Thumper_23 Posted August 11, 2012 Share Posted August 11, 2012 Well I tried to flash to svl7's unlocked A05 last night and bricked my machine for the 2nd time. Fotunately I have a great tech supervisor,his name is Jose Hernandez. They are sending a tech out with another board and graphics card. He said he was going to be talking to some engineers about why so many guys are bricking thier mobos when flashing the bios. Does anyone know a way to flash the bios that's less risky than the normal way? Thanks Oh I forgot to ask,whenever you flash the bios with a 7970M should you have Enduro on? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Brian Posted August 11, 2012 Founder Share Posted August 11, 2012 Create a USB recovery drive, you should be able to recover the board. Although his R4 bios has been shown to work so I'm not sure why or how yours was bricked. What did you do exactly? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thumper_23 Posted August 11, 2012 Author Share Posted August 11, 2012 I just unzipped the file then ran the INSYDEflash exe, it started to work then the screen went black and both fans got really loud. After about 10 minutes I shut it off. I took the cmos battery out for about 1/2 hour. When I put the battery back and started it up the keyboard and all the lights lit up but I had a black screen and 1 continuos beep.Theres no way I can recover the mobo is bricked. I'm just wondering if having Enduro off during flashing caused the problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Brian Posted August 11, 2012 Founder Share Posted August 11, 2012 Having enduro off or on should have nothing to do with it. It bricked because you shut it off during the flash. Based on your description, you should still be able to recover the motherboard, have you tried? Hopefully @svl7 can provide you with more feedback. Thankfully Dell will take care of you regardless. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thumper_23 Posted August 12, 2012 Author Share Posted August 12, 2012 Brian I have flashed the bios on my R3 several times without a problem and the flash never took more than 3 minutes. Are you saying if I had left the computer running indefinitely it would have restarted with a successful flash? Actually I think I left it running more than 10 minutes because I went out to the garage and had a smoke.Also I don't have a clue how to recover a bad flash and would very much appreciate if you could tell me how.Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Brian Posted August 12, 2012 Founder Share Posted August 12, 2012 Thumper_23 said: Brian I have flashed the bios on my R3 several times without a problem and the flash never took more than 3 minutes. Are you saying if I had left the computer running indefinitely it would have restarted with a successful flash? Actually I think I left it running more than 10 minutes because I went out to the garage and had a smoke.Also I don't have a clue how to recover a bad flash and would very much appreciate if you could tell me how.Thanks Instructions Updated: thanks to naldor for the filename suggestion. If it sat there for 10 mins then it was likely just a bad flash but I don't think the modded bios is the culprit either. For recovery, I'm not sure if it applies to R4 but for M18x-R1 + M17x-R3 it does: 1. Download the R4 bios and extract it (I use winrar to extract) to any directory. 2. Go to the extracted directory from step 1 and look for a file named QBR00EC.fd and rename it to M17R4.HDR 3. Take the M17R4.HDR file, put them on a fat32 formatted flash drive. 4. Remove battery + disconnect cmos battery from system. 5. Disconnect power cord to the system. 6. While the system is off, plug the USB drive into the eSATA/USB port. 7. Press the END key on the keyboard and while its pressed, plug in the power cord. 8. You should hear the fans come on and the system should start reading from the USB key. After step 8, you should hear a series of beeps and then the system may shut down a few times. Once that's done, rebooting the system should bring it back to life if this worked. If not, it could possibly be that the file name in step #2 is wrong or it just doesn't work for M17x-R4. Still worth a shot though. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
naldor Posted August 12, 2012 Share Posted August 12, 2012 Thumper_23 did you try this method, or dell already fixed your mobo? If dell didnt fix your mobo yet, you could test this so other members would know it works would be appricated . Thanks in advance ;P - - - Updated - - - Btw, when I flashed my A05 dell bios, it went blackscreen 2, for like 1houre. I turned it off after the houre coz I thought the flash failed, and still the update was succesfull for some reason, so maybe next time try to keep it running for a while . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thumper_23 Posted August 12, 2012 Author Share Posted August 12, 2012 No Dell is not coming till next week board is on backorder till the 17th (I wonder why). I will attempt Brians method and report back. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thumper_23 Posted August 12, 2012 Author Share Posted August 12, 2012 :sad:Didn't work Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
naldor Posted August 12, 2012 Share Posted August 12, 2012 Well, would it be possibly that the recovery name could be M17R4.hdr?? just throwing in? trying couldnt hurt his mobo, coz they already replacing it anyways ;P, just have to extract the hdr file from the bios then I guess, and could give it a try? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Brian Posted August 12, 2012 Founder Share Posted August 12, 2012 naldor said: Well, would it be possibly that the recovery name could be M17R4.hdr?? just throwing in? trying couldnt hurt his mobo, coz they already replacing it anyways ;P, just have to extract the hdr file from the bios then I guess, and could give it a try? I don't think M17R4.hdr will work, it might perma brick the motherboard but if Thumper wants to try I suppose there nothing to lose at this point. Did the system read the usb when you tried? Sent from my GT-N7000 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
