Hello,
I'm hoping you can help me.
My daughter was given a laptop that had suffered a disk crash (I also suspect it had suffered a vicious virus). I replaced the HDD but could not get the damned machine to load windows from CD. I tried everything and then tried installing Ubuntu instead - worked first time - amazing! Problem is my daughter needs to use a specialist app which is not supported under Linux so I need to get Windows on there somehow. I suspected that the BIOS is corrupt as it just refuses to boot windows from CD (tried 3 different copies) so thought I would try Flashrom. I am not particularly techie so am probably doing something stupid but this is what happens when I try it ...
new@new-desktop:~$ sudo flashrom -r backup.bin flashrom v0.9.1-r706 No coreboot table found. Found chipset "Intel ICH4-M", enabling flash write... FAILED! This chipset supports the following protocols: Non-SPI. Error: Programmer initialization failed. . any help would be gratefully received.
regards
Martin Hann
On 11/26/2010 09:56 AM, hann martin wrote:
My daughter was given a laptop that had suffered a disk crash
The word "laptop" here is significant. Laptops are problematic for rom flashers because often you have to work through the embedded controller and laptops have many different methods of allowing the host to get to the firmware rom.
See: http://flashrom.org/Supported_hardware#Supported_laptops.2Fnotebooks
(I also suspect it had suffered a vicious virus). I replaced the HDD but could not get the damned machine to load windows from CD. I tried everything and then tried installing Ubuntu instead - worked first time - amazing! Problem is my daughter needs to use a specialist app which is not supported under Linux so I need to get Windows on there somehow. I suspected that the BIOS is corrupt as it just refuses to boot windows from CD (tried 3 different copies) so thought I would try Flashrom.
I highly, highly doubt a corrupt BIOS is your problem. Corruption in your firmware image would almost certainly render the laptop unbootable. The steps the BIOS takes to boot a Linux CD image are the same as for booting a Windows CD. Its what happens after the code is loaded from CD that is different.
Its much more likely that your CDROM is generating random bit errors. A Linux live CD will deal with that condition much better than a windows install CD. Most Live linux distros have a boot option that lets your run a CD check where it checks the hash of all the files on the CD. That will exercise your CD drive a lot. Try that and see if it passes.
If the laptop has the ability to boot from USB CDROM then you can also try to use an external CD drive.
You may also be able to work around the windows CD crash by remastering the CD adding, removing or updating the drivers.
Tools like nlite will let you remaster the Windows boot CD.
I also seem to remember reading somewhere that its possible to create fake ram-drive CDROM. Copy all the files in there (with slow verified copy) and and load the windows setup from there. That would get you until the fist windows reboot. Sounds pretty messy though so you would need your local tech geek to help figure that out.
A bit of googleing on alternate methods of trying to install XP turned up the following where they have links for how to install XP via network.
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=2322
If nothing else then the forums at boot-land.net may be a more informative place to seek help than here.
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hann martin -
Richard A. Smith