# BIOS Flash Failed, Now Motherboard is Dead...



## spirit

I flashed the BIOS on my Foxconn H55M-S motherboard so that I could enable AHCI, as the newer BIOS apparently introduces AHCI so that means I can boot into Windows faster, and I flashed the BIOS through Foxconn's LiveUpdate crap thing. I backed up my previous BIOS onto my HDD and then I updated with the newer BIOS and then once I restarted when the updater asked me to, I restarted and then my PC won't POST at all. The lights on the PC and the keyboard are all on, but no display and certainly not POSTING (removed all 4 RAM sticks to see if I would hear a beep and it didn't, so obviously I don't get a beep if something fails). 

So, if anybody knows how to recover a previous version BIOS without being able to see what's on the screen, I'd like to know. I'd also like to recommend two things. 1. Don't flash the BIOS through software, and 2. Don't buy Foxconn motherboards! Clearly, you get what you pay for. Cheap build quality, terrible support, awful website, manuals written mainly in Chinese, terrible software (when I was backing up my BIOS it said it was "backuping" my BIOS, great English ha) and generally really rubbish. Now I've got to get an 1156 board to replace this heap of Chinese junk if I can't get it to work again.

Does anybody know if I can do anything or shall I just call it a day? I tried resetting CMOS, didn't work. Would appear now that after having pressing the power button to boot the PC up, it boots up, dies for a couple of seconds, then boots up again. I only replaced the PSU last week so I know it's probably motherboard-related. Any help/advice appreciated.


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## jamesd1981

Was the machine running ok before the bios flash ?


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## johnb35

If the machine won't post at all, your screwed.  You will either have to order a new bios chip if it can be removed and replaced or you will have to send it in to get replaced.  Or buy a new motherboard.


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## spirit

jamesd1981 said:
			
		

> Was the machine running ok before the bios flash ?


It was working absolutely fine before the flash wrecked it.



			
				johnb35 said:
			
		

> If the machine won't post at all, your screwed. You will either have to order a new bios chip if it can be removed and replaced or you will have to send it in to get replaced. Or buy a new motherboard.


Thought so.  Will look into a new motherboard. Is there a chance that it will have damaged my CPU, RAM and hard drives, like a PSU explosion would have done?


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## jamesd1981

And you have tried resetting the bios using the jumpers on the motherboard ?


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## spirit

jamesd1981 said:


> And you have tried resetting the bios using the jumpers on the motherboard ?


Yes to no avail. I had to unlock the BIOS by moving the MDG jumper, but I did this before the flash. I loaded up the flashing software, it said "yo the BIOS is locked" so I turned the PC off by shutting it down, moved the jumper, booted it up again (ran absolutely fine) and then updated the BIOS. It then told me to reboot, so I did, and then when it restarted suddenly there was no display.


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## johnb35

No, it will not do any damage to anything else, just the motherboard.


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## jamesd1981

On most modern motherboards, they actually check to make sure it is a suitable bios before starting the flash did this happen with yours, and did the bios flash reach 100%


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## spirit

johnb35 said:


> No, it will not do any damage to anything else, just the motherboard.


Praise the lord. Thank you I think you saved my day by confirming that my worst fears were not going to happen. 



			
				jamesd1981 said:
			
		

> On most modern motherboards, they actually check to make sure it is a suitable bios before starting the flash did this happen with yours, and did the bios flash reach 100%


Don't ever remember it checking as such, it just read the *.ROM file I downloaded from Foxconn's website and went along with it. I think it would have read any ROM file and been happy with it. I think it did reach 100% because it was asking me to restart my machine and that the chances would take effect once I rebooted.


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## jamesd1981

Are you using a graphics card or onboard ?


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## spirit

jamesd1981 said:


> Are you using a graphics card or onboard ?


