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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?"
You should name the companies.
I have this issue, too. But this is with Fedora 18 software (yeah, but it's the same idea).
It's like whack-a-mole, the update fixes one thing, but breaks several others. I'd say, unless there's
a real reason to upgrade, especially on legacy equipment, don't.
I was on the phone with Cisco help desk regarding a problem with my wireless router. They told me to upgrade my BIOS. As they (2 help desk people) were on the line I flashed the BIOS. The BIOS failed and bricked the router. They told me to call another Cisco number and the person there refused to replace the unit. It took me a long time to forgive Cisco on that one.
I found updating a motherboard's BIOS from Windows is as safe as Russian roulette. I found most motherboards have a SPI bus connector. You can make a parallel port to SPI adapter and save a bad flash.
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.
http://whatif.xkcd.com/16/
Name the products, which will of course also tell us the companies. However, it is very hard to evaluate this in general terms. A flash operation can always go wrong. If the updated code expliclitly recommended by the vendor was in fact incompatible, then I think they are at fault to some extent even for out-of-warranty hardware. But that's the only case.
I never made a brick by flashing the BIOS but I never solved a problem that way either. It was always a malfunctioning chip on the board that the BIOS can't solve.
Don't buy hardware that can be bricked by flashing the BIOS. In this modern day and age there's just no reason for it, especially not for a price anyone would call "expensive".
Dual BIOS setups are ideal, but the ability to backup the current BIOS in case it needs to be rolled back is a must reguardless.
My
I generally exercise some degree of distrust towards computer manufacturer recommendations when my product is no longer under warranty and their legal team likely has them relatively well protected against your situation, but I'd definitely name names. Send a note to the Consumerist, find a few execs and contact them directly. It may be legal, but it's a dishonest approach for those companies to take. It doesn't cost you much time and energy to bring unwanted attention to the companies and that attention is sometimes enough to suddenly get your components replaced. It won't cause systematic change, but at least you're better off.
Not one to miss an opportunity for a car analogy: if a critical recall fix bricked your ride, I think most everyone would agree it is the manufacturer's responsibility to make things right even if the vehicle is out of warranty. Of course, there's obviously more regulation involved and a more direct correlation to physical safety in the case of cars (i.e., you are putting yourself at risk of bodily harm if you choose to disregard the recall fix).
It's been almost 4 years since I built my last box. I'm planning on building another desktop this summer and would like to know who to avoid as I'm intending to purchase a motherboot that's supported by coreboot so I don't have to deal with UEFI. If there's a motherboard vendor doing evil stuff and they're listed I would like to avoid them if I can. Here's the link for supported motherboards: http://www.coreboot.org/Supported_Motherboards
I can't say hundreds, but yeah, I've flashed a bunch of stuff without bricking. Most of it was Apple kit, though.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
If it is working, then an "upgrade" cannot make it better. It can only be the same or worse.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It's you. I've flashed firmwares of hundreds of devices - motherboards, phones, video cards, embedded systems, routers, etc, and I have never once had one of them brick.
That's not a fair statement, because the specific devices and firmware versions have not yet been stated, so your statement is completely based on an assumption based solely on your experiences, which may nor may not have any relevance to this hardware in question. Thus what you're doing is known as "blaming the victim".
Why are you flashing these devices?
The only "critical" firmware upgrade is one which will - or at least has a fighting chance of - fixing an issue you are actively experiencing.
... and solder a socket in?
I have. It happens. It wasn't a true brick as I was able to pull out some incompatable hardware (with the new bios rev) and get it to boot, but I couldn't downgrade either, so I was stuck without that piece of hardware until it got fixed. If I had been your average user, however, and did not dare open the case, it would have been effectively bricked. Then again, your average user never upgrades their bios.
Whenever I had to upgrade a BIOS or firmware, it was usually on a brand new system or only a few months later for some recent issue. When equipement is out of warranty, you need to take that into account. What was important enough that required you to upgrade the BIOS?
As a technician working on site for various clients, I would warn the clients of potential problems every single time. If I had to update a motherboard BIOS to fix a problem, I would tell them that if the update fail, the system woouldn't boot and this could delay their operation. If the motherboard wasn't under warranty anymore, I would tell them that they would need to replace it. If the system was too old, I would suggest that they forget the risky procedure and consider buying a new server. It's all relative to the client and the problem, but you need to cover your base so that they are the one making the decision and taking responsibility for it.
