[michael1985]

thank you fbyte. you're my hero. hehe

[fbyte]

Txs

glad it keeps helping bringing back to live dead minis. We should thank the guys at Phoenix for having that nice safe-guard method of flashing

[lemmingrun1]

Originally Posted by fbyte

if you don't want to play with the linux and dd, i found a windows version of the phoenix critdisk.bat tool that allows you to directly create a recovery flash disk using a usb stick (instead of the floppy)

the "trick" is that the boot in the recovery disk is kind of special, it loads the minidos.sys file which is the one that would execute the phflash16.exe and load the bios.wph.

Just run wincris.exe, leave the default values and press "start", it would create a bootable (recovery) usb disk.

I've add the latest a05 bios to the zip file, so it would give you the fx function keys (if it works)

i f*ing love you ! Its taking me days to fix this untill i descoverd this brill ! ! !

[discogen]

My Windows XP mini 9 bricked itself while playing an avi with vlc. Firefox was also open at the time.

First I got the blue screen. Then I rebooted. When I started playing the avi again it worked for about 5 minutes and then froze and the screen went black but the power light remained on.

I had to unplug it and remove the battery to get the power light to go off and to attempt a reboot. But once I plugged it back in I could only get a dead screen with the power light on.

I have tried the pendrive flash method with three different devices without success. Holding down fn+B while plugging it in does cause the power lights to flash white and orange, but hitting the power button at this point does not result in any lights turning on on the pendrives. I'm willing to try buying a usb floppy, but if the usb is not being accessed, then that would be pointless, right?

What I want to know is: should the mini 9 at least light up the pendrives if it is still capable of doing an external floppy bios flash?

Thanks for your help.

[fbyte]

Hi,

as far as I know, if your usb memory stick has some kind of activity leds, they should flash if it's getting power.
If they doesn't, it could be that the mobo is not booting at all, which could explain why it failed with the 3 different usb sticks.

hold fn+B , then connect the power plug, then press the power button.
wait a second and release all 3 keys (button=key )
If the post runs, you should see some led blinking in the USB stick.

If it doesn't, you can try removing the bios battery but you would need to open it up.

Still, for how the problem appeared (in the middle of a Windows session) it looks more like a hardware issue (maybe overheating) than a bios/corruption problem.

[discogen]

Thanks for the advice. I guess I'll try cracking it open and removing the battery. The warranty is already expired anyway.

[Jardan84]

Thanks guys for this great post. i though i was SOL until i came across this ..

[tesser]

I dont want to take over this topic but i have the same problem as the topic starter (mine was bricked by my son)

i have downloaded the software posted here in this topic but it fails to work for me my usb stick shows is computer along with my hdd but this software says i have not connected it ?

i have tried it by formating my stick to ntfs and fat32 both wont show

any ideas ?

i should point out im on win 7 32 bit

[fbyte]

Maybe is W7, you can try manually editing the CRISDISK.BAT file and try to create the disk from a cmd session.

1. open the CRISDISK.BAT and replace all the occurences of A: with F: (F: is you USB disk)
2. run the crisdisk.bat and say yes to everything, you should see something like this:

-----------------------------------------------------------

The Crisis Disk in drive F: is being formatted

-----------------------------------------------------------


Insert new disk for drive F:
and press ENTER when ready...
The type of the file system is FAT32.
QuickFormatting 1.44M
Invalid existing format.
This disk cannot be QuickFormatted.
Proceed with unconditional format (Y/N)? y
53 percent completed.

....
....
-----------------------------------------------------------

The necessary files are being copied to the
Crisis Disk

-----------------------------------------------------------


Copying the file "MINIDOS.SYS"
Copying the file "PHLASH16.EXE"
Copying the file "BIOS.WPH"

Press any key to continue . . .

It takes ages because is a normal format, but at the end, the disk "should" contain the same as if you build it using the WINCRIS.EXE tool.

[tangechel]

Originally Posted by fbyte

If you don't want to play with the Linux and dd, I found a Windows version of the Phoenix critdisk.bat tool that allows you to directly create a recovery flash disk using a USB stick (instead of the floppy)

The "trick" is that the boot in the recovery disk is kind of special, it loads the MINIDOS.SYS file which is the one that would execute the PHFLASH16.EXE and load the BIOS.WPH.

Just run WINCRIS.EXE, leave the default values and press "start", it would create a bootable (recovery) usb disk.

I've add the latest A05 bios to the zip file, so it would give you the Fx function keys (if it works)

I've run into this same issue. I've now gotten my Dell Mini to boot to the USB drive. It beeps many times, then it restarts, does a quick flash of the Dell screen, then asks me to "Enter Password"

What password is it asking for? A BIOS password? I haven't set any passwords on this computer. What might it be? Thanks for any info anyone may have.