Over the years I have flashed hundreds of bios and firmware updates. I have never had a problem until a recent bios flash went south.  I have a Gateway T-1616 laptop and I was going to install Windows 7 on it so I could start playing with the new Windows.  Well I thought this would be a good time to reflash my bios to the latest version.  I downloaded the latest version from Gateway's website and ran the update.  I then rebooted the laptop and nothing; the only thing from the laptop was some activity from the DVD-ROM.  The screen was blank and nothing happened.  Well this is a first; I had never had a flash go bad.

Well after two days of scouring the Internet for info on recovering after a bad flash I learned that most modern bios's have a recover mode .  In this mode the computer boots up with the ability to reload the bios from a floppy or USB drive and reload the damaged bios.  In this mode there is no screen output and the bios either does this automatically if it detects the right files or you need a key combination to initiate the recovery mode.

I was unable to initiate the recover mode of my laptop, and Gateway support was no help.  If you are out of warranty they send you to their paid support.  Rather then spend the money on the paid support or to have someone solder on a new bios chip for my motherboard.  I will just buy a new motherboard for the laptop since I can change that out my self, saving the labor charges.