Satellite P200 BIOS dead

[jpneathey]

My 2 month old Toshiba Satellite P200 is now a very shiny doorstop, thanks to my naivety in believeing I should keep my laptop as up to date as possible. I have done BIOS flashes many times in the past on my Dells and Compaqs without any issues. Not this time.

I downloaded the latest flash from Toshiba and started the program running. Everything was OK until I got to sector 4 out of however many and the system froze. Mouse played up, KB went dead. Screen then went white and that was that. Couldn't shut it down, put it to sleep, nothing. Had to unplug the power just to let the juice run down as the power button was dead.

This morning, I have a laptop that flickers its HDD light, checks the CD Rom and then does nothing. Blank screen, the works. I have the correct BIOS flash, I just now need to get the flash to speak to the chip, but I'm stumped. Tried it on a USB stick and a CD Rom but nothing.

Any ideas? Problem is that I am in Sarajevo right now so sending it back to the UK is really the last resort. Thanks.

[edwin]

I think contacting Toshiba tech support might be a good step in this, surely that shiny new laptop still has warranty and they might have some clues on how to perform a recovery flash, so they can tell you what to do.

[LordZog]

Use the Boot Block Recovery system in the laptop.. As long as you have a USB floppy drive, and a blank disk, you can reflash it at boot.. THis is available on all the Toshiba's as long as they use the Phoenix bios.. Did this multiple times to a P100 and a M73.. The floppy image has been added as a live link to rapid share. I have modified it to work a little better than the HP one floating around and the ACER.. The HP/Acer one used an old Phlash16 (1.3) program that wasn't supported by my SST29V040 EEprom chip but this new version (1.4) does so give this one a shot..

This is the Crisis Recovery Disk at RapidShare I just uploaded

This has the bios for M73 1.90. Replace BIOS.WPH with your own bios. If Toshiba gives you a BIOS.ROM, just rename it.. Then run WINCRIS.EXE to make the bootable floppy, and then follow the readme.txt included. Let me know how it goes.

THIS HAS TO BE DONE BY A FLOPPY THO.. Toshiba seem to disable the Thumbdrive/CD-ROM options for this.. Your CD-ROM blinks at boot as thats what the CD-ROM's firmware is supposed to do to see if a disk is in it.. And for some reason, toshiba disable the thumbdrive boot block all together, some models ya can boot an OS from a thumbdrive, but the boot block has been modified to not allow your to flash from one in BB Recovery mode.. Shame as Phoenix has been adding thumb drive BB Recovery since Trusted Core SP1.

[wingco1]

I have a Tosh Sat L30-10S with a failed BIOS flash. Made a recovery disk using your CRT. Unfortunately no joy. The laptop doesn't actually run the Floppy FDD, all I get is a click as the FDD receives power.

[sategodude]

Hi,

I have a Toshiba P100-10F with a broken BIOS, and also want to do a crisis bios recovery. Does anyone have an idea how to enter it (Fn B, Win B, Fn Esc, Win Esc didn´t work)

Thanks