I am using a GeForce GTS 450 as the CPU doesn't support onboard video. Even with the card removed it still isn't posting at all. Been having issues of the late with losing the display signal for a couple of seconds meaning my monitor goes blank and then comes back on again, and I've had problems with the NVIDIA drivers being unstable. I replaced my PSU and this seems to have made the issue go away... but it still happens every now and then but not half as much as it used to. The clip that holds the card in secure on the PCI Express slot is broken so it's only being held in by the chassis.

What would you guys recommend as a good replacement 1156 motherboard that won't break the bank? I don't know how much I have to spend so ideally cheap as possible would be best.


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## jamesd1981

Did you use the fox live update utility to do the flash ?

Where do your error beeps come from, do you have a speaker on the motherboard ?


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## spirit

jamesd1981 said:


> Did you use the fox live update utility to do the flash ?
> 
> Where do your error beeps come from, do you have a speaker on the motherboard ?


Yes I did use the live update and no there were no error beeps, I don't have an onboard speaker in the PC. Even with all 4 RAM sticks removed there are no beeps.


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## jamesd1981

Well to get the audible error beeps, you need a speaker, usually a round black one stuck inside the motherboard, or on your board near the front panel connections there should be four pins in a row that may say speaker printed on the board, you can buy a connector to put on the pins.

The fact that you have had other problems with the system including the loose gpu, i would try to make sure it wasn`t anything else before dumping the board.


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## StrangleHold

Look and see if the bios chip is removable. If so, get Foxconn to send you a new bios chip.


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## cabinfever1977

and dont flash the bios this time


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## spirit

jamesd1981 said:
			
		

> Well to get the audible error beeps, you need a speaker, usually a round black one stuck inside the motherboard, or on your board near the front panel connections there should be four pins in a row that may say speaker printed on the board, you can buy a connector to put on the pins.


This is not a premium board, it's a Foxconn for heaven's sake - it's a cheap crappy Chinese board, so there is no speaker. It doesn't even support RAID or AHCI! Yes I know where it should be but the board doesn't have one. I have an older PC which may have a speaker which I will try on the Foxconn today.



			
				jamesd1981 said:
			
		

> The fact that you have had other problems with the system including the loose gpu, i would try to make sure it wasn`t anything else before dumping the board.


I think my GPU itself is fine, I think my GPU problems are a result of the lock on the PCI Express slot on the motherboard. The lock snapped off so now it isn't locked firmly in place. The GPU itself is fine and I tried a GeForce 9800 card on the PC and still had the same problem.



			
				StrangeHold said:
			
		

> Look and see if the bios chip is removable. If so, get Foxconn to send you a new bios chip.


It's £11 for a new BIOS chip from a third-party website. I can't get onto Foxconn's website at the moment because everytime I try to access it is says the network is busy. I don't particularly want to buy BIOS chips from a third-party website as they're probably counterfeit and they seem alarmingly cheap. I think it may be an idea to get a new motherboard.



			
				cabinfever1997 said:
			
		

> and dont flash the bios this time


Definitely not! Never flashing a BIOS again after my experiences, or certainly not flashing one through Windows.


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## jamesd1981

Well have a look at these sites, if you are going to get a new board.

http://www.ebuyer.com/search?page=1&store=2&cat=14&filtersubcat=2954

http://www.cclonline.com/category/4...list/1014008-1014009-1014010-1014011-1014017/


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## jamesd1981

For future stick to the main brands of motherboard

asus, gigabyte, asrock, msi, and at u push biostar

They all have various was o bios flash that are very easy and reliable.

You can simply flash from within windows, some people don`t like that way but with new modern boards it seems fine i have done it countless times with no problem.

The other way is to get an empty fat filesystem flashdrive and add only the bios rom file, insert it into usb port, reboot the machine, enter the bios and select the motherboards built in flash utility, for example asus ez flash.


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## spirit

I have found an ASRock P55 Pro ATX 1156 mobo on Amazon for £80 which looks good. Only has SATA II though. I also know about the ASUS P7P55D-E which is an 1156 board with SATA III. The ASUS is £30 more making it £110 which seems very expensive for an 1156 board I think considering (let's be honest), 1156 is obsolete now. I have a Crucial M4 SSD, is there going to be much difference between SATA II and SATA III? The M4 does take advantage of SATA III. On my Foxconn I couldn't get AHCI (hence for the BIOS upgrade) so that was what was making my SSD slow I reckon.


