Is Winfast Ti 4200/ BIOS still salvagable??

[Intrepid4]

Hi all, I've got a graphics card bios question. It specifically deals with the Leadtek winfast 250LE GeForce 4 Ti4200 that just arrived. To get to the point, the drivers were a pain to install from the CD, although I was finally successful. Up to this point the card was functioning fine. I also installed the Winfox (version2) software, which for those not familiar with Leadtek products contains system information, settings, tweak tabs etc. The biggest reason for installing it however, was that it contained a BIOS updating program.

I followed the directions in the reference manual completely as far as updating the BIOS was concerned. I downloaded the new BIOS file (a .rom file) from their website, read the old one with the software, loaded the new bios file and then clicked on the flash bios button. I watched the status bar fill to 100% and was notified that the computer had to be restarted for the changes to take effect. I restarted and to my surprise no image was displayed. The computer POSTed, fully loaded WinXP and reached the desktop (as indicated by the startup and program chimes), it's just that the screen was completely black. In addition, the monitor did not display the "No signal input" message, but the monitor led remained the amber yellow, as if no signal was being received.

I tried the card in another computer and had no better results. I then put the old TNT2 Ultra card back in the comp and it worked fine. The problem is definitely with the card and I am assuming the BIOS except that I followed the directions completely and made dead sure that I DID NOT interfere with the process until complete.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Is the graphics card or it's BIOS still salvagable possibly by undoing what I did, or by reflashing, or is the Card as good as RMAed?? Thanks for all advice and assistance.

 

[jiffy]

Sorry to hear that, it doesn't sound good. I think your going to have to send it back, if you can't get it to boot. Chance are their going to have to repair the BIOS. You can try clearing the CMOS, and a little praying, unless someone has an ideal I think your out of luck.




Hey Baby, want to play with my computer?

 

[Guest]

Man, that happenned to me with my GF256 DDR way back in the day. I mean I bought that baby like the same day I discovered they were available. Leadtek posted the wrong damn .rom file on their webpage, and I got psychadelic rainbows the next time I powered up.

Heres my story: Luckily I happened to have another internet comp at my house. All I did was wait until the next day when they mysteriously had another BIOS update file posted. Flashed it and everything worked great after that. Even did several update flashes later too. And am still running that card on a family machine to this day.

I am making it sound so easy though. Consider the following:
1. I did mine manually from a boot disk floppy.
2. Before I flashed it obviously I couldn't see anything, so the timing must be right and the keystrokes must be exact.
3. I got luckier than a mother.

I suggest trying it manually like I did, but it's hard because you need to sort of have a feeling for what your computer is doing without being able to see any reasonable looking graphics.

If in the event you do RMA it let me know what happens as I always wondered if they would try to weasle out of the warranty of the damaged goods which were damaged due to them posting a bad ROM file.