Since you listed the update as "critical", you need to balance the pros and cons of doing this type of update. While updating the OS is a requirement against vulnerabilities, updating a BIOS isn't like that(most of the time). Sometime, you just need to tell the boss, "listen, if we don't update the firmware, it's possible that we'll get that bug that will destroy our data, and if we update the firmware, it's possible that we'll get some other problem, I suggest "this" and "this" but you need to be aware of the risks."
I think it's best if the original author would please name the particular products.
You should flash new stuff out of the box as they can be quite behind.
A Crucial consumer SSD (yeah I know, not a CPU) stopped, instantaneously.
Answer from Crucial: "Update Firmware". Updating involved the consumer understanding how to use cryptic commands in various states of the pre-boot process on a 2nd machine running Windows with wording no consumer would have ever likely understood and then used in a command line.
Companies who sell things like this without having adequate software and instructions do not DESERVE TO BE SUPPORTED by consumers.
I have never had a problem since switching to using only Intel boards with Intel bios. The upgrade process usually goes quite well (I've probably flashed 100 or so Intel boards over the past 3 or 4 years) and if there is ever a problem, it automatically rolls the changes back. Out of that 100 or so bios flashes, 0 have been bricked. That being said, when it comes to consumer grade boards, especially when they're out of warranty, I just assume I'm on my own and if something like that happens, its off to EBay or Craigslist.
Thus what you're doing is known as "blaming the victim"
I guess the question is, "so what"? Sometimes the victim of something is to blame.
I once had to move (hot swap) a socketed BIOS chip to a other board that also had a socketed BIOS to re flash after it failed and it worked when I put it back in to the first board.
Does the card / board have an bios recovery mode? I did that a few times on laptops that where not booting and was able to fix most of them.
I'm glad that every one of your flash updates has worked. I've performed MANY upgrades successfully. I follow the directions, make sure the power is good, etc. Success not the question here, but - what happens when one is advised of an upgrade (not just a casual ... look it's late) and the upgrade fails?
Name and shame away!! I want to know which companies to avoid in that respect!
Remember kids: What's right isn't as important as what's profitable.
Sockets are expensive and would add considerably to the height of the component. Everything is surface mount now.
If it is out of warranty, then of course you're the one at fault. Since it's out of warranty, it's on you to see what the firmware does and make the decision on whether or not to flash. Either way it's all on you to deal with the consequences.
You nearly always have the option of purchasing extended warranties for "critical" equipment. If it is really that critical, why didn't you replace it at the end of its warranty period?
I have a 1996 car. Sometimes things break or I want to alter something which requires modifications. Often, I turn to the service manual. If, while following the directions in it, something goes horrible wrong, I wouldn't even consider holding the manufacturer of the car responsible. That's what you should do too: deal with it. Take your loss, don't use outdated equipment or have it serviced/modified/upgraded by professionals that have insurance that covers these kinds of risks, which happens to be the single most important thing that makes professionals professionals.
0x or or snor perron?!
Is the first thing you really should; always try for everything. Except maybe flashing firmware if you have no way to unbrick a faulty flash (but it is still what you will probably have to do to fix anything major).
Them telling you this is not them making a mistake, and they cannot guarantee how old out of warranty hardware will react to anything.
Why were you inquiring about problems in the first place? Maybe in both instances your expensive hardware was already broken and was bricked not because the advise was bad or the firmware was bad, but because the hardware was already malfunctioning.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T500 brick that I made this way three months ago. I was running into a few weird Windows problems--everything was fine on Linux--and "upgrade the BIOS" was a stock troubleshooting suggestion. After a decade of happy Thinkpad ownership I didn't think this was risky. On the first reboot the update did something to fry the TPM chip. It worked fine before, never again afterward. Boots hung for about 10 minutes as the BIOS tried to talk to it, I stopped that only by disabling it there. And then the next week the computer stopped POST altogether. The laptop had been running fine for 3 years at that point. I've seen a few similar reports at the Lenovo forums; it's not just me. The only people who resolved this were still under warranty, the rest of us haven't considered it cost effective to pay for a fix.