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## jamesd1981

There is a big difference between sata 2 and sata 3, i recently changed almost identical ssd, ocz vertex, sold my sata 2 and bought the same drive only sata 3.

The windows index went from 6.9 to 7.9 which is the limit could be higher, all other benchmarks including 3d mark, novabench and benchtown, the scores shot up.

Are your hard drives all sata 2 ?


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## spirit

At the moment I get 7.4 on my Windows 7 WEI with the M4 SSD even when it's on SATA II and AHCI is not enabled. But it takes about an age to boot. A hard drive is faster. It's very embarrassing. Once you're in Windows though, it's very fast, it's just the boot-up that takes 3 days, or about 40-50 seconds in my case. Seq. Read speeds are about 230 mb/s and sequential write speeds are about 175 mb/s. 

Both of my drives, the SSD and the Caviar Green are SATA III. Would it be possible to buy a SATA II motherboard and then buy a PCIe x1 SATA III card? Would that do the job, or not?


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## jamesd1981

You could do that, but i suppose it all depends when you intend to upgrade your socket, if it is not in the near future, i would go for a proper sata 3 and maybe usb 3.0 board.

Although a lot of users would consider the 1156 socket out of date, it`s not really that old, it`s only your serious user like those on here that really want the newest gear, your  average user and potential buyers don`t really care about socket, they only care about, the power, the hard drive size, and features like usb 3.0 etc.


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## spirit

Yeah the ASRock has USB 3.0, but only SATA II, but the ASUS has USB 3.0 and SATA III, it's just really expensive though. Yeah I know 1156 is not that old, only 2 years or so. Anybody else know of an 1156 board which has SATA III on it that I can still buy today? I'm not too fussed about USB 3.0, not got any USB 3.0 devices anyway.

Edit: Found the MSI P55A-GD5 - looks good


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## jamesd1981

http://www.cclonline.com/product/27...therboards/Asus-P7P55D-E-Motherboard/MBD1067/

http://www.ebuyer.com/290237-ex-dis...io-atx-motherboard-includes-ebr1-ga-p55a-ud3-

These two both have sata 3 and usb 3.0 the two standards seem to go together.

They are about the same price, but for about an extra £30 i think they would be worth the extra money to unlock the speed of your sata 3 drives, and those up to date features will make it much more attractive and valuable when you do come to sell it.


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## spirit

Do you think I'd just be better off buying an i5 2500 and a new motherboard?


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## jamesd1981

It`s really down to your budget, you could sell your quad core 1156 no problems and put that towards a new base.

The only thing i would hesitate is with the sandybridge 1155 socket, get a motherboard is good, but the new ivy bridge range is due out shortly which i think is to run on the same socket, so don`t know if i would go for a sandybridge i5 or buy a cheap sandybridge cpu to get up and running, then get a decent ivy bridge on it`s release.


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## spirit

How much do you reckon an i5 760 would fetch? I'd just buy the 2500 and a good Z68 motherboard, I'm not too fussed about Ivy-Bridge unless it's going to blow everything else out of the water. Still only young, I don't have loads of money to throw around.


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## jamesd1981

On ebay they seem to be between £150 and £175, that should pay for a big chunk of your upgrade, you can actually get 1155 boards cheaper than 1156.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_f...kw=Intel+Core+i5+760+2.8GHz+Quad&_sacat=58058


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## spirit

Mine won't come boxed though. I bought my CPU, motherboard and my RAM as a bundle from Novatech. I doubt I can get it replaced under warranty can I? If I got £150 for the CPU I could easily buy a board for that, I can get a Z68 board for like £85, then that would leave me £75 for the CPU, but I'd still have to save another £100 or so to get the 2500. I don't know what I should do, should I just get any old 1156 board and keep with the 760 and then call it a day?


