NotebookForums.com › Forums › Notebook Manufacturers › Toshiba Forums › Toshiba Notebooks › Help needed: Failed Bios upgrade on Satellite M305-S4848
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Help needed: Failed Bios upgrade on Satellite M305-S4848

post #1 of 6
9/17/09 at 12:13pm
Thread Starter 
Hi, I attempted to upgrade the BIOS on my Satellite M305-S4848, I did the upgrade using a boot-able dos USB flash drive. The update was almost complete and then the system just shutdown. When I powered the system back up I was met with a blank screen and one long and two short beeps around 30 second intervals.

I then tried created a crisis recovery disk for the phoenix bios to use my usb floppy drive to recover the BIOS. The Problem I encountered was the bios file is too big for the floppy. The fn+b seems to initialize the recovery mode but I cannot get the file fitted on a floppy. So then I assumed it would support crisis recovery mode from the USB flash drive but even after formatting the flash drive it will not recognize the flash drive. It lights up for a second and then shortly after the beep sequence starts. I did this also with a cd by creating a bootable cd with the crisis recovery files, the drive spins up but still no effect. In this instant I have no beeps, the system just sits there idle. I then created a virtual floppy disk and created an image using a 2.88 mb image, created an iso using the floppy boot sector and burnt it to cd hoping the cd would emulate a floppy and initialize the sequence. This failed as well.

In short I want to know if anyone knows of any other successful method of recovery the BIOS on this series laptop or any method of recovering the BIOS of any laptop that has a 2 mb WPH BIOS file.
Reply
Reply
post #2 of 6
9/17/09 at 7:29pm
The only way I know of reflashing to the original BIOS is to take it to a Toshiba Repair facility and they reflash it. It will cost you though.
I dont know how many of these failed BIOS queries I see in a given year, must be 50-100.
Just because there is a new BIOS listed, does not necessarily mean your machine needs it.
Each BIOS upgrade addresses a known problem in some models. If your particular laptop is not having those problems, then DO NOT DO THE UPDATE. There is no faster way to turn your functioning laptop into a doorstop. Last price I heard for a BIOS flash was about $50.
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 6
9/18/09 at 11:02am
I don't know where people get the idea that Toshiba will flash it or do any kind of component level repair work? They only replace boards. Unless Toshiba plans on sending it back to Asia to the manufacturer of the board, they will simply replace the motherboard. Thats what I was told when my flash failed on my P205 Satellite.

What you can do is contact Toshiba and demand that they perfrom the repair free of charge (board replacement or system replacement). They wanted to charge me $299.00 for the board replacement. I contacted aqstech.com and they did the BIOS repair for me for $99

There is WAY too much bad information going around the web since the decline in the economy. I have no idea why it started then.. but the facts needs to be set straight.

$50 for a BIOS repair? Most places that I found including (BIOS Man, bad falsh etc..) don't even do surface mount BIOS repair.
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 6
9/18/09 at 12:05pm
BIOS reflash had been the norm up til a few years ago and assumed it was still the case.
Had no idea now that the procedure was to replace the entire board. Will have to check into that more and see if that is the new proceedure and what the basic cost would be.
Thanks for bringing that to our attention. Bottom line is: BIOS upgrades just because they are there can be very detrimental to the well being of your laptop and can be costly
Reply
Reply
post #5 of 6
9/18/09 at 12:16pm
Fully agree on the point that a BIOS flash can be detrimental to the well being of your laptop!!!!
Reply
Reply
post #6 of 6
9/21/09 at 9:44pm
Thread Starter 
Well guys I got around the problem I had by creating a bootable CD using the boot image I extracted from the crisis recovery floppy I created using ImgBurn. This of course extracted the boot info short of the bios.wph file that was too big to fit on the floppy causing the CRD program to fail when copying the bios.wph. Then I used Winimage and edited the floppy image type to a 2.88mb floppy, imported the bios.wph file into the image, reopened ImgBurn and created a new bootable CD image using the new 2.88mb floppy image. Booted the laptop, the fn+b key combo wasn't even needed, it automatically started reflashing the BIOS and I waited bout 5 mins just to be sure and cycled the laptop. It worked.

Thing is it worked for 2 days and just flatlined. I feel I had a problem with the motherboard from the get go.
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Toshiba Notebooks
NotebookForums.com › Forums › Notebook Manufacturers › Toshiba Forums › Toshiba Notebooks › Help needed: Failed Bios upgrade on Satellite M305-S4848