I tried to jump two major point releases at once here, from 1.20 to 3.24. My guess is that QA wasn't done on this much of a jump at once. Maybe 1.X->2.X->3.X or some other two step sequence would have worked. The Thinkpads have been disappointing is several ways recently, so I can't really say this surprised me.
No, actually, the people who have issues with BIOS/firmware updates are in the vast minority. Updates don't remain on a support site for long if the update itself has an issue. The vast majority of "bricks" caused by firmware flashing are either the fault of the person doing it, or the hardware already had a failure somewhere that was exacerbated by the flash.
Considering that IT departments flash hundreds/thousands of systems regularly, the handful of gripes you see on forums are just that - a handful.
I have some Thinkpads around here and it seems there's a firmware update every few months. But if you read the 'what's new' it's usually something stupid like "Old version updated to support new model xxxxxx" which I don't even have. Or worse "Corrected typo in BIOS menu."
Before I flash anything I'd like to know why and under what scenario, if any, it's necessary.
If the bios update isn't security related and you aren't experiencing the described issue or condition I would likely avoid doing the upgrade entirely.
Why open yourself up to the risk?
If the only two times the "victim" flashed a bios he bricked a device I suspect a loose nut behind the keyboard.
That is not at all the case. BIOS/firmware/driver updates/upgrades can potentially do four things for a working system:
1) Add new features. Many products get new features as their life goes on. My desktop board, an Intel, has gotten a number of new BIOS features during its life. When you update the code that runs something, no surprise that code can add features.
2) Improve performance. Sometimes, a faster/more efficient way of doing something is discovered. It takes an update to make that happen. I remember a big one back in the day with 3com switches. A firmware update provided a major improvement in through put and CPU usage.
3) Fix a bug that you haven't hit yet, but could. This is why you'll see updates tagged as urgent. Just because you never hit a bug that got discovered, doesn't mean the bug isn't there. So you want to get it fixed, BEFORE you hit it. There have been firmware updates that fixed some nasty ones, like data corruption with SSDs. Some people never got hit, but that doesn't mean the update wasn't a good idea.
4) Security issues. Same deal as with the bugs, just a different kind of bug. If a security issue is discovered, it'll take a patch to fix it and the system will be working before the patch.
The "Don't fix it if it ain't broke," really is not a valid ideology for systems administration.
Many devices with a BIOS provide a way to do this. If the OEMs don't support such a scenario, then geez, shame on them.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Yeah, that's fair. But these devices aren't out of the box, they're out of warranty.
the basic issue is this... the vendors are pretending to support their slop, but don't. so let us all know who to avoid.
and you're right, BIOS should be removeable. alternatively, there should be an external-force component so even if the BIOS goes to Mars one-way, the flash can be reloaded through some sort of tool... say, a USB dongle... that could be standardized and put on the pegboard for $20.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Would you expect them to replace something that's out of warranty? Read their warranty terms, it probably says that once the warranty ends, under all circumstances so does their obligation to you. That's why manufacturers sell extended warranties/maintenance plans.
If the device isn't under warranty, why are you listening to their advice in the first place? You upgrade firmware at the manufacturers' instructions BECAUSE you need them to provide warranty support, not just for the hell of it. I'm not even sure why THEY would be willing to spend their time talking to YOU if your systems are no longer under warranty.
Only if you can PROVE that the new firmware was massively faulty. There are tons of variables involved in upgrading the firmware of an advanced system, and they can't anticipate all scenarios, or have the ability to know how well your equipment was maintained before you upgraded.
It could be that YOU didn't bother to read the release notes that have critical instructions about clearing some values before performing the firmware upgrade. It could be that your hardware was about to fail, and the firmware upgrade caused the first reboot in months or years. Or maybe the flash had stuck bits, and the firmware change had to write there, and just exposed the faulty hardware as a MORE visible problem. You were upgrading because of OTHER problems, right? How do you know the problem wasn't the hardware becoming faulty?