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## jamesd1981

No they won`t replace it under warranty, due to the fact there was no actual fault in the hardware, it was a bios flash gone wrong which they wont cover.

At the price your cpu is selling for, compared with how cheap the 1155 range is, i would go for the upgrade then it`s done, your hardware will  be bang up to date and it shouldn`t cost you much out your own pocket.

I can recommend this motherboard, as i recently bought to build my sons new sandybridge, it is attractive to look at, lots of features, really easy overclocking, and the bios flash is a breeze.

Check out my review.

http://www.ebuyer.com/281367-asus-p...raphics-output-8-channel-audio-atx-p8z68-v-lx


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## spirit

I'll speak to Dad and see what he says. At the moment I don't have any money so it would mean selling something if I upgraded, probably the CPU and I doubt my CPU will fetch £150 because let's face it, the 760 is old now and you wouldn't even consider using one for a new build, and my CPU is not boxed and has no warranty as I purchased it as part of a bundle. The board looks good but I don't know if I'm going to upgrade to 1155 or not. I am tempted to for the reason you said - my hardware would be much more up-to-date. I have used Sandy-Bridge before but only on machines which I do not own, would there be a difference between an i5 760 and an i5 2400 or 2500?


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## jamesd1981

http://www.ebuyer.com/229999-intel-...-l3-cache-retail-boxed-processor-bx80605i5760

Your cpu is £155 new, so you would certainly get £100 to £125 for it, boxed shouldn`t matter as long as you have it stored in an anti-static bag.

You should see a noticeable difference between 1156 and 1155 perfromance, and intel just released a new driver for sandybridge built in hd graphics, took my sons graphics score from 4.8 up to 5.2 which is about the same as a mid range graphics card.


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## spirit

Reckon if I start it at £100 on eBay I'll get some interest? Or should I start low and then hope people see it and then bid like crazy? Just been onto Novatech and seen you can pick up an i5 2500 OEM CPU (so no box etc etc) for just £135, that's about £30-40 saving by just not buying it with a box and CPU cooler. I wouldn't need the 2500K as I am not an overclocker, 3.3GHz is high enough for me! I can get a Z68 board for about £85 or a P67 board for even cheaper (both will have SATA III and USB 3.0), so the upgrade is very tempting.

Before I buy or even think about buying replacement parts though, I want to be sure that the BIOS is completely gone and unrecoverable, - is there any chance or way of getting my back-upped BIOS back and working?


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## jamesd1981

Before you list on ebay, try, gumtee and adtrader, they are both free to list and no fees to pay when it sells, i only use ebay as a last resort, gumtree is pretty good and a lot of people use it.

As far as your bios goes, if it is down the bios flash going wrong, you wont get any display even to get into the bios to restore or reflash it.

You have tried resetting with bios jumper and tried different memory setups is that right ?

The power supply is pretty new isn`t it ?

That only really leaves the graphics card are you sure it is ok ?


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## spirit

Tried moving MDG jumpers, tried reseating the RAM and the graphics card, the PSU is less than a week old and it's a good quality brand-name one (see my signature), so yeah, pretty sure it's the motherboard.


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## jamesd1981

Have you tried removing the ram and just trying one stick at a time, worth a shot.

As you say you want to be sure the bios is totally gone, if the bios does turn out to be gone as stated earlier in the thread, you could get a replacement bios chip that way you could sell the board as well, or even sell the board and cpu as bundle.


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## spirit

Not tried each stick at a time but I recently tested the sticks with Memtest they all passed except one stick which I have now replaced. I can't hold of Foxconn at the moment, their website is down, and I can't buy replacement chips on eBay.


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## jamesd1981

http://bios-repair.co.uk/Programmed-BIOS/Foxconn/LGA1156-Foxconn.html

What about here, prices seem not bad.


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## spirit

Already linked to them in this thread, I'm not sure how reliable or trustworthy they are. Do you think I'd see a difference in performance by just upgrading the motherboard and sticking to the i5 760? I don't think the H55M-S is a terribly great performing board is it?


