On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 02:20:25PM -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 11:02:49AM -0400, wrote:
On Thu, Aug 13, 2015 at 12:37:32AM -0400, William Park wrote:
I can't even get to BIOS. Power LED comes on and few other keyboard related LEDs. Then, it turns off.
Some people have managed to get it to reflash the failed update to A34 by putting the bios on a 2GB or smaller USB key and holding down END key while turning it on. You have to put the HDR and ROM files on the USB key.
Apparently failling while updating to A34 has happened quite a bit.
From what I have seen the procedure is:
Extract the bios files:
E6400A34.EXE -writehdrfile
This even works with wine: # wine E6400A34.exe -writehdrfile
resulting in: $ file E64* E6400A34.exe: MS-DOS executable E6400A34.hdr: Dell system BIOS version A34
Then place the resulting file on a usb key that is no more than 2GB (probably needs to be FAT16 is my guess).
Unplug battery and power, then insert usb key, hold END key, and plug in power (leave battery out apparently), battery light should go red, release END key, and it should reflash the bios again. At least as far as I understand the instructions.
I have ThinkPad T43 (Windows 10) fortunately. I extracted HDR file, copied to 256MB usb stick (FAT16), and booted per instruction. The battery LED flashes orange/blue (blue is default colour)... it's been flashing for 2 hours. :-( Keyboard LEDs are diagnostic LEDs during POST, and they say I may have processor failure. What a shame... its keyboard is the best laptop keyboard I came across. -- William