semi bricked Sony Vaio VGN-CS36GJ

[spiderman_pink]

Latest version of bios here:
http://www.sony.com.sg/support/download/...vgn-cs36gj

Saw in the forum that this version was already modded before. But the links were broken/file deleted.

So I extracted EP0000208656.exeand modded R2060Q2.ROM using andyp's latest phoenix mod tool.

Flashed using the windows Insyde flasher from the extracted EP0000208656.exe.

Of all the time in the world, I had to have a tummy ache during the flash. Ran to the toilet to take a dump, and when I got back, the Insyde flash program was gone. I thought it had auto restarted after a successful flash, boy was I wrong.


Restarted the laptop, and it hanged trying to load into Windows.

Tried to reinstall Windows 7, failed due to error 0xc0000225.

Suspecting it was a bad flash, I setup a bootable dos usb stick and renamed the original unmodded file R2060Q2.ROM to SonyX64.fd and tried flashing using dos flashit.exe. This too failed, error FADT not found.

Tried the known recovery methods Fn+esc, win+b etc to no avail.

Installed ubuntu. Linux works, but flashrom failed. Doesn't even detect my chipset.

I can enter the bios and all. But it seems the ACPI table is missing?

Other threads with similar symptoms:
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads...S-Recovery
http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads...-bad-flash
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hardware...18769.html
http://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-pl...-sony-vaio

Help, anyone? Sighhhhhhhhhhhhh

edit 1: so perhaps i'm looking at this from a wrong angle. maybe the flash was fine? its only windows that seems to have problems, but kubuntu linux works perfectly fine.

this is the original rom file: http://www.mediafire.com/download/o3b56s...2060Q2.ROM
and this is the one i modded: http://www.mediafire.com/download/slhqek...2_SLIC.ROM

as far as possible, i'd like windows 7 on this for simplicity. the owners are aged users, wouldn't want to to scare them with linux.

so i've been searching around for answers, and stumbled upon this blog http://feature-enable.blogspot.sg/2009/0...-vaio.html

perhaps there's a way to unlock more options in my bios using this method? maybe some acpi options that can be enabled? or if i could have the option to change achi to ide? i can boot up to the efi application to change the setup variable, but i don't know how to find the corresponding offsets to change, if any. would appreciate any help..

edit 2: decided to do a test. bootable dos usb, with flashit v1.3u ihisi v1.8.5.

on the sony vaio, running command flashit /all produces error: fadt not found

on a compaq presario cq40, it shows "please do not remove the ac power"
"initialising"
"error this fd file can not open"

edit 3: managed to install windows xp with standard hal. so far no working versions of insydeflash. sigh