BIOS Help with Vista

[his_holiness]

Hi,

 

I am not very computer savvy when it comes to computer setup etc (more of an end user of products) and I have a question if someone can help. I use Windows Vista Ultimate and have been looking at the "Problems Reports and Solutions" piece of System Maintenance. I have a recommendation in here to consider a BIOS upgrade, but I have not idea what to do. The company who I bought my laptop from went into Administration early this year and so I cannot ask them for help. Is it possible to find out what BIOS upgrade I need, and if yes, can someone explain to me what I need to do with it? I assume that you will need certain information about my PC, but rather than me boring you with everything can someone be specific about what is required. I will be eternally grateful

 

Thanks:)

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Why do you think you need a bios upgrade?

 

What is the make and model of the PC?

[his_holiness]

I only think I do because Vista is suggesting it? My PC is an Evesham laptop model "PC Pro Voyager C720DC". The suggestion was from the Vista "system and Maintenance" area of Control Panel.

[Tootech]

What's the problem with your system?

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Have you been on to Evesham over this?

 

Here are their details if not.

 

http://www.evesham.com/contact/

[his_holiness]

Mr Wolfeymole: I have not been onto Evesham since when I bought the PC I purchased the extended warrant service to cover me for technical issues for 3 years. In January (??) they went into Administration and the company that took them over phoned me to kindly inform me my extended guarantee was now worth diddly squat and would I like to pay them £x per month to cover me , which frankly I did not. I am therefore not keen to speak with anyone there now since I believe I would be charged, but if this is the only option then so be it....

Mr Tootech: I do not know which one of the many problems reported from my PC this solution refers to. I cannot see any link back to the initial reported problem from teh advised solution. Sorry

 

Thanks Both!!

[Guest Wolfeymole]

If Evesham went into liquidation in January then I find it hard to believe that Evesham would still have a website going 9 months later.

 

I personally will ring these people tomorrow to find out just what their predicament is.

[his_holiness]

Thanks Wolfeymole, but I can assure you that the owners are not the same people I bought my PC from and I have tried to call their service centre a couple of times and been told both times I am not covered any more in terms of warranty. I have to log off now but I will come back tomorrow to see if you have any news. Really appreciate the help. Have a good eve!

[Guest Wolfeymole]

By law if a company runs X companies in different names they have to state that they are; "Trading as".

 

Call back tomorrow.

[Tootech]

Ok, never mind the Vista reports in System Maintenance.

 

What is actaully wrong - what happens that shouldn't, and what doesn't happen that should.

[Dalo Harkin]

If Vista is saying it needs a BIOS flash then it WILL need a BIOS flash - these are not easy to do at all on laptops and depending on who made the motherboard they are not easy to do - Most BIOS flashes are done by todays standards in a windows environment - but still most MOBO manufacturers do not offer this yet - only some of the bigger ones like ASUS do and you still need to perform it via a floppy - and seeing as though you do not have one on a laptop, you are a bit stuck.

[his_holiness]

Wolfeymole, I apologise for the delay in coming back to you, but I have been trying to get in touch with Evesham to follow up with them on the issue. I eventually got an E-mail reply from them stating the following:

 

Dear Customer

 

 

Regrettably Evesham Technology Limited ceased trading on 3rd August 2007, when the company was placed into administration.

 

Following Evesham?s administration, arrangements were put in place whereby certain Evesham customers were entitled to receive technical support from Totalcare and Support Limited without charge. Whilst free support is no longer available, Total Care and Support still offer support to customers of Evesham Technology Limited (In Administration).

 

Should you wish to receive technical support in relation to your product, please contact Total Care?s technical support team on 0906 200 1002. Calls are charged at £1 per minute and may be recorded or monitored for training and quality purposes. Lines are open 9am - 6pm Monday to Friday

 

Alternatively should you wish to discuss the other support options please contact Total Care;s sales team on 0800 138 8005 (freephone) 9am - 6pm Monday to Friday. Again calls may be recorded or monitored for training and quality purposes.

 

Technical support is no longer available through this e-mail addess.

 

 

Yours sincerely

Totalcare and Support Limited

 

I know that this is not a forum for discussing my legal rights but maybe this is useful for you if anyone else comes in with a problem with Evesham? I will not pursue any further this BIOS issue with you since I think I am possibly chasing an issue that may even not exist (since there is a suggestion that I should not pay too much attention to Windows solutions). I will however be starting a new thread soon on Vista SP1.....watch this space since I think I have more issues based on Evesham not existing any longer.........Thanks for the help!

[Guest Wolfeymole]

Well you wanna ask them if they are in administration why are they still trading.