YOU bought the systems, as designed. You can't claim you were forced to buy a poorly designed system, or were forced to continue using it after the manufacturer would no longer extend the warranty on the device. Next time go find a system that has these components in sockets, and don't complain to us that it's more expensive, or isn't exactly what you wanted.
When dealing with hundreds or thousands of systems, any firmware upgrade is guaranteed to have issues on at least a few systems. So yes, I've seen lots of firmware upgrade issues, and dealt with them. But no, I've certainly never seen a firmware upgrade from equipment manufacturers that bricked ALL the devices we've appled them to.
Bricked systems are nearly a thing of the past. Decent motherboard manufacturers include dual BIOSes, or at least a minimal BIOS that'll allow re-flashing when a BIOS is corrupted.
Most of the time, there's some OEM command to restart the device, or load defaults, that gets your hardware back into a usable state. Sometimes the local system communications is hosed, but the network (web, IPMI) interface is still up, and allows firmware upgrades or other controls from the network. On occasion, a very, very small percentage of (old) equipment won't survive an update, even after trying everthing you've got. Then, you just have to write it off as any other hardware failure, because that's what it is.
For the most part, important systems are under warranty, and the OEM will replace faulty parts next day. If their firmware updates were breaking devices left and right, they'd be out one hell of a lot of money.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
There is a degree of truth in what you're saying. He does shoulder responsibility here.
On the other hand, what the vendors have done is childish, at best. They have suggested he do something to the hardware, they participated (wrote the update), and when the metaphorical window broke, they ran like miscreants. Their mothers should really give them a firm talking to and send them to apologize.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
The failure rate on many computer related things floats at some fraction of a percent. If you've only done a few hundred of them, it wouldn't surprise me that you haven't seen a BIOS failure. It's not that unlikely from a statistics standpoint, just like two bad updates in a row is unlikely--but it's surely happening to some unlucky soul.
I got a shipment of 500 motherboards once that turned out to need an update before they could be deployed, to add support for the CPUs purchased. A bit under 1% of those BIOS updates didn't work out and the boards had to be RMAd. It was less of a problem than ones that were DOA though, where the system wouldn't even boot far enough to do the update. (These were Asus board in 2003, and I dream of DOA rates this low now)
Yes, you should name the companies.
No, there's nothing else you can do about it.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
They really don't, unless the Internet can use it to put together a list of companies that actually take engineering seriously, and have a bulletproof firmware update procedure.
I've shipped dozens of devices to production that might need reflashing in the field. It's easy to create a reflash procedure that works reliably (meaning half a dozen times on one configuration) on the engineer's desk, and reliably (meaning several dozen times on several devices) in QA. It's very difficult to create a reflash procedure that works reliably on a million units in the field, in a million different configurations, in a million different locations. Especially when the product was built with barely sufficient FLASH for the normal runtime image, much less a duplicate image to revert to.
It's similar to coding - for anyone who's done any significant amounts of production 'C' code, you quickly realize that error handling ends up being three or four times as much code as the mainline code that solves the problem you're trying to solve. Now, try to handle an error after you've erased your runtime image in Flash. It's not easy.
Companies that don't spend the engineering effort to get this right end up with many bricks in the field. Companies that do spend the engineering time to get it right still end up with a few - it's kind of unavoidable in the current state of the art.
And the worms ate into his brain.
If a simple recovery procedure can fix the problem, it's not a brick.
Perhaps there is a way to re-flash it back to the older firmware?
who prays for Satan? Who in 18 centuries has had the humanity to pray for the 1 sinner that needed it most? ~Mark Twain
For your server grade stuff, sure.
But consider, at my work a standard desktop is under $400. We buy them by the thousand, so we get decent machines at cheap prices.
Let's just consider the flash chip. At $400/machine, you'd need a failure rate in excess of .25% to make putting that component in a socket be worth it. That's before figuring that if it takes $100 in labor to diagnose and repair, if it happens in year 4-5 it might not be worth it at all.
While I've flashed stuff at both home and work; I have to say I've done it far more often at home. At work stability is king, we don't really change components in the desktops, so no compatibility issues to crop up, thus no need to flash.
I don't read AC A human right
Logic would dictate that if the piece is no longer functioning as desired you flash anyways as replacement is inevitable.