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## jamesd1981

You may see a slight increase but nothing huge, your cpu, ram etc are still the same, if you got a sata 3 board you would see quite an increase from hard drive and as an effect perhaps boot time and file transfer.

Well they seem to be a pretty big supplier so i would think they are pretty reliable.

I would certainly go for the 1155 upgrade regardless, so it`s about getting the most for the parts you sell, cpu is no problem, and motherboard maybe with the £20 or so to get the board working again, so you can sell it also.


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## spirit

Could just sell the board as spares/repairs and state that it needs a BIOS chip in order to get it running again, but it can't guarantee that's all it needs. In the past I have sold stuff as spares/repairs on eBay and it has sold. So you say upgrade to 1155 then?


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## jamesd1981

Yes i suppose you could do that at least you would get something for the board as well, so between the cpu and the board, you should just about cover the new board and cpu, your end price will really depend on which cpu you choose.


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## spirit

I'd choose the i5 2400 or 2500 and I have spoken to Dad about my board and he's keen to buy a replacement 1156 one - is Biostar is a good brand? Is this or this a good board?


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## jamesd1981

Biostar motherboards are not bad for how cheap they are, but both the boards you are looking at are sata 2, so you will still have the reduced performance of connecting sata 3 drives to a sata 2 motherboard.


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## spirit

oh well dude, can't have everything. Do the boards have AHCI? I should imagine they do.


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## jamesd1981

http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=508

That`s the link to first board on biostar site, you could download the manual for full details.


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## spirit

Already checked it does have AHCI. Found a used ASUS P7P55D-E on ebay for £80, buy it now, so I may get that as it has SATA III and USB 3. I've let Dad know about it.


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## jamesd1981

Yes i would certainly try from the asus, is it from a private seller or company, and is their feedback all good ?


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## spirit

looks to me like a private seller but the seller has 100% positive feedback.


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## spirit

In case you're interested, I have just ordered a second-hand but mint ASUS P7P55D-E board for £80 + £8 P&P from eBay. Went for this board over the MSI P55-CD53 and the Biostar boards because this has USB 3.0 and SATA III which my drives can advantage of. It also has multi-GPU support (Crossfire I think). Won't be flashing the BIOS!


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## jamesd1981

Good choice, a better branded board and all the up to date transfer standards.


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## spirit

That's why I purchased it. I think £87 total second hand is pretty good considering the board still retails new for about £113 on Amazon.


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## jamesd1981

Yes a nice deal, are you going to try and sell you foxconn board for repair ?


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## spirit

Yeah once I've got the ASUS board all in and running, I will try and put the Foxconn on eBay as spares/repairs and explain what went wrong with it. Suspect somebody who refurbishes these boards then sells them on again will buy it. Sold faulty motherboards and graphics cards on eBay in the past and always been lucky, so...


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## larsch

Have you checked the manual for bios recovery options?


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## spirit

larsch said:


> Have you checked the manual for bios recovery options?


I lost the manual the board came with and Foxconn's website is down at the moment so I can't download one, and I bet the manual would tell me no such thing. Already ordered the replacement board now so once it's all in and working I will have to work out what to do with the Foxconn and see if its worth selling.


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## tremmor

I figured you tried this. When available click on support for your motherboard. They might have program to try and recover the bios and put back to defaults. 
its a maybe if ya did not. Depends on what went wrong during flash and where written i think.


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## spirit

Got a copy of the manual which I found on Google (not from FC's site), and there is no mention of BIOS recovery. All I get are the options to load fail safe defaults which is what the board ships with, but that's useless to me as the machine doesn't even POST.


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## spirit

My ASUS board shipped this morning (First Class Recorded) so it should be here shortly. Thank you for all the help guys, much appreciated, and I will put the Foxconn on eBay as spares/repairs once I have got my ASUS up and running.

Edit 17th Feb 2012 It's here now .


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