its me again margrett

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 11 Apr 2001 3:28 am

Many of BIOS' are Phoenix or AMD. If you know who's BIOS it is, you may be able to go to their site and download what you need.

One option - that may or may not work. If you are going to have to rebuild the hard drive, if you can get into the system and reformat that with the Windows emergency backup diskette, that may elimnate the problem of allowing you to reset the BIOS. Depends on the particular BIOS. If you have the emergency disks from your virus program (you do have a virus program - right??) they might be able to recover something for you. If you don't have the emergency disks, maybe you can borrow them from someone locally that has them. Both Norton and McAfee have "emergency recovery" diskettes - if you can get it to recognize the floppy drive at least long enough to get it loaded.

Also check the McAfee and Norton sites. I know McAfee has written instructions on how to recover (or at least recover enough to rebuild the system) from many destructive viruses.

All of this assumes you can load from the floppy. If you can't load from floppy, even a flash BIOS program won't do you any good. In that case you may have to buy a new BIOS chip to get it working.

Bill Crook · Post by **Bill Crook** » 18 Apr 2001 5:09 am

Jack....

(I am NOT attempting to blow holes in your post here but as I have had this to happen to me and other computer users in the past,I really would like to know of an alternate choice to replaceing the BIOS chip (at$75.00)in the machine)

Question:

Given the fact the BIOS is blowed out,then the machine won't boot up correctly anyway.
How am I suppose to go on-line and D/L a new flash BIOS ??

The last time I did D/L a BIOS,it installed itself directly into the BIOS chip. (I assume that the BIOS chip is a EEprom of some sort.) Even that was a very nasty ordeal !! I had no control whatsoever, had anything gone wrong with the D/L, I would have scramed the BIOS chip beyond repair.

Larry Beck · Post by **Larry Beck** » 18 Apr 2001 7:06 am

Bios code is quite small so there is plenty of room on a bootable floppy for the bios, any support or install program and the the usual boot files.
If you have a 'name brand' computer, go to their tech support site and chances are they will have the file you need. Gateway has a good site for example.
The proceedure you get will be what Jack said with perhaps more details for your computer.
As for what to download with, if you don't have a working computer, go to the local library. Or use the computer you posted the question with....

BTW:The bios type and version is usually the first thing on the top of the screen at boot up.

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 23 Apr 2001 11:08 am

Mike, unless you have Windows NT drivers for all your devices stay away from WIN 2000. It is an upgrade to Windows NT 4.0, the commercial version of windows. Win2000 does not support DOS and is not compatible with some of the "consumer" software and not all hardware (e.g. sound cards, video, etc) are supported by Win2K. Win2K is designed for servers and workstations.

I'm using Windows ME and I like much better than 95 or 98. The "restore my computer" function alone is worth the upgrade. It is also a lot stabiler (is stabiler a word?) and I don't get the "blue screen of death" that I used to get on the other versions.

The restore my computer function tracks all changes, deletion of files, installation of programs and the changes. If, for example, you load a program and it screws up a windows dll and it won't run, you can go to the restore my computer function (in safe mode) and have it restore the system to the point before the program installation. It's saved my butt several times.