BIOS update screwed up

[Salvador Freemanson]

Hello,

Someone pressed the power button on a Toshiba L300D laptop while the
Bios was updating.
Now we have an expensive brick.
I gather that some special jig is needed to re-flash the bios.
If that is so, or is it something I can do myself?
If not, anyone have any recommendations for a company that can do this?
Preferably in North West London area.
Thanks

[BillW50]

In news:4af7384c$0$21123$426a...@news.free.fr,
Salvador Freemanson typed on Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:29:48 +0100:

Well some BIOS protects a small bit of code to reflash the BIOS just in
case something like this happens. How and if this can work depends on
the BIOS. But what you can try is the BIOS code on a floppy or a flash
drive (FAT16 only) and press F2 at boot. If that doesn't work, try F3,
etc.

Otherwise yes the BIOS can be reprogrammed. Although it has to be
de-soldered, removed, and reprogrammed. The cost for this is 100 bucks
and more. I would think one would be better buying a working motherboard
off of eBay or something would be a better plan if you really like the
machine.

--
Bill
Gateway MX6124 ('06 era) - Windows XP SP2

[Barry Watzman]

According to my service documentation, the recovery procedure requires a
special "service" BIOS floppy diskette and an "external floppy disk
drive" (it's not clear if this is USB or PC Card (Toshiba has and
sometimes uses a PC Card external floppy drive)). The process for
initiating recovery bios reflash is to hold down the F12 key while
turning the power on. You can try this with a standard "user" bios
update floppy and a USB floppy drive, it might work, but no guarantees.
The service documentation does warn that a power failure during a bios
flash can result in a unit that is "non-recoverable".