ConnectPro Computer Services

[Vincent0]

Hi,

I'm wondering if Future Shop offers bios flashing services to its customers. I would like to flash the bios on a LG R580-K.AHC4WA9 laptop I bought from Future Shop a few months back, during the Christmas shopping season, but as I have never actually flashed a bios before, I don't want to make any silly mistakes and would prefer to have a professional flash my bios for me the first time around. I am fairly comfortable around computers, but after reading a week's worth of horror stories on various websites concerning bios flashes gone bad, I don't feel confident enough to do the flash myself.

The main reason I want to have my bios flashed to the latest version LG offers for my laptop model is that I suspect that a flash would solve my Suspend (a.k.a. sleep/standby) issues in Linux; I've seen many posts by other laptop users (HP though) who have claimed that a bios flash fixed their problem with suspend, and have the same problem/error codes as I do (looks like it has something to do with an incompatibility between the Intel ICH9 chipset's SATA Controller and the kernel, but I'm pretty sure the bios plays a role somewhere...). Not to mention that in Windows (I dual-boot Windows 7 and Linux Mint 8, by the way), I cannot update my Intel chipset drivers; Windows keeps on giving me an error message along the lines of 'your hardware cannot support it', but these are drivers that LG has placed on their LG Intelligent Update CD and all the other driver updates worked anyways, when I upgraded from Vista to 7.

Ok, so to cut a long story short, can I take my laptop in to my local Future Shop store and ask for a techie to help me out with a bios flash? I don't mind paying money for the service, so long as it is cheaper than sending my laptop to LG for a repair (apparently their warranty doesn't cover flashes gone bad due to user error...). Thanks for taking the time to read this!

[Krypto]

The Future Shop techs should be able to do this for you no problem if you're that concerned.

As a heads up though, doing a BIOS update should be pretty easy - most manufacturers now have a program which performs the update from within Windows.  It's not like it used to be with older computers where you used to have to prepare a boot disc with the BIOS in order to install it during the boot process.

Still, if you don't want to take the risk at all, Future Shop can perform it for you.  The only catch is that I don't know what the price would be for this service.

[Vincent0]

Ok, thanks, I'm glad to know Future Shop can help me out then. I'll pay my local Future Shop techs a visit when I have time later. I tried to flash my bios in Windows earlier today, but when I ran the executable file containing, well, whatever LG put in there to flash my bios, I get an error message essentially saying that I can't flash my bios because there are some other services running as well. I did kill my anti-virus software first before I tried to proceed with the flash, but I suppose that's not enough. Do I have to go into the Task Manager and end almost every single process or something for the flash to work? And would flashing in Safe Mode work better?

[Krypto]

Hmm, interesting.  The most often cause would be antivirus/firewalls, but if you've disabled them...  In this case, if you are willing to get the help, then take it in.  I'm not 100% certain which processes might be the issue (especially without seeing the computer), but the FS techs should be able to sort it out.