N
netsniper
I recently have been having a problem with my motherboard.
Either when in Windows/Linux, I would always get some sort of
corruption issues that caused my computer to
halt/fail/segfault/shutdown. Mainly this happened during
massively intensive CPU/Memory operations such as compiling
large volumes of source code. My first thought was the memory,
so I ran memtest86+ v1.20 on both sticks. The program only gave
me errors in the 100-300 range on test #5. All other tests
passes successfully. The program only shows the first few
errors on the screen, but it seems that the low memory portions
were afected (0.7 MB - ? MB). This lead me to believe that I
had encountered some sot of BIOS corruption issue. I first
started noticing this about 3 months ago when I installed
QuickTime 6 within windows xp, obtained from a non-verifiable
source.
It would seem that I may have encountered a BIOS virus/parasite,
but I had not heard of many people encountering them. I know
that they do exist, and in fact, are discussed in detail in a
security book written by Greg Hoglund. He talks about how to
change code within the BIOS to hijack computer operations. The
difficulty of this should be that all BIOS code/operation is
different from board to board. Every PC user may have some
differing type of chipset/hardware/mobo/bios, and thus the code
to acess these devices would be different. However, there must
be some general underlying operation that is the same throughout
ALL BIOS on PC x86 architectures in recent history. Thus, it
may be possible to write a UNIVERSAL BIOS parasite that can
hijack a computer, and worse yet, modify the internal code to
prevent a BIOS flash/update that would essentially kill the
parasite. I believe I may have encountered such a thing,
although I may be completely wrong.
I have been in the computer scene a while now, and have never
encountered a bad BIOS flash in the hundreds of times I have
done them. For the first time ever, yesterday my luck ran out.
I tried flashing my Asus A7M266 mobo using the standard Asus
windows based flash utility and the latest beta BIOS 1008.2b -
and this was the wrong move by far. It may just be that the win
flashing utility was bad, but nevertheless, I am left with a
dead board that powers up and does NOTHING! WHat happened
during the flash process was rather odd though. It first backed
up the old BIOS, then erased the chip, and attempted to flash
the new beta bios. The odd thing was that during the erasing of
the BIOS (the second step), the mouse and computer were very
slow to react to my actions. It only took about 15 seconds, but
I had never seen this before. I usually do DOS based flashes,
but this utility was recommended by Asus via their website.
When it got to the third step, it failed to flash the bios with
the new one. Thus, the chip had been erased and now nothing was
on it to boot the computer after I shut it down rather naively.
In the end, I hav a dead BIOS.
My question is, what can anyone recommened to get this thing
back up and running? This BIOS chip is an EON EN29F002N
distributed by Phoenix/Award. I have thought about building a
programmer to access it from my laptop, but this may be more
work than necessary. Asus offers a reflash service for only $5
+ shipping, or replacement for $25. I have heard that they take
weeks to get the chip back however :-( I need this issue
resolved ASAP as my laptop is not for home use really, so any
suggestions are greatly appreciated. Also, if anyone could
reprogram this for me or get me a new BIOS quickly for a
moderate fee - I WOULD GLADLY PAY IT!! Please let me hear your
input...
netsniper
Either when in Windows/Linux, I would always get some sort of
corruption issues that caused my computer to
halt/fail/segfault/shutdown. Mainly this happened during
massively intensive CPU/Memory operations such as compiling
large volumes of source code. My first thought was the memory,
so I ran memtest86+ v1.20 on both sticks. The program only gave
me errors in the 100-300 range on test #5. All other tests
passes successfully. The program only shows the first few
errors on the screen, but it seems that the low memory portions
were afected (0.7 MB - ? MB). This lead me to believe that I
had encountered some sot of BIOS corruption issue. I first
started noticing this about 3 months ago when I installed
QuickTime 6 within windows xp, obtained from a non-verifiable
source.
It would seem that I may have encountered a BIOS virus/parasite,
but I had not heard of many people encountering them. I know
that they do exist, and in fact, are discussed in detail in a
security book written by Greg Hoglund. He talks about how to
change code within the BIOS to hijack computer operations. The
difficulty of this should be that all BIOS code/operation is
different from board to board. Every PC user may have some
differing type of chipset/hardware/mobo/bios, and thus the code
to acess these devices would be different. However, there must
be some general underlying operation that is the same throughout
ALL BIOS on PC x86 architectures in recent history. Thus, it
may be possible to write a UNIVERSAL BIOS parasite that can
hijack a computer, and worse yet, modify the internal code to
prevent a BIOS flash/update that would essentially kill the
parasite. I believe I may have encountered such a thing,
although I may be completely wrong.
I have been in the computer scene a while now, and have never
encountered a bad BIOS flash in the hundreds of times I have
done them. For the first time ever, yesterday my luck ran out.
I tried flashing my Asus A7M266 mobo using the standard Asus
windows based flash utility and the latest beta BIOS 1008.2b -
and this was the wrong move by far. It may just be that the win
flashing utility was bad, but nevertheless, I am left with a
dead board that powers up and does NOTHING! WHat happened
during the flash process was rather odd though. It first backed
up the old BIOS, then erased the chip, and attempted to flash
the new beta bios. The odd thing was that during the erasing of
the BIOS (the second step), the mouse and computer were very
slow to react to my actions. It only took about 15 seconds, but
I had never seen this before. I usually do DOS based flashes,
but this utility was recommended by Asus via their website.
When it got to the third step, it failed to flash the bios with
the new one. Thus, the chip had been erased and now nothing was
on it to boot the computer after I shut it down rather naively.
In the end, I hav a dead BIOS.
My question is, what can anyone recommened to get this thing
back up and running? This BIOS chip is an EON EN29F002N
distributed by Phoenix/Award. I have thought about building a
programmer to access it from my laptop, but this may be more
work than necessary. Asus offers a reflash service for only $5
+ shipping, or replacement for $25. I have heard that they take
weeks to get the chip back however :-( I need this issue
resolved ASAP as my laptop is not for home use really, so any
suggestions are greatly appreciated. Also, if anyone could
reprogram this for me or get me a new BIOS quickly for a
moderate fee - I WOULD GLADLY PAY IT!! Please let me hear your
input...
netsniper