A virus Burned my Bios

[javier.deleon]

Hi, I have an ACER Extensa 4420 laptop. Original BIOS V1.17

Recently I opened by mistake a file (virus) that burned my BIOS and prevented my laptop from booting with any O.S. or internal/external source.

I tried to boot with an old win 98 CD, and downloaded with another lap the BIOS files V1.18 from the Acer website (ABVXD.VDX - FLASH.SYS - OTA118.exe) , but I can not use it in DOS mode. So I managed to get an USB pen drive with portable XP os, but now the problem is that the executable file (OTA118.exe) says that there is not enough battery or external power to continue. (The battery is new and its plugged in.

How can I burn the BIOS??

OTA118.exe it's supposed to flash the bios from windows. I've read that Acer usually uses Winplash, but not in this case.

The problem is that with a usb portable xp I can't install Winplash and use it. And it just wont boot with any hard disk because it turns them off when they try to start windows.

Please, I need help!

[cp]

Recently I opened by mistake a file (virus) that burned my BIOS and prevented my laptop from booting with any O.S. or internal/external source.

IMHO no. there's no virus that burns any BIOS. this is an urban legend.

And it just wont boot with any hard disk because it turns them off when they try to start windows.

IT turns them off? it the laptop?

[javier.deleon]

...then I'm living an urban legend

But it's 100% real, I'm not saying that it burned it from windows, because when I opened the file, I saw a black window opened for a few seconds, and then I got scared and used system restore. But when the laptop booted again, it booted for the last time. After that no HDD (internal or external) can boot in my laptop and the number of the BIOS version is missing!


And when I tryed to burn the new BIOS version It just won't let me!

PLease Help me!!!

[javier.deleon]

IT turns them off? it the laptop?

Yes the laptop! You can hear the disk powering off and a few seconds after.. the laptop turns off too.

I've tryed booting removing the original HDD and inserting a different one, but it always turns them off!

I can boot using an old win 98 cd and from an usb pen drive with windows XP.

I used the windows Vista Recovery CD but it can't fix the problem!

Belive me, I've tried everything I could think of!


I forgot to tell you that the date of the BIOS is missing too! So it changed both things, the name or verison and the date!

[cp]

download gparted to partition and format the HDD. and download knoppix to test the laptop by running the live-cd. you can even run memcheck from one of those cds.

since the laptop still boots i really doubt that something altered the bios. reason: the program must have read the bios from flash, decompressed it, found a nice place in a real custom code to insert its patched code, recalculated the bios crc and flashed it back using its own custom routines. that's a bit too much work for nothing (an infected _working_ machine is worth the work maybe, but a non-working machine is useless).

so you can start with the two cds i mentioned above or just take the laptop to a good (!!!) service station.

[javier.deleon]

Hi CP, Thank you very much for your time and help My laptop is running at last!

I burned the BIOS and everything worked out perfect! there are no more problems with my laptop!