Bricked a Toshiba u300 with bad flash- crisis disk wont boot

[inedible]

Hi there,

I was trying to update my BIOS last night to correct some ongoing issues I've been having... It was done 10 blocks out of 16 when windows BSOD'd. (winphlash.exe)
After rebooting I'm welcomed to a nice blank screen with no sign of activity... Lovely.
I called Toshiba and explained to them what happened and they said that should definitely be covered by warranty... but for some reason the serial number has rubbed off of the warranty sticker I've never cleaned the bottom of the laptop with anything and I'm generally pretty careful with it, but somehow the s/n was rubbed off, and because of that they won't help me (even though my laptop model was first introduced less than a year ago and therefore *MUST* be under warranty.).. I can't figure out why they would use water soluble ink for something as vital as a serial number, or why they would use a windows based bios flashing program, or why despite these both being problems directly caused by toshiba that they refuse to fix it... but I digress..

At any rate, I've downloaded the crisis boot disk for phoenix bioses, downloaded the correct WPH file and obtained a USB floppy drive, but no combination of keys will get it to see the floppy drive.. I've tried FN+B, WIN+B, FN+ESC, and a few others, but it never seems to try the floppy at all.

Is there some other key combinations I can try, or does anyone know if this laptop has some kind of "recovery jumper" or "boot block" or something, or is my 4 month old laptop now a $1000 paperweight?

[Sharedoc]

Did you try copy of the invoice/bill to proof ownership and date of purchase to validate warranty...

[inedible]

Did you try copy of the invoice/bill to proof ownership and date of purchase to validate warranty...

Yeah, unfortunately I don't have that... I'm the kind of person who can usually fix most problems, and I've never had to RMA anything in my life... After speaking with several managers at Toshiba, telling my story time and time again, after yelling at them that no, I cannot press start and go to settings, after getting frustrated that of the 6 asian men I talked to named John, that only one of them comprehended that the laptop would not turn on, their ultimate solution was to take it to an incompetent local store (who also told me to go into the start menu, click settings) who would first charge me about $400 plus $80 consultation fee, and then if they somehow could magically find the serial number in the bios which cannot be read, they could call toshiba with that info and see if the charges for the repair could be refunded. (take note that this model of laptop DID NOT EXIST A YEAR AGO, *ALL* u300's IN THE WORLD ARE STILL UNDER WARRANTY)
I don't have $500, and if I did, I wouldn't risk having to spend it on repairing this laptop, I'd simply invest it in a different brand of laptop.

I think it's ridiculous that they'd be the only company in the known universe who purposely disables such an important recovery tool present by default in all phoenix bioses, but I digress... Don't buy Toshiba. I know I never will again, and I will advise my clients to do likewise.

[argybargy]

I have the same problem. Did you find a solution?

I´ve just fried my bios upgrading it. I´ve tried that trick with the key combinations like Fn+B but the laptop won´t power up at all.

The laptop is a Fujitsu Siemens C1010. I got the bios upgrade from their site but something failed during the upgrade and now it won´t turn on.

Does anybody have a solution or is the laptop destined from the scrap heap?

[inedible]

I did manage to fix this...

I figured out which chip was my bios and unsoldered it (it was an unmarked little 8 pin SOIC8 chip with a green dot painted on it, labeled 25x80VSIG).. I bought an EEPROM programmer off ebay, found out it didn't support the chip, broke pins off the chip trying to get it to work, gave up and bought a preflashed chip from bios-repair.com, soldered it in and everything went smoothly.
I'm posting this from that laptop now.

For $30 it was definitely worth it.