* PLEASE DO NOT SEND ME PERSONAL MESSAGES WITH SCREAMS FOR HELP - THEY WOULD BE IGNORED. ALL INFORMATION NEEDED FOR SUCCESSFUL BIOS RECOVERY IS IN THIS POST. *
* NEVER EVER USE WINDOWS UTILITIES TO UPDATE PHOENIX BIOS 'CAUSE THEY ARE LAME AND IN MANY CASES LEAD TO BIOS CORRUPTION! *
Intro
Well, that takes three weeks and a lot of blood and sweat for me but here it is - Phoenix BIOS recovery instruction (particularly for F-S ESPRIMO Mobile V6535 =)
First of all, read my treads on this forum:
[V6535] POST error after BIOS update
[V6535] Binary BIOS file wanted
[V6535] Crisis recovery disk creator v1.0.0.4 w/ BIOS v1.22
Most of valuable information about subj are already there. Another helpful information sources are:
How to fix a corrupted Phoenix BIOS using the Crisis Recovery Disk
BIOS Recovery procedures@My Digital Life Forums
Though they are a bit outdated, they helped me to go into right direction.
1. Theoretical part
Let's assume that you have already read all the mentioned above stuff and quite sure that your BIOS is from Phoenix and it is corrupted for some reason. So, let's go to the point. All you need for successful Phoenix BIOS recovery is:
1. Flash drive 2 Gb at the most ('cause it should be formatted to FAT16). In my case it was 64 Mb one.
2. Binary BIOS file for your motherboard (BIN or WPH extension in most cases). Present time BIOSes are more (in some cases mach more) than 512 Kb or 1 Mb, so this is why you need not floppy but flash drive.
3. Phoenix Technologies WinCris application (v.1.0.0.4 or higher) to create Phoenix Crisis Recovery Disk (CRD) from your flash drive.
If you have all that three components, your victory is at hand :) WinCris v.1.0.0.4 with BIOS binary file particularly for F-S ESPRIMO Mobile V6535 you can get here (archive password is "crisis").
2. How it works
2.1. Spadework
Archive contained this files:
BIOS.WPH
WINCRIS.EXE
PHLASH16.EXE
MINIDOS.SYS
CRISBOOT.BIN
WINCRIS.HLP
CRISDISK.BAT
MAKEBOOT.EXE
BIOS.WPH is binary BIOS file, PHLASH16.EXE is Phoenix flasher, all other stuff needed to make bootable media from yours flash drive. If your laptop model is not V6535 (or not F-S at all) of course you have to use appropriate BIOS binary, but it's name have to be BIOS.WPH anyway.
In case of F-S laptops it's not so ease to get appropriate binary BIOS file. In my case it was made by restoring F-S bootable CD-image file system with help of R-Studio, but I think that other tools of the same sort can handle it as well.
After you got appropriate binary BIOS file, renamed it to BIOS.WPH and placed it to the WinCris directory, you have to prepare your flash drive. Just format it to FAT16 from windows, volume label doesn't matter (empty in my case). Remove all other flash drives from your system just in case, disable you anti-virus for the same reason and run WINCRIS.EXE:
- crd.png (6.56 KiB) Viewed 37063 times
Hit "Start" and after several seconds your CRD is ready.
2.2. Blind boot
Unplug power cord and remove accumulator battery from your laptop (in my case I removed HDD as well but I think it's not necessary in general case). Mentioned above sources insist that one need to press and hold some keys combination before inserting power cord back. That combination should initiate Crisis Recovery Mode and make blind boot possible. In my case I can't get any sign of that mode w/o CRD but I hit "Fn"+"F" (presumed combination for F-S devices) anyway. I don't know was it necessary or not but this is how it worked in my case.
2.2.1. My case
I inserted CRD into USB port, pressed and held "Fn"+"F", plugged power cord in and hit the Power button. Immediately after that laptop produced series of beeps synchronously with flash drive LED blinking (I suppose that was a part of BIOS binary reading to RAM). I released "Fn"+"F" on second or third beep. After about a half minute of that son et lumière flash drive LED stopped blinking and beeps changed rate to slower one (I suppose that was a part of BIOS flashing). After that laptop rebooted by itself and voilà - Fujitsu logo flashes on display. Technically all the procedure took about a couple of minutes.
Сonclusion
One more time, thanks to all people who helped me and good luck for everyone who reed this post not just out of a sporting interest.