Sony VAIO CS17G: BIOS Recovery - Help!

[Parry]

Hi,

I tried updating the BIOS of my Sony Vaio CS-17G notebook to the latest updates given at the Sony Support Website. It's an Insyde BIOS, i tried updating my BIOS to version R0290Q2.

Everything went fine, got message 'BIOS updated successfully', 'Press OK to shut down.' Pressed ok & now nothing's okay. The system is not booting up!

Tried the following troubleshooting, but no luck;
1) Pressing F2, F8 & F10 keys.
2) Disconnected the AC Adapter, removed the battery & pressed the power button for 60secs.

Have looked around in the tutorials for Recovering From A Bad Insyde Bios Flash, where can I get the original bios file ******.FD? Pls assist.

[1234s282]

Heres the original extracted ROM file (Follow tutorial and substitute. FD for .ROM)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/747181/Sony%20VA...racted.zip

Regards
Admin

[Parry]

Thanks a ton 1234s282, you are really proving to be an for my lappy.

Three Things, pls clarify:
1) Will removing the motherboard battery help resetting?
2) I too figured out that its an Insyde BIOS because of the update version. Is there any other way to confirm that too?
3) If things went wrong while updating the BIOS with version R0290Q2, should we try to flash with it?

[1234s282]

1) Not really , removing the motherboard battery resets bios settings to defaults - it doesnt help if the actual flash failed but seeing as itsaid "Flash Successful" its worth a shot as sometimes upgrading the bios requires all the settings to go back to defaults first. Unplug your computer , remove the battery , wait a whole 10 minutes , replace the battery and switch it back on and see if you an get into the bios.

2) Not that i know of but its definately insyde because the download includes the insyde flash utility!

3) Yes , still flash it - chances are you just had a bad flash and its always a good thing to have the latest bios available!

Regards
Admin

[Parry]

Thanks a lot once again for your instant reply.

Will be visiting one of the Sony service centres, lets see wot they gotta say or else will take up on the things our way.

[Parry]

Heres the original extracted ROM file (Follow tutorial and substitute. FD for .ROM)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/747181/Sony%20VA...racted.zip

Have downloaded the file & extracted it. Its a .ROM file, whereas your tutorial says

Download the original bios file ******.FD and rename it to ******.BIN and place it on a USB thumb drive.

Pls clarify.

[1234s282]

just rename it to .bin (You have to have "Hide Extensions for known file types" unticked under folder options (in control panel in Vista and Windows 7 )

Admin

[Parry]

One positive development; visited Sony Service Center yesterday, explained them that it happened cause of their support staff has asked me to update BIOS, provided them the case reference number. They are looking into the laptop, could be it gets done under warranty. Fingers Crossed.

[Parry]

1234s282 ... finally the motherboard has been replaced by Sony under warranty!!!

Just got it ... checking, will update.

[Parry]

Found these issues with my new motherboard:

1) On re-boot am getting a PXE error message;

YUKON PXE v 6.22.1.33 (20070803)
©Copyright 2003-2006 Marvell ®. All Rights Reserved
Pre-Boot Execution Environvment (PXE)
©Copyright 1997-2003 Intel Corporation

PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable.
PXE-M0F: Existing PXE ROM.

2) Vista too is loading up a bit slowly.

Checked my boot configuration it had;
External Device: Enabled
Network: Enabled

Disabled network as boot configuration, pressed F10 for Save & Exit. There was a black screen for about a minute or so.
Then I re-booted enabled the network boot configuration & notebook re-booted as earlier with the error message. Pls assist.