In other words, stop being a whingey bitch, recognise the inevitable, make informed decisions, and accept responsibility for them.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Restore the backup. IBM and Asus ask you to save a copy of the previous BIOS before the upgrade and they also provide a restore utility.
Perhaps there is a way to re-flash it back to the older firmware?
Unfortunately - no. The system will not (complete) the post to get to the level of ability to flash. ALSO, Dell does not have previous version(s) available. (Note: I've already ordered ANOTHER replacement motherboard)
Just happened to me Upgrading my AsRock motherboard UEFI firmware stalled at "Processing Crashless..." How ironic is that Anyway a phone call to AsrockAmerica, they requested I email a copy of invoice which I got from NewEgg. Two days latter new bios chip in the mail And Bobs your uncle. Very pleased with the response. John PS it was on a Linux system and no one even chirped once about not supporting Linux.
Name the companies and the products.
Otherwise you risk being deemed a "whiny bitch"
or simply a pot-stirrer.
What good does this do without that information? Who can it help?
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
BIOS flashing shouldn't be that scary thing that might brick your computer. It's just software. Manufacturers should take the responsibility that their BIOS updates work.
After bricking three successive broadband routers using firmware upgrades recommended by their respective manufacturers, my position on firmware upgrades is simple: NEVER do them, unless you have nothing to lose (i.e. if your device is working so badly that you would need to replace it anyway).
It is bad design if their upgrade programs brick their devices against all recovery methods. I've worked for several companies as a firmware engineer and our products were not brickable. The bootloader is not customer flashable, everything else is. Several of my products were RAID controllers in competition with LSI. I would suggest shouting far and wide that a consumer upgrade procedure was capable of bricking their device. Even the small computers which use uboot and like-bootloaders can be field recovered using an inexpensive (under $50) bring-up device if the manufacturers so choose. Designs like graphics controllers should have a recovery method using a PC app which placed the executable into RAM and then the user forces the graphics card into a special boot mode which looks for the executable at a pre-defined address.
I've never worked on a PC motherboard main-CPU design but I would think that a good BIOS design should have an A-image and a B-image where you can not bootload the A-image from itself and vice-versa.
.. Blub falls right in the middle of the abstractness continuum. -- Paul Graham
I upgraded the BIOS, I think it had to do with turning on a virtual mode.
Bricked it like nobody's business. Nothing like a blank screen when you turn it on.
My previous desktop was easy to flash, and had a large enough flash chip that it actually kept the old image, and you could boot it so that it would recover. Unless, I'm guessing, that it was so bad that it couldn't do much. Makes me wonder. But it never bricked, and I never had an issue.
Bryan
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.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
I'm too far down for this comment to really matter, but in general, it is possible to unbrick a failed BIOS flash. The reason is that already for some time all (or maybe almost all) manufacturers have two parts of the BIOS - one that gets updated, and a second part that never does, or maybe can't. The second part (actually it is the first), only has very rudimentary software. It can read floppy disks, but not much more than that. The idea is exactly that you can recover from a failed flash.
That means that to recover, you need to get the right program into a floppy, with the right BIOS on it. You then boot into this special flash mode, which often means pressing some key combination. I've done it on an LE1700 that I bought of e-bay, and I'm pretty sure you can do it on almost any computer.
In some more modern BIOSes you don't need a floppy, but can do it with a USB stick.
I'm too lazy to do a thorough search for the exact procedure, but here are two good links that I found:
http://www.mydellmini.com/forum/dell-mini-10v/18080-how-unbrick-mini-10v-using-floppy-drive.html (this will work also on other computers, I think)
http://www.wikihow.com/Reflash-BIOS
On top of that make an internet research about the upgrade.
Honestly: if you are in a corporate environment there is no reason _inside_ to upgrade stuff, regardless what reason is given by the vendors, except in very rare cases. (E.g. girewalls etc. are protecting you, so how should a security flaw _inside_ be a _serious_ problem?)
With inside I mean the computers/hardware inside of your corporate network.
What I want to say: judge if an upgrade is so serious you need to install it immediately.
Make a google/internet research what others say about it. If possible wait until you get enough google hits. Likely you only get hits if something went bad with the upgrade. So chose your timeframe.
