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Questions & Answers about BIOS + our BIOS-Repair-Service
General BIOS-Chip Information
What is the BIOS?
How does the BIOS-Chip look?
Where can i find the BIOS-Chip on my Mainboard?
Where can i find Informations about BIOS-Chip-Type and Manufacturer?
BIOS-Chip De-/Installation
What must I consider during the BIOS-Chip-Deinstallation?
What must I consider during the BIOS-Chip-Installation?
Our Repair-Service
Cash, Remittance, or PayPal?
What must I consider during the dispatch?
Is every Chip-Repair successful?
How much time requires the repair?
Which informations are needed to send my chip to BIOSFLASH?
What is to be considered with the binary BIOS-Update file?
Must a Substitute- or Reserve-Chip be exactly the same model?
The repaired Chip is back, but it doesn't work?
Short for Basic Input-Output System; this is a chip (or set of chips) in your computer
that controls how your computer communicates with some of the basic hardware componentes
in your system, such as the keyboard, floppy drive, and hard disk. In newer computers, the
BIOS is also what supports Plug-&-Play. A buggy or incompatible BIOS is a common cause
of problems encountered when upgrading to a new version of Windows.
If the BIOS detects an Hardware-Error, the BIOS gives out a special Error Message and/or
special beep-tones.
There are 3 different Chip-Designs:
The exact chip position could be various between different mainboard-types.
In most cases you will find a chip which has a colored label (e.g. AMI, AWARD).
You can find it (see Picture) very often at the border of your Mainboard underneath
the ISA/PCI/AGP-Slots. Another Position, mostly by PLCC-Chips, is on top of the
ISA/PCI/AGP-Slots, or nearby the CMOS-Battery.
First, you have to remove any sticker from the BIOS-Chip, because all information
are standing directly on the topside of the chip. Many Manufacturers placed their
Company-Logo instead of their Company-Name on the Chip. Beside the logo/name you can
find the real Chip-Type(e.g.for WINBOND = W29C020, ATMEL = AT49F020, etc.)
For our customers, we offer a (partial) List of all supported Chip-Types and the corresponding Manufacturer-Logos on one of our websites.
Make sure that you unplug your power supply! Before removing the BIOS-Chip, prevent your PC components from Static Electricity! I propose to use a special tool to remove the BIOS-Chip.
You can order/buy these special tools here.
Always the same: Make sure that you unplug your power supply! Before removing the
BIOS-Chip, prevent your PC components for Static Electricity!
PLCC:
The PLCC-Chip and his Socket have a marked position on one of their corners.
DIL:
The DIL-Chip and his Socket have a marked position, on one of their short sides.
Be carefull, a wrong inserting could damage the Chip and/or the Mainboard!
Cash
Sending Cash inside your Delivery is fast, but not very secure.
My Tip: crease the bank notes to smaller pieces and put Aluminium-Foil around it.
After that, fix it on a piece of paper with adhesive tape.
Remittance
Sending Money by remittance is slow, but secure.
Attention! A bank transfer from outside Germany is very expensive (high fees) and you
have to add the fees to the normal costs! Secondly it takes a lot of time until the money
is on our account (up to 1 week). First, if your money is on our account, we will send
your chip back to your address.
PayPal
Another good type of payment is PayPal.
It's fast, secure and you can pay with your credit card (AmEx, Visa, Mastercard) onto our
verified PayPal-account.
POD - Pay on delivery
(only inside Germany!)
You can also pay per POD, but it's very expensive and only for german customers!
Please don't send us chips in boxes or other protection-cases, which are higher
than 10-12mm. We try to keep our prizes for distributions low and using the german
Deutsche Post parcel-format (l=353mm, w=250mm, h=20mm). So, we can't send any chip-boxes,
which are higher than 10-12mm, back to your address.
Protect your Chip: press the chip into a piece of polystyrene and wrap aluminum foil around it:
Don't use foam without a hard case around it, because it's too soft and your chip could get damaged.
Stick all (Diskette, Cash and Chip) onto a piece of paper, because if your dilivery would
be damaged (throw open), small parts could fall out.
In most cases: YES. By wrong BIOS-Updates, CIH-Virus, Power failure, or if the PC hangs
while updating. But, if you have bought a used Mainboard and the first Boot shows a blank/black screen,
it don't must be the BIOS-Chip. It could be every part of your Hardware. Please contact
first the Mainboard-Seller.
At least, it could be that the Chip is defective and must be replaced. (see also her: The repaired Chip is back, but it doesn't work?)
We are using 3 Industrial-Multi-Programmer. If you have send us the cash inside your
delivery, we often do the Back-Shipment on the same arrival day.
Remember: after your payment has arrived us, we'll send you, as soon as we can, the
re-programmed chip back to your address.
- Chip manufacturer, Chip type, Design (PLCC-32 or DIL)
- Mainboard type and manufacturer (incl. Revisionsnumber, if known?)
- the excact Filename of your BIOS-Update
- Address
- Email-Address
Use only Updates directly from your Mainboard-Manufacturer, or if you've bought a
complete PC by Dell, IBM, Compaq... get it from them. You can find a List of all
Mainboard-Manufacturers by www.wimsbios.com,
or by using a search engine like www.google.com
with the following keywords: "Mainboardtype + Mainboardmanufacturer + Homepage".
The File Extensions could be different, e.g. *.awd, *.bin, *.rom, or only a number. File
extensions with *.exe, *.zip oder *.rar, are compressed BIOS-Update files. You can decompress
an *.exe-file with a doubleclick. *.zip and *.rar files could be decompressed by programs like
www.winzip.com or www.winrar.com.
The Filesize of the decompressed binary BIOS-Update must be the same as the size of your Chip:
128KByte (1 MBit)
256KByte (2 MBit)
512KByte (4 MBit)
1024KByte (8MBit)
We don't need any Flashprogram (phlash.exe, awdflash.exe, etc.) to reprogram your chip !
No. Many other Chip-Manufacturers have identically constructed Chip-Types in their
assortment. We are using some lists, called "Cross Reference Lists", which were created
by some Chip-Manufacturers.
This could be one of the following reasons:
- The BIOS-Updatefile was the wrong one
- The Mainboard has a different Revision number
- The BIOS-Updatefile was damaged while Download, Copy, Decompress
- The BIOS-Updatefile on the Mainboard-Manufacturer Website is defective
- The Mainboard is defective
- The Chip was wrong inserted
- The CMOS-Settings were not extinguished
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