How to undo a BIOS Upgrade

[mrsteve2007]

I did a recommended bios upgrade from HP for a K8S-LA motherboard.

Now no matter what I do my computer freezes. What can I do to uninstall this?

Evidently my media PC model Mll60N must not have this motherboard

Thanks HP, I am totally down

[Mister_Do]

Hi mrsteve2007,

I do believe you have the right motherboard, but I think something must have went wrong based on the backup you tried performing previously. See my reply to your other thread for instructions on clearing the CMOS.

If you are able to get into your BIOS now though, you can reset the default settings from there. Here are some instructions to help with this: HP Desktop PCs - BIOS Setup Utility Information and Menu Options

Let us know how it goes.

[mrsteve2007]

Something I did not mention. On the last part of the instructions you sent me for updating the BIOS link. I did go into my cmoss and loaded defaults but this did not help anything.

I will be working now on re-setting the cmos and bios as your documentation recommends and will let you know how it works.

[mrsteve2007]

After doing the steps of clearing the cmos and setting the bios back to default we have a new err.

After I start in system recovery my new err is as fallows:

"The file dmboot.sys is corrupt"

Any answers are really appreciated. This computer is really giving me a headache!

[mrsteve2007]

Well after doing the Cmos and Bios fixes. I get the big bad blue screen saying:

Windows has detected a problem and has shut down.

STOP: 0x00000050 ( oxe117Foo,ox00000000,ox8085E11B,ox00000001)

Blue screen now no matter what I do, totally down.

Can anyone help?

[ibfrenchy]

Mr Steve

the DMBoot.sys for for dynamic volumes. Have you added any hard drives or made any changes recently to disk management? do you have RAID?

If you did then you may have had to make some changes to the settings in BIOS away from the defaults and that could cause you not to be able to boot.

Can you get into BIOS? if you can then it isn't corrupted, it is then probably just some settings.

bill

[ibfrenchy]

Just saw your other post on stop error 05

if you've made changes to your hardware settings (added a hard drive, turned on RAID, etc) you may be having a problem based on changing back to default settings.

Here is a reference on a vista Based pc with that stop error from microsoft.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/939720

in an extreme case I did find this article from microsoft that says this could actually be a virus, but...I wouldn't go there just yet...lets look at the hardware changes first...but here is the link

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/903251

bill

[mrsteve2007]

Thank you for your help. My problem with your advice is that this is a XP machine.

Do you know of a hot fix for an "XP" software machine?

[mrsteve2007]

I have mae no hardware changes. Everything is factory. It all started when I kept getting a blue screen every once in a while and I did a complete system Recovery.

Bad Idea. This is an XP media Center machine about 5 years old.

The computer worked fine for what I was doing. Hate to spend the money for buying a new machine for  the same thing.

[RasterBlaster]

Mr Steve 2007,

Based on what I have read, if you want to continue troubleshooting, I would try the following things:

1) Unplug the PC, open it up,. and clean out any dust bunnies that have colected around the fan areas - especially the processor. You mentioned that this whole mess started because you did a recovery due to intermittent problems. Not saying there is a lot of dirt inside, this is just something you have to do before doing anything else. If there is dust clogging the vents - especially underneath the processor fan, then there isn't much point in going further because even if you recover system back to the way it was, the processor might be damaged and more likely to blue-screen and freeze in the future.

2) Can you open the BIOS screen as ibfrenchy asks? If so, then this is a slightly better sign that you can fix this using a system recovery. If you cannot get into the BIOS Setup Utility, then some serious troubleshooting is needed - installing the 315.rom file from SP26627 from a startup disc created from another PC.

3) Attempt a recovery from the hard drive, F10 after turning it on. From what I've read, you are getting a blue screen and Stop code.

4) Attempt a recovery from recovery discs. Same error? Different error? Does it work? If your recovery discs are lost or bad, then you can either try to find a set over the Internet or from HP or you can install a full version of XP from Microsoft... if you happen to have a set of discs lying around.

5) Lastly, if I had recovery discs, I would use an old 98/ME startup to get to a command prompt and prep the HD using debug script. Then, after the HD was prepped, I would try the recovery discs again.

These things I mention are things I do when I am trying to save a computer. If a computer that has been around a while is working good for years, but then starts to freeze or blue screen over time, that is generally an indicator that an internal part is overheating or failing.

Other things to note...

• I never update the BIOS unless the BIOS update addresses a problem I am having. And when I do update the BIOS - I sweat and pray when the computer is restarting.
• I've done about a hundred HP system recoveries, most from the HD - I've only had 1 fail.

I do wish you well. I hope you get it fixed or at least get to use some of the parts in a new PC.