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December 27th, 2016 09:00
[Alienware 14] InsydeH20 BIOS Blind Flash
So I'm in a peculiar spot. Recently my Alienware 14 laptop has been unable to post and gives me a single beep code indicating BIOS or ROM corruption. I would like to update my BIOS to A09 to try and fix the issue (I'm on A06 at the moment).
Now, I can get my computer to boot, but that requires me to leave the laptop off for about an hour and then hold the power button for 30 seconds (essentially discharging the system). The problem with that is that the Dell utility used to flash the Insyde BIOS requires the system to reboot. Well, to reboot I have to do a full power discharge which in turns erases the BIOS image that the utility has pushed to memory somewhere. No image, no flash upon reboot.
This seemingly leaves me with one option, and that is to do a blind flash of the BIOS off of a USB. If anyone is familiar with the procedure, could you please enlighten me.
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WillMEDS
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December 27th, 2016 09:00
Crisis averted! It's amazing that aver two days of struggling with this, that the solution falls into my arms minutes after I posted here.
I got really lucky. I decided to run the Insyde flash tool again from windows, and this time, out of the blue my laptop reboots successfully. The BIOS update was able to finish, and now my PC POSTS reliably. For anyone who has this issue re-flashing the BIOS corrects the issue.
Back to the initial problem. How does my ROM become corrupted for no apparent reason? I blame shoddy design of the motherboard. It seems to be a case of data degredation (This is the first time I've ever seen something like this, but now I'm a believer!) I've owned an Alienware M14xR2 and now an Alienware 14, and I've always heard stories of motherboard failure with Alienware laptops. I think that several of these failures could be traced back to ROM failure/corruption. My laptop was failing POSTs for for about a month and was progressively having more failures. Fortunately, I was able to identify the issue before I completely lost the ability to boot my system. Should I had not been able to boot my system, a blind flash of the InsydeH20 bios would have been necessary to resolve this.