere for 5 minutes then reinstall it, right side up. Power up and the bios should be back to the origional bios from the factory
Posted by: Charles White at December 8, 2004 6:27 PM
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I changed my bios, not knowing what I was doing and the pc went on the fritz big time. Long story shortened, I found the battery you spoke of. Mine was sitting up, not laying down so it took a while to spot. I did as you said. Pc wouldn’t shut off. Powered off pulled the battery again. This time after placing it I spun it a couple times and VIOLA!! My pc works as usual. Thanks!
hello
i have a question/problem with my pc. i tried to do a system recoery with a recovery disc. i’ve done this before with no problems. this time however i did have a problem. i keep getting a blue screen saying that… the bios in this system is not fully ACPI compliant.
i can not get on the internet to down load a bios update. have you any ideas how i can solve this problem?
i have HP Pavilion g6 1131sx laptop, i was doing updating the BIOS the computer freezes , when i restart the computer, now on boot blank screen and caps lignt blink and nothing happened. please i want help. its my new laptop just use for 3 months. i am very sad. i am new to bios.
hi sir i have asus mother board 845 chipset, i’m trying installed winxp service pack2 not getting installed , if i install windows xp service pack1 , installing , sir please suggest what could the problelm,hard disk , everything is k, but getting installed service pack2
hello everyone,
ive got d same problem which Mr.Hempo has been facing..i couldnt find any answers here. It’ll b vry helpful if someone could solve d prob.
Mr.Hempo if u hav solved d prob pls do post d solution
Situation: Two (2) different laptops, two (2) different manufacturers (Dell and Gateway) are now exhibiting the same “extremely darkened” display. the icons/mouse can be seen on the display (just barely), but can be seen perfectly via
HDMI/serial cable to secondary display(s) such as lcd tv’s. Newer Dell running W7, Gateway running XP Pro. Older son’s friend was given access to wireless network password, and ironically 24hrs later Dell’s display went dark. computer diagnostician could not figure the problem, as it stopped when at his shop. picked up Dell, brought it home, and it started again that very same day. week or so later, the older Gateway started the same thing. I reset the WEP/WPA2 key via router, to ward off the possibility of hacking, and ran AVG (free version) on both. Nothing remarkable discovered. Help.
“microcode failur, visit HP web site to update your BIOS” this massage is view mycomputer open.ineed update the bios version.but i not understand bios update.please can you help me?( bios-AMI motherboard-hp)
I turned on my Sony Vaio VPCF121GX laptop (windows 7), and the Vaio logo appeared then there was a black screen with a flashing underscore. I pressed alt+ctrl+del, but task manager didn’t come up. So force-turn off my laptop and restarted it. It came up the same with black screen and flashing underscore. I tried pressing f8 to get into safe mode but it won’t work, neither does f2. Removing the battery and rebooting doesn’t help either, and i don’t have a recovery disc. Can anyone help me?
Unfortunately i made some video configuration in bios and now i could not see any sign in monitor. Even bios setting does not display in screen. What might be the solution. Plz make it fast. Cpu runs but there is nothing in the monitor. Simply dark.
to run linux from cd, i changed my bios settings to give CD-ROM as the first preference.
now my windows is not running even after restoring the factory defaults.. plz help. its urgent.
my pc is not starting its givin error msg of win32 file missing when i tried 2 install xp again the setup is stopin in middle pls help me out