German companies, I mean big ones, but its true for smaller ones as well, e.g. never upgrade to a new Windows version until the one they are currently running is _failing_ (not no longer supported, but: _failing_).
Of course this approach does not work, e.g. if a BIOS or firmware upgrade needs to be done for your gateways (routers to the outside) or similar.
In such cases obviously you need a backup. A replacement router from a different vendor, another RAID controller or another set of harddrives, what ever you do.
I remember an online game where suddenly there was a new TeamSpeak client available. Lots of people upgraded, with the result that the server rejected the connections, as the server was old and outdated. I keep my TS client as it is and only upgrade when the server rejects me because my client is to old (and I install the new version into a new folder so I can run both at the same time)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I believe that to be an inaccurate assessment.
Example, was an upgrade that failed. I then removed the chip to flash it on a USB powered flashing device. I could see the chip, I could see the file, I could "write" the file - but every attempt to do so yielded a blank chip when I attempted to read the finished product.
I gave up, and wrote the original BIOS back to the chip, but that required two attempts to do so.
I don't understand the process or the chips well enough to even try to explain why, but it happened. Maybe it's as simple a thing as, the new BIOS was a few bytes to big to fit onto the chip. Maybe the chip was faulty in some way, but passed QC inspection. Maybe electricity behaves differently in my county. I don't know, but flashes don't always work right.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
When doing work on machines that are out of support (and the PowerEdge 1950 is old hardware), you take your chances, that's all you can do.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
I mean, don't do the BIOS upgrade. Is this a trick question?
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
This particular motherboard did not allow downgrades, asshole. I had a lower version firmware but the in-bios utility, the windows flasher, and even the dos flasher refused to do it. As I understand, it's increasingly common with uefi boards (my last two).
Just curious, what do you do when all the vendors in an area have screwed you over? Do without critical hardware?
I flashed hundreds of BIOS in my lifetime, never once had this broke something.
I'm an IT pro, and I have flashed thousands of devices in my career. Hundreds of MB'a and countless HDs, cd-roms, RAID controllers, and amd network devices like WAPs. The only time I have bricked a device is when I lost power in the process. Even then, I was able to recover the device with some googling.
Maybe I've been lucky or maybe just buy H/W from good manufactures like Cisco, Dell, and HP.
First off, I wasn't advised to do a BIOS update. I was updating the BIOS just to have an updated BIOS. In the middle of the update process the laptop power cut out. I was pretty certain that I had bricked it. I called Toshiba and they agreed that yes I had bricked it. There was nothing to be done they said except buy a new motherboard for the laptop which is about the same price as buying a new laptop. I didn't accept that as a final answer.
After some panicked googling I came across info on an "emergency" way to flash the BIOS. It involved having the BIOS file on a thumbdrive and pressing some key combo on boot up. That worked, which was great. What really tees me off is that Toshiba support didn't tell me about this alternative way to flash the BIOS. I doubt that they were unaware of it.
...unless you're experiencing a problem expressly fixed by a BIOS patch - do NOT update your BIOS.
As much as I like to upgrade like the next guy - I've experienced far more problems than fixes with most bios updates. The only time I update now is when they specifically fix a problem I'm having.
In the case of your 'really expensive' stuff or essential hardware - if it's just a security patch - get a nice $50 router with firewall and plug your device into that. No use risking or destroying a piece of essential hardware on a BIOS update that is ALWAYS a risky operation.
And shame them. Shame them publicly on reviews and on their forums. Be courteous by not using foul language or being irate - but state the facts and how they treated you. If they don't realize this is super-bad PR, then these guys likely don't deserve your business.
What more could be said? You risk bricking the device, and having the manufacturer say just that.
Don't upgrade firmware yourself out of warranty, unless you have a proven recovery procedure, that you are prepared to follow.
Unless you are a hacker, and prepared to take extreme measures, such as leveraging an EEPROM programmer to restore the original image..
Have a manufacturer authorized service provider handle the upgrade, and make sure you transfer a risk of failure to them, or don't do it.
If a manufacturer suggests you upgrade... which is unusual, usually they won't provide support to customers out of warranty -- if they do, make sure and get it in writing, and get a promise in writing that they will provide a replacement if the upgrade breaks it.
