What To Do When an Advised BIOS Upgrade Is Bad?

Bomarc writes "Twice now I've been advised to 'flash the BIOS to the latest,' once by a (major) hard drive controller maker (RAID); once by an OEM (who listed the update as 'critical,' and has removed older versions of the BIOS). Both times, the update has bricked an expensive piece of equipment. Both times, the response after the failed flash was 'It's not our problem, it's out of warranty.' Given that they recommended / advised that the unit be upgraded, shouldn't they shoulder the responsibility of BIOS upgrade failure? Also, if their design had sockets rather than soldering on parts, one could R/R the faulty part (BIOS chip), rather than going to eBay and praying. Am I the only one that has experienced this type of problem? Have you been advised to upgrade a BIOS (firmware); and the upgrade bricked the part or system? If so, what did you do? Should I name the companies?"

Comments

What you're really asking...

[Let's All Be Chinese]

is what the legal status of their "recommendations" is and whether you ought to sue them.

The tried-and-true andwer to that is: Ask a lawyer. I'm quite sure it can and does swing either way depending on local laws and any number of details you haven't provided.

Don't fix it if it aint broke

[flyingfsck]

If it is working, then an "upgrade" cannot make it better. It can only be the same or worse.

Re:Yes

[Firethorn]

I don't mean to be a knob but I think the fault doesn't particularly lie with the vendor.

I view it differently. The vender advised the work. If I called up Toyota and asked advice about something for my 10 year old truck*, while it might be out of warranty if their advice resulted in major damage I think they should be liable for something.

Your advice seems to be along the lines of 'buy hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment every year to replace equipment that is still functional solely to keep the warranty up'.

That's not good for the company's wallet, the environment, etc...

*Not that old yet, but still

Re:Yes

[lightknight]

Wait, wait, wait. A BIOS flash should (almost) completely erase the BIOS, then reprogram it.

Are you telling me that some companies use incremental BIOS upgrades? And why?

This is particularly worrying to me, as I have a SuperMicro L8i SAS controller I just installed in my main machine, and LSI is apparently behind the chipset.

Re:Do a public service and let us know

[SCPRedMage]

Corporations are not people; they do not care about you, nor should you truly care about them.

The only thing corporations are concerned about are their bottom line; if doing something helps them profit, they'll do it. If doing something HURTS their bottom line (such as, oh, I don't know, paying taxes), they'll avoid doing it as best as they can.

Any example you might provide to prove otherwise is only an example of image control, a calculated effort to improve their standing in the eyes of their consumers.

Bottom line: report what corporations do. If it's bad, it'll help your fellow consumers avoid being screwed over. If it's good, it'll steer them towards companies that care enough about their image to not be total dickbags.

Good Samaritan Laws

[obtuse]

My main concern is this: If the manufacturer gets punished for failing to properly support out of warranty hardware, they'll just stop altogether. Too many manufacturers will already refuse to talk to you about out of warranty equipment.

Since they tried to help, I'd prefer not to see them punished for this mistake. Think of it like good samaritan laws: They protect a person who stops to offer aid to the injured, from being sued.

My other thought is that perhaps there was some hidden problem that something in the update triggered. Updates often have new functionality, or may write to memory not used before, so it isn't too hard to imagine them tickling an existing bug. For a car analogy, imagine you bought a used car from a friend and complained that it shook horribly at 75, but since your friend never went over 65 he never noticed when the tires and alignment deteriorated to that point.

Finally, I'm appalled that they don't make old firmware versions available. That would be the appropriate response to your problem. Hopefully you can find someone helpful who has the old firmware around, either inside or outside the companies. Definitely appropriate for people to be warned that these updates can cause problems.