Another bricked G74SX due to BIOS FAIL

[Trashking]

Well, you can add me to the laundry list of poor saps who attempted to update the BIOS of the G74SX.

I had bought this unit off an online retailer and within 1 hour of receiving it and applying the BIOS via the Aflash utility within the bios had rendered the system completely useless.

Would it be too much to include a txt or readme within the download, or at least SOME type of caution/instruction/safeguard to go with it?

Considering the flash utility readily finds and accepts the BIOS file off a USB drive, then proceeds to self-destruct, you'd think there would be at least SOMETHING mentioned about this in the BIOS section of the downloads.

What garbage.

This unit is beyond the RMA date, so I was informed it is not covered. An early quote from the rep came in at 222$. So after shipping (75$) + 222$ + Tax im stuck for at least 300$.

Ridiculuos.

[Pitcher@asus]

where are you get aflash tool? from ASUS website or ? do you have so easy zflash in BIOS? why do not use easy flash?

[Trashking]

Im sorry.

I used whatever tool is included from within the BIOS.

Either way, why is it acceptable from the manufacturer that one or more methods that are available are considered 'dangerous' with likely outcomes of destroying its usability. This seems like very poor business practice.

[fostert]

Sorry to hear of your brick. I strongly urge you to write to ASUS or get someone's attention there about putting in a dual-BIOS setup (i.e. two CMOS chips on the board, one as backup in case of a failed flash) on future laptop mainboards. Its been around on high-end desktop boards for years, and does not take up that much extra real estate on the board. In fact, why it is *not* a part of ASUS' high-end laptops,I don't know....

[dstrakele]

Try holding down CTRL+HOME on startup to bring up BIOS Recovery. Some have reported CTRL+Alt+HOME allows recovery of the previous BIOS. In these cases, it reads the hidden BIOS file in the root of C:.

If your machine still shows some signs of life on startup, try it at least 10 times. If your laptop is completely dead, you'll need to RMA.

I recommend you PM cl-Albert, the ASUS Customer Loyalty rep on this forum, and request his assistance with your RMA.

[Boosted_R]

Sorry to hear of your brick. I strongly urge you to write to ASUS or get someone's attention there about putting in a dual-BIOS setup (i.e. two CMOS chips on the board, one as backup in case of a failed flash) on future laptop mainboards. Its been around on high-end desktop boards for years, and does not take up that much extra real estate on the board. In fact, why it is *not* a part of ASUS' high-end laptops,I don't know....

You forgot to mention, that even super cheap $100 PC motherboard, like Gigabyte come with dual Bios Chips.... Did a simple Intel i5 build with a Gigabyte MB about 2 years ago and works great........ till this day, no proper warning about BIOS bricking........ end of the day, it seems like a cash grab..... No respect for mobile consumers..... sorry to hear OP, you shouldn't have to pay for ASUS downfalls, pisses me off when companies are making money on their own error

[Trashking]

Thanks for the ideas guys, unfortunately I have already shipped my laptop off to Asus. I'm going to pretend for now that they are going to make this right and just reprogram the chip and ship it back to me.

[fostert]

Thanks for the ideas guys, unfortunately I have already shipped my laptop off to Asus. I'm going to pretend for now that they are going to make this right and just reprogram the chip and ship it back to me.

I hope they don't pretend ..! Bon Chance.

[Trashking]

WOW, this whole thing gets worse by the second. So they ended up charging me for the damage incurred by their file and utility, and now it has come back with extra work done. For some reason they messed with my LCD (screen was working fine before BIOS flash fail) and now all blacks/darks are coming out RED.







What a JOKE.

[fostert]

Wow...$300 to trade one problem for another? Way to go Asus. Brutal.

Sounds like they unplugged the LCD screen (perhaps during disassembly to get at the BIOS chip) and later replugged it in improperly, with one or more of the pins that control the blue channel not making contact anymore? Just a guess, but you could open 'er up and reseat the screen cable yourself: that may fix it. Not like opening it up would void your non-existant warranty, and even if it was on warranty, it sounds like sending it to ASUS would just encourage even more problems...

Lets hope it was just bounced around in shipping and that it left ASUS' shop in a working condition...otherwise this is inexcusable.