Or else... pay the manufacturer for out-of-warranty service, and send in the unit.
It's certainly not reasonable to be expecting support, for free, after expiration of the support, though. The manufacturer is not in the wrong refusing to spend money, that wasn't part of the warranty or expected cost of their sale of the hardware to you.
Don't argue with Dogma. Those that believe it don't listen and nobody else cares.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
A Jackass like the first AC with the whole 'blaming the victim' dogma?
The key question remains, is he a victim of his own incompetence, a malicious company or an 'act of god' (shit happens). Your assumptions aren't valid ether.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I basically agree with you. However, if they are going to give the advice out to idiots, they really should make it idiot proof
A simple way to do this is a 2 stage BIOS with a starter PROM that does VERY minimal duty so i'ts hard to screw up. The starter PROM does only TWO things. 1. It tests one specific on-board USB port for a device with a specific code being present. If present, it will check for a partition containing a checksummed image that is not the same as the one already present. If the checksum validates, it will use that image to perform a re-flash maybe followed by a hard reboot. 2. Jump to the flash entry point.
Manufacturer provides the image file with integrated checksum, and an optional utility program for lamers to use that wipes the USB MBR, makes one partition the size of the file, and copies the file to that partition. If they want to prevent others from making these, they encrypt the image or checksum with something the first state boot PROM can decrypt.
The idea is an idiot can download the new image file and the USB transfer program. The idiot runs the program tells it where the file was stored (this may be hard for some idiots). When USB is complete, plug USB into the special on-board port (can be extended out to the back on some machines), and hard boot (reset or power cycle). It gets automatically flashed. If it fails, do over. Idiot may need a 2nd computer if yet another file needs to be used.
A smarter machine will have 2 flash spaces to keep a backup.
Manufacturers need to support idiots as those are now their largest customer base.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Well, I've flashed bioses, firmwares and roms for 20 years, and never once bricked anything. Maybe that's because I usually read the instructions carefully and follow them religiously. I say this is the case of RTFM.
Name the companies, they screwed you over.
I never do firmware or bios upgrades unless there is a very, very good reason. These things have a habit of bricking equipment.
I bought a bottom-end vostro laptop for personal use, but since it's a "business" computer it had next-business-day warranty.
Sure enough, I had a little keyboard glitch and called it in and they overnighted a new keyboard to my city and the next day a tech showed up to install it. It was pretty sweet.
I went through this back when I was in high school. Compaq insisted that a BIOS update for my laptop would resolve an issue I was having with the PCMCIA slot under Windows 2000. The BIOS update bricked the motherboard, and the BIOS recovery procedures did not work. They then washed their hands of the problem because the laptop was out of warranty. To say that I was livid would be a gross understatement...at sixteen years old I didn't have the means to run out and buy a replacement. Laptops still cost $1200 at a minimum back then, and even ebaying an old used laptop would have cost $700+. I considered taking the issue to local media so that I could get some sort of response from Compaq, but ultimately decided it wasn't worth the effort (plus, you know, I was sixteen, so I figured I wasn't going to be taken seriously).
This has happened to me.
My GPS, a TomTom Via 220 (I think that's the model) ... well, I got an email from TomTom saying that there was a MANDATORY SOFTWARE UPDATE. They warned that the gps would stop working a week later if the flash wasn't done.
I followed all of the instructions to the letter, including making sure it was fully charged. Then I had an expensive brick. The thing won't boot any more, it's totally useless. Their response? Sorry, out of warranty.
I feel violated.
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}";main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}
After bricking three successive broadband routers using firmware upgrades recommended by their respective manufacturers, my position on firmware upgrades is simple: NEVER do them, unless you have nothing to lose (i.e. if your device is working so badly that you would need to replace it anyway).
Isn't "the device working so badly that you need to replace it" pretty much the standard situation for broadband routers, whether or not you have the latest firmware?
http://blog.nexusuk.org
It's very simple: "Don't fix it if it ain't broken." Going beyond is an extra (unnecessary) risk.
Whether a slashdot editor having a few bad experiences with BIOS updates is worth a whole featured /. article, is another matter.
Bomarc: I am sorry to hear of your issues with your PowerEdge server and would like to discuss them with you. Please email me at dellcarespro@dell.com and I will take on your case.
