Dell Inspiron BIOS fecked

biko

GF has a Dell Insprion 5160 at work and it kinda gave up the ghost there a few weeks back. She started using another instead but now she needs the Dell fixed.

Issue is that it never makes it past the BIOS load screen (looks like the one below). Once the graph reaches the end the whole thing just repeats and starts over. Pressing F2, F12, or any F-key or other key does nothing at all - it just cycles the load screen.



I assume BIOS is fecked and need to create a bootable CD from which BIOS will update itself. There is no floppy drive, just CD and USB.

Preferably this can be fixed as I don't want to loose information by formatting the whole thing clean and install everything from scratch.

How do I create a CD that will update BIOS on startup?
This is the BIOS.

Standard Toaster

Call and speak with Dell.

You could try clearing the CMOS
http://docs.us.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/pblan/removing.htm#system

May void any warranty though.

MarkR

Have you tried removing some of the memory? It's not even completing post, and I think that memory failure can cause this.

Does it get past this screen at all? If not you won't be able to reinstall or boot from a cd with a new bios file. All that happens after post.