Can a bad BIOS Flash kill a CPU?
Posted: Sun Apr 09, 2006 3:52 am
I tried flashing the BIOS of my ASUS motherboard (model P4B533 with a Pentium 4 1.8GHz CPU). The first time I tried it with the latest BIOS version (1015) EZ-Flash told me that the BIOS doesn't match. So I tried the next oldest version (1014 - without rebooting in between) and that read and updated ok. It finished properly, and told me to reboot.
After that, everything was dead...
I tried all the common cures: battery out, shorten reset jumper, removing all cards, moving RAM, etc., but nothing helped.
The CPU fan runs, and the power light on the board is on, but other than that nothing moves (no floppy, no harddrive, no video, no POST beeps).
So I got another motherboard (a used Gigabyte GA-8IE533), moved the CPU and video card, and tried again.
And I got... exactly the same behaviour...
CPU fan runs, but no video, no drive activity, no POST beeps.
I guess that means that my BIOS flash killed my CPU?
How can that be???
I know, the BIOS regulates the voltage, but can it be so far off that it could fry a CPU?
Very confused, and very annoyed...
After that, everything was dead...
I tried all the common cures: battery out, shorten reset jumper, removing all cards, moving RAM, etc., but nothing helped.
The CPU fan runs, and the power light on the board is on, but other than that nothing moves (no floppy, no harddrive, no video, no POST beeps).
So I got another motherboard (a used Gigabyte GA-8IE533), moved the CPU and video card, and tried again.
And I got... exactly the same behaviour...
CPU fan runs, but no video, no drive activity, no POST beeps.
I guess that means that my BIOS flash killed my CPU?
How can that be???
I know, the BIOS regulates the voltage, but can it be so far off that it could fry a CPU?
Very confused, and very annoyed...