My Poor Laptop

September 30, 2011 3:05 AM

Is there a place I can take my laptop to get crisis bios recovery done to it in person, instead of sending it to the manufacturer and waiting forever?

I have a Brand New laptop, the software from the manufacturer kept popping up telling me I needed to update the Bios. Huge mistake, when I did it got a verify error in the middle of the process and ruined my whole computer, it won't start anymore.

I have spent three days spinning my wheels trying to do a bios recovery on my own, reading every possible suggestion online. I really thought I could do it on my own but I am giving up.

Would a local computer repair shop, or electronics store or something be able to offer a Bios Flash Recovery process on location? I don't want to send the computer back and wait 2 weeks, with school and work I can't afford to. I tried chatting with someone from GeekSquad just now, and he didn't sound too optimistic.

Reading about the recovery process online it appears that there are tons of people who have been able to recover their own computers after a bios crash, so I've got to image there would be some kind of professionals who would be able to do the same thing for me.

Where can I get this done? And is this at all a risky thing to trust someone at a shop to fix for me? (Are they going to accidentally wipe my data or make the problem worse?)

Thanks MetaBuddies!

posted by chocolatemilkshakes to Computers & Internet (2 answers total)

The first thing to do is pull the hard drive and make a backup.

Then, if you're lucky the bios chip is end-user removable: in that case you can find out what sort of chip it is & send off to someone like bios-repair.co.uk who will write the appropriate image to a new chip (or possible the original one if you send it to them) and post it to you.

However, it's more likely that the bios chip is soldered to the motherboard, in which case you'll have to send the laptop off to someone who can unsolder it & replace it with a working bios. A one-man band (like the guy I linked to) might consider doing a rush job if you drove over yourself, but you'll have to find someone close enough.

Downside risk is that they fry your laptop removing the bios chip.
posted by pharm at 4:26 AM on September 30, 2011

I wouldn't bother. Backup the hard drive, then get whoever you bought the laptop from to replace the whole laptop.
posted by devnull at 4:38 AM on September 30, 2011 [1 favorite]