How would the device know that there was a software update? Do TomTom have access to the stream of signals from the GPS satellites to all GPS devices, whether or not made by TomTom, and include a way to brick them too? What would happen if some non-US military power hacked into this communications channel through GPS signals and sent out a virus to all US military GPS devices turning them off? then the US military would be blind, and the Foreign Power (TM) could invade at will.
Or is there possibly some other communications channel into the device which TomTom intend using? In which case, just disable that channel. Then TomTom can't brick your device. "No communications channel" equals "no malware entry route."
What input does a GPS device need other than a GPS radio signal? Oh, and power (available from Chinese batteries at a store near you).
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
This model uses GPRS to get realtime traffic information. I am guessing that the format of this stream was changing, so they had to update firmware. Personally I decided to upgrade before the deadline. There is no way to disable the GPRS channel that I am aware of -- and I wanted to keep the traffic info, as it was extremely useful to me for avoiding frequent jams.
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}";main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}
Are you talking about a SatNav system, not a GPS system? A SatNav that uses GPS for it's positioning data and has some other junk related to cars and roads, and TomTom have broken that other stuff?
You can't disable the SatNav functions and retain the GPS functions? Yeuch - remind me to not get one of those, even if they're remaindered.
The SatNav my wife got me a few years ago was bloody atrocious too - it wouldn't output any of it's GPS information either, and it's maps were at least 20 years out of date in our area AFTER the "get updated maps" operation, and they wanted a 2 year (=£720) commitment to a subscription before they'd even accept bug reports for their maps. Still, it provides endless entertainment as the "deranged crack addict", which is about as much as one expects from such things. And it does get some roads right - you just have to know which ones are right. Which rather defeats the object of the exercise, doesn't it?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Because they made good motherboards, so I assumed that they also made good BIOS update software.
I was upgrading my mothers computer, and decided at the last minute to top it off with the latest BIOS. The manufacturer (a famous 3 letter name brand) offered not only the standard DOS bootable upgrade, but also an "In Windows" BIOS updater. And even though my experience and knowledge told me that this was EXTREMELY unlikely, I assumed that if they were offering it as the preferred method of doing a year old BIOS update, and since I couldn't find any posts either complaining about it, that they'd figured out how to do a BIOS upgrade from inside Windows.
BAD decision.
My first hint that the BIOS upgrade didn't take was that their verification program kept saying it didn't work. I tried loading both the old and new BIOS, but the final check always failed. I kept the computer on for three days knowing that if I reboot it, that it'd become a brick. And of-course, when I did finally reboot, it was a brick.
This really pissed me off because the thing was a really good computer, with several more years of life left in it.
I even considered buying a chip programmer, but the BIOS was surface mounted, and my desoldering skills are even worse than my soldering skills.
THINK! It's patriotic
Lesson (re)learned? "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
THINK! It's patriotic
GPRS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Packet_Radio_Service
It's the slowest kind of internet access I'm aware of. I believe WAP used to use GPRS for comms. It is really really slow.
Yeah, this is a satnav -- but these things are commonly referred to as gps units, even though they do more than that.
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}";main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}
I first started accessing the Internet with a 2400bps modem down a telephone line at 3 i nthe morning - to avoid blocking the line for the other people in the house. And paying £0.042/minute for that access. I'll go and get my Zimmer frame now.
Being commonly referred to as a GPS doesn't make it right to refer to them as GPS units. The common herd may do that, but this s Slashdot, a gathering place for self-proclaimed nerds who do know better.
I'm holding off from getting a satellite navigation tool to replace the one that was burgled in 2003, in part in anticipation of the installation of the Galileo system and the expansion of the GLONASS system. But I'm also careful about having such systems, because there are places where I've worked (and courted, and I expect to return to, for more work), where possession of such equipment is grounds for being charged with espionage, and nobody sane gives the police the slightest opportunity to detain you.
The wife got me a SatNav system for my birthday a few years ago. It's good in-car entertainment, fit for laughing at. For navigation ... well, I'm a geologist. I don't do "lost". There are always navigation clues, and you do read and memorise the map of where you're going before you go there. Don't you?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"