What are the causes of BIOS corruption? Can one tell the cause of corruption?

Question

I'm sure it is a case of bad BIOS. What I'm not sure of is how did the BIOS get corrupted.

What causes BIOS failure in common scenarios? It was a Pentium 4 from 2004. Does age have to do anything with it? Is there a way to know what caused my BIOS failure? Battery is not the problem.

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 02 '11 at 15:22

BIOS failures are very uncommon, when they do happen it's usually the result of a failed attempt to update. Because the BIOS memory is on an EPROM it's difficult to have it fail under normal circumstances but with a 7 year old computer you're overdue for your first part failure. The chip may simply have worn out at this older age.

Hope this helps explain.

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited Jan 25 '12 at 14:03

2

MY BIOS apparently was corrupted somehow because my laptop was bricked and nothing worked until I shorted the CMOS battery which reset the BIOS. Problem solved.

edited Jan 25 '12 at 14:03

soandos

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answered Jan 10 '12 at 04:24

Nathan

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score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:04

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The BIOS itself does not corrupt, although some kind of malware can destroy it.

Not starting does not imply broken BIOS, it's often caused by hardware failure of dust. According to How do I clean dust from a computer?, canned air can do this. (I did it with a vacuum cleaner, but canned/compressed air is safer).

edited Mar 20 '17 at 10:04

Community

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answered Mar 02 '11 at 15:18

Lekensteyn

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What are the causes of BIOS corruption? Can one tell the cause of corruption?

3 Answers3