That time a BIOS update bricked a school computer and I had to fix it with a toothpick

Was updating a Dell Optiplex in the school lab last Tuesday. Update froze at 47%. Then nothing. No POST, no screen, just a blinking power light. Had to pull the CMOS battery, short the jumper with a paperclip, and cross my fingers. Got it back after three tries. Anyone else had a BIOS update go sideways like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

karen41019d ago

My friend had a similar thing happen with a Lenovo laptop, the update just stopped at 53% and the machine went completely dead. He ended up having to hold a toothpick on the reset button for like 30 seconds while praying it would work again. It finally booted on the fourth try, but he said the smell of burnt toast was the scariest part.

kais6719d ago

Hold on though, I mean the smell of burnt toast is usually the motherboard giving up, not just a botched update. Maybe his machine was already on its last legs and the update just happened to be the final straw. Could be the power supply or something internal was already frying before he even hit that update button. A lot of those Lenovo models from a few years back had known capacitor issues too. Idk, sounds more like his laptop had a hardware death sentence already and the timing was just bad luck.