naldor Posted August 12, 2012 Share Posted August 12, 2012 I just go back into the bios flashinig etc(been busy with school/unversity for past 4 yearss), but a few years ago, on dells, HDR files would work if u bricked your bios, and my tool says the recovery name is M17R4.hdr, so thats why I though that, just the old way of getting HDR files out of the .exe files doesnt work, and when I extract it I cant find it, unless the .fd should be renamed but I doubt that? Or is this way outdated? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Brian Posted August 12, 2012 Founder Share Posted August 12, 2012 The HDR files were for Phoenix bios but the recent AW's use Insyde which are .fd. I think someone on another forum tried the .hdr extension and perma bricked the motherboard. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
naldor Posted August 12, 2012 Share Posted August 12, 2012 Okej, thanks for clearing that up . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svl7 Posted August 12, 2012 Share Posted August 12, 2012 Naldor is right, I just manually checked in the BIOS, and the recovery name stated there is definitely "M17R4.hdr". Make sure you use a freshly formatted USB stick (Fat or Fat32) with nothing else than the recovery file on it.Also it might be a different key you need to press on the new systems, I don't know, or even a different USB slot (though I doubt this). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thumper_23 Posted August 12, 2012 Author Share Posted August 12, 2012 So i use your unlocked bios and which file do I rename M17R4.hdr? Also do I leave the cmos battery out during the whole procedure? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
naldor Posted August 12, 2012 Share Posted August 12, 2012 Well, for the .hdr file, I am not sure atm, I have been working on it today but have been leakign time to figure everything out again, and yes you should leave it out, you should teh GPU out 2. BUt concerning the .hdr file, if i extract the exe file, i still get an .fd file, so thats odd, gonna put some more time into that 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svl7 Posted August 12, 2012 Share Posted August 12, 2012 Just rename the BIOS file (.fd) with the recovery name, you need to flash a BIOS after all, and if the recovery procedure doesn't recognize the file it won't flash it anyway, don't worry.And it doesn't matter which BIOS you use for recovery, the recovery name is always the same, you can also use A05 stock or A03... or the modified one, doesn't matter. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
naldor Posted August 12, 2012 Share Posted August 12, 2012 If you tried, let us know if worked, and what you did exactly 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thumper_23 Posted August 12, 2012 Author Share Posted August 12, 2012 IT Worked Thank you guys for all your help and support!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svl7 Posted August 12, 2012 Share Posted August 12, 2012 Cheers! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thumper_23 Posted August 12, 2012 Author Share Posted August 12, 2012 Well now that I'm back on planet Earth I'll tell what happened. I renamed that fd file to M17R4.hdr and put it on my usb as the only file on the stick. Then I inserted the usb stick in the port and held the "end" key down as I plugged in the power plug.The machine fans started roaring and a minute or so later I started getting steady beeps.The cmos battery was out. Then I started getting 5 beeps for about 10-15 minutes.Finally I figured it didn't work so I put the cmos battery back in and pulled the power plug and usb stick out.There were no restarts and nothing came on the screen unless i missed it when I stepped out of the room for a couple minutes.So I plugged the power cord back and expected to get the 1 continuos beep but to my amazement it booted up.I went into the bios and I had svl7's A05 flash on there. The guys coming in a few days with a mobo and graphics card, what do you guys think I should do? I noticed before all this happened I wasn't getting as good performance as with my last card Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
svl7 Posted August 12, 2012 Share Posted August 12, 2012 Oh yeah, you need the coin cell battery in the system, the BIOS writes some values to the nvram, it won't be possible with it removed.Regarding the technician... depends... I don't like it when people mess with my system, so I definitely wouldn't let Dell change the mobo unless it's really necessary, it's easy to mess up something during this procedure. A new GPU can be nice, but it may also perform worse... just my 0.02. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thumper_23 Posted August 12, 2012 Author Share Posted August 12, 2012 So when doing this procedure you leave the coin cell battery in right from the start? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Founder Brian Posted August 13, 2012 Founder Share Posted August 13, 2012 Oh yeah, you need the coin cell battery in the system, the BIOS writes some values to the nvram, it won't be possible with it removed.Regarding the technician... depends... I don't like it when people mess with my system, so I definitely wouldn't let Dell change the mobo unless it's really necessary, it's easy to mess up something during this procedure. A new GPU can be nice, but it may also perform worse... just my 0.02.Not necessarily true, I had the coin cell removed for the M18x when I recovered it. Might vary from system to system. I wouldn't let the Dell tech mess with my system now that it's working fine, you're just asking for trouble, like @svl7 said, he could just cause extra damage to your system and then you'd be stuck with more problems. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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