flash....ouch!

[vicki lynne]

O.k. HP Vectra, dual pent pros, 191 mb ram, win xp. Tried to flash bios, 90% of the way through it stops and says internal stack overflow, change stacks setting in config.sys and try again. I rebooted and now it won't complete post. HELP!!!!!!!!!:eek:

[classicsoftware]

Does the word toast mean anything to you? This is usually bad. Can you get into the BIOS? Take the disk to a different PC and try to edit the stacks line in the config.sys file and then try it again.

Contact HP support, if that's where you got the BIOS from and speak to them. But I suspect you better get out the Jelly, because it may be toast time.

[vicki lynne]

Darn! DArn!! DARN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks anyway.

[vicki lynne]

P.S. Might as well make this a learning experience, Just what exactly did I fry?

[classicsoftware]

There are BIOS or CMOS chips on the motherboard. Sometimes they are plug in and you can replace them and sometime they are soldered on and you ned a great deal more expertise to swap them out.

Look at these (http://www.unicore.com/techsupport/award/bioschips.htm).

Read this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS) for more detail.

These (http://www.badflash.com/removbio.htm)people might be able to help.

Another (http://www.motherboard-biosflash.co.uk/) Bios repair service. As you can see BIOS flashing is not always safe or succesfull.

[vicki lynne]

Had read about it. Knew it had issues. Figured it sounded like a good idea at the time. Someday I'll learn, I hope. Thanks for all the info. I appreciate.

[kiosk]

If you have the resources and you're feeling particularly adventurous, you might try hotflashing the EEPROM chip. This would require you to have another working board of the similar type, so it's probably a no-go.

[Whyzman]

Ah, what would the learning process be without the "learning curve?"

Here's a couple more interesting reads...

http://www.tech-forums.net/computer_articles/bios-flashing-recovery.php

http://www.biosman.com/biosrecovery.html

[Whyzman]

One other: http://www.quepublishing.com/articles/article.asp?p=27188&seqNum=7&rl=1

[vicki lynne]

Thank you guys for taking the time to teach. It really helps when someone can explain. The pictures make a lot more sense that way.:-)

[kiosk]

Actually I hotflash every time I flash a new BIOS onto a particular mainboard. It leaves me with a known good spare EEPROM chip which I can reuse later in a different board, but it requires you to have several different types of EEPROM chips kicking around in your workshop. There aren't really that many combinations, and most boards will work with chips that weren't specifically designed for them, as long as the chip density matches. I'm getting all of my IC spares from trash or otherwise dead boards.

[vicki lynne]

it's alive !!!!!! That last link that wyzeman gave me was the one that worked. Thank you so very much. I've got it back to where it gets past post all the way to trying to boot the hdd but that's for another forum. Anyway thanks again.:D

[Fruss Tray Ted]

:confused:

Orphaned reply alert!
;)

[Paul Komski]

merged the orphan back to mom

[vicki lynne]

Sorry, still learning.

[Whyzman]

it's alive !!!!!! Way cool! :D