 

http://www.evesham.com/

[Dalo Harkin]

I bought the PC I purchased the extended warrant service to cover me for technical issues for 3 years. the company that took them over phoned me to kindly inform me my extended guarantee was now worth diddly squat

 

I would have also thought that they would have to refund you, or carry on the protection?

[his_holiness]

Wolfeymole, Dalo, Thanks for the advice maybe I will pursue this. Given that I am less than optimistic, I have another question on this thread. I have used a tool called Belarc Advisor to run a list of all the components on my PC, and it tells me that the BIOS is from "Phoenix Technologies" along with some code which I guess relates to the version(??) I took a look at Phoenix.com and looked at their link for BIOS upgrades , which takes you to a site called BIOSAgentplus.com where they you can use their tool for a free BIOS scan and can tell you if you require new BIOS (and drivers I think) along with the relative links to get the updates. Do you know anything about the site, ie can it be trusted or is it case of nothing comes for free......

Sorry if I sound like a doubting Thomas but I have had friends who got their PC's screwed up by liberally downloading things they found on the web.

[Dalo Harkin]

I have had no dealings with the one that you say, BUT I have had pc's to fix that people say I went on this site and got the latest downloads etc - and when I looked they say we have X,Y,Z driver pay......amount and we will let you have continual updates FREE etc - they tried this and when they went into the site - it didnt have any of the drivers that it said it did -

ONLY get drivers from the makers of the Components:-

CPU driver - INTEL or AMD

GPU driver - NVIDIA or ATI/AMD

MOBO drivers - ASUS, GIGABYTE etc

Anything else I would leave well alone!

[his_holiness]

Dalo, thanks again. Looking harder at the report generated by Belarc, it says the system board (I assume this is the MOBO) is made by "Clevo Co." and has a model number of M570U, which appears to exist on CLEVO.COM website. Does this mean anything to you? I could not personally list all MOBO manufacturers and for example know about ASUS, but have never heard of GIGABYTE (as I said, I am not clued up in the hardware field.) Should I maybe contact them?

[Dalo Harkin]

I would yes - have a look on their site and see if they offer downloads :)

[Seth]

I'm not convinced that a bios upgrade is needed. Most Window's errors are far to generic to be of practical value. Heck, just look at a typical BSOD.

 

Are you experiencing any problems with the computer? If not, I most certainly would not be trying to upgrade the bios.

[Dalo Harkin]

Seth,

 

As you too use Vista, there is an option in the control panel called Problem reports and solutions - and it is constantly updated by MS - it provides solutions for hardware and software.

[Seth]

Seth,

 

As you too use Vista, there is an option in the control panel called Problem reports and solutions - and it is constantly updated by MS - it provides solutions for hardware and software.

 

Understood, however I think that before a bios upgrade is tackled, we should see the error report and find out if the computer is even exhibiting any problems.

[Dalo Harkin]

I too understand that Seth, BUT I have never seen one of these reports come back with something that is not needed.

[his_holiness]

Well, one of the problems I am experiencing is that I am unable to install SP1 for Vista. I have spent around 4 hours on the phone this week with the MS helpdesk who have talked me through renaming directories related to Windows update, Disabling potential hardware which could cause issues and removed all of my Antivirus guard etc etc (even downloading the update to my desktop it does not run without error.) . They concluded that there was an issue with my installation of Vista and that I should contact my manufacturer to get it repaired (see earlier part of this thread as to why this is not so straight forward.....). I found the Vista installation disk supplied with the computer, and when we looked at it there was no repair option in the contents so MSHD told me to try and re-run the set up. At this point the install wizard came up with an error message saying that tbs.dll was faulty / corrupt and that I should contact my manufacturer to resolve (again see earlier piece of thread.......) I am now currently unable to update to SP1 (I believe that I should although it will not kill my computer if I do not) but I am now looking for answers as to why and the BIOS upgrade was one of few things suggested by the solutions centre which I could not manage due to my lack of general PC skills. Hope this helps to clear things up a little?

[Dalo Harkin]

Do you actually have a Vista disk?

If you do then that would make it alot easier - if you just have the repair section on the lappy then you can use that - but either way you have some serious issues with your system.

[Tootech]

The BIOS is going to be a tough one to sort out.

 

I've just had a look on the Clevo site at CLEVO - Download

 

and there is a note regarding vendor machines....

 

*Note:

These drivers or Manuals are customized for CLEVO's Notebook PCs only.

We would not advise using them with other vendors' products.

 

The BIOS may or may not be customised and attemtping an update may render your machine next to useless.

 

I wouldn't go that route unless I had spoken to the Vendor.