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Inspiron 11 - 3147 BIOS update to A09 bricked motherboard
I went to dell.com and had it choose drivers/downloads for me... one of these was the BIOS A09 update. It downloaded and automatically rebooted my computer where it proceeded to 69% and froze. I was in a motel room at the time (on the road with my work) and after 20 straight hours of being froze on 69%, I had to unplug as it was time to hit the road. Eventually my battery died and upon attempting to restart my computer all i get is the white power light coming on and a weak beep... I believe from what I have found on line it has "bricked". Why did this happen and is there a way to recover my laptop? It recently went out of warranty and I'm lost without it.
Ive tried removing the battery, and the CMOS battery and then holding the power button on for 15 seconds before applying AC power.
I also made a bootable usb with windows on it to no avail. Please help
ejn63
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April 5th, 2016 06:00
The least expensive option is to take the system to a repair shop that can unsolder the BIOS chip, flash it externally and re-solder it. This should run $150 or so.
The other option is to replace the system board - which will easily be twice that cost (or more).
enotsenol
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April 5th, 2016 06:00
That's crazy... What causes this? My support assist informed me that this update needed done so I told it to do so... Basically Dell told me to update and I did. Now it screws up my computer and the only fix is $150 or so? Thanks for your response... not trying to sound hateful to you at all just frustrated that this could happen. Any advice to prevent this in the future?
ejn63
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April 5th, 2016 07:00
Any BIOS flash carries a risk of failure. It is usually unwise to include the flash with other updates - it should be done solo. It also is wise to skip BIOS updates unless there is a specific problem you're trying to solve that is known to be fixed with the BIOS update, precisely because there is always a risk of bricking the system with a failed update.