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Wishing everyone a happy new year for 2014

May the new year bring love happiness and peaceful living to all

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Toshiba Corrupt bios Recovery

We would like to thank the original author of this review at www.punj.co.uk for granting us permission to publish this  particular blog content. The original contents of the review can be found at http://www.punj.co.uk/


On one of our previous blogs we reviewed and demonstrated on how to recover your computer / laptop from a corrupt bios using the EPROM / EEPROM MCUmall True-USB PRO GQ-4X Willem Programmer 

Now we are going to show you how you can recover from a corrupt bios using no specialist equipment.

This method will require the use of a floppy disk media, CD/DVD or a standard usb stick flash media device. This method is commonly known as"Bios Crisis recovery disk method".

The bios is the first part of software code to run when you switch on a computer. This code gives instructions for the power on self test (post). This self test checks and ensures that the computer has all the required parts eg disks memory etc and that they function.

Most modern computer bioses can be recovered by using a crisis disk whether this be via a floppy or usb disk media. On some computers however when the bios boot tables become corrupt this can be problematic as this normally requires the bios chip to be manually reprogrammed or replaced. If your bios boot tables have become corrupt then this process will probably not be successful.

We were recently contacted by one of our clients who had corrupted the bios to his Toshiba A100-210 Model PSAA8E laptop.

Our client had visited the official Toshiba website and downloaded the bios for his laptop from here

He then carried out the procedure of updating his bios as instructed. 

The Toshiba bios program seemed to run and complete as confirmed at the end of the update. However when the laptop re-booted he noticed that the start up screen seemed to stay stuck on the blue bios start-up screen. He was then unable to get the laptop to progress further and boot to his windows xp installation.

There was a lot of private data which was now UN-accessible. In desperation the laptop was given to us to see if it could be recovered. We are not sure why the bios update had failed as our client seemed to suggest that he had carried the update as recommended.

 

We knew that this laptop has a Phoenix Bios so our first attempt was to try the bios disk recovery method. 

For this method which we have successfully used before you will need a usb floppy disk drive with 1.44M floppy media. You will also need to download files as instructed below. In brief we will create a recovery diskette which will have a good copy of the bios file. For this particular laptop a good copy of the bios file will be available within the download below.

This is a step by step instructions on how we carried out the bios disk recovery method.

1. Download the BiosRocoveryMethod.rar file from here  This will have all the files required to create the floppy diskette and a good copy of the bios file for this laptop.
2. Use winrar to decompress the downloaded file and place them in a folder on your desktop.
3. Now you will need a floppy drive or usb stick. We used a usb floppy drive as we no from experience that the usb stick will be unsuccessful with the recovery of this particular laptop.
4. You need to carefully read the instructions in the BiosRocoveryMethod folder downloaded earlier.
5. You will now need to Click on the Phoenix_Crisis_Recovery.exe to make a bootable Floppy.
6. Copy all the files from Rescue folder to your newly created bootable floppy diskette.
7. Rename your BIOS file to bios.wph and copy it to your floppy diskette. We have provided a good copy of the bios file for this laptop.
8. Now un-plug the power to your laptop. Connect your usb floppy drive to your usb port with the newly created bios recovery diskette.
9. Hold down FN+F keys on the keyboard and while holding plug the computer in to the power and press the power button.
10. You should hear the laptop bleeping and also the floppy drive being read and working. Hold the keys for a while and then let go.
11. Leave the laptop for at least 10 minutes. Within this time the laptop may also repeatedly bleep whilst also copying the new bios file to your laptop.
12. If the laptop does not restart itself after about ten minutes turn the power down and re-start the laptop

Hopefully the laptop will re-start and at the intial bios boot screen ensure that you set your bios to "Load bios Defaults".

Your laptop should now boot to your xp installation and hopefully you will have recovered from your corrupt bios.

A few words of caution. This method with the provided bios file is only for the Toshiba A100-210 Model PSAA8E laptop. Do not use this file if you are going to use this method for a different laptop / computer. If you do use this method for a different computer / laptop which has a phoenix bios be sure to use a bios file for that computer or laptop and re-name to bios.wph.

You should also be aware that updating the computer / laptop bios carries risks and could render your motherboard completely dead if things go wrong.

We are providing the contents here for educational purposes and offer no guarantee that this process will work for you. On this note you should be aware that by carrying out the processes here you do so at your risk.

We hope our readers have enjoyed our project and will come back to www.punj.co.uk for our views on more technological projects and products.

If you have enjoyed our latest tip or wish to discuss this further then please leave your comments and suggestions below.

punj

Using OpenDNS with BT HomeHub Broadband

Using OpenDNS with BT Homehubs Broadband

We would like to thank the original author of this review at www.punj.co.uk for granting us permission to publish this  particular blog content. The original contents of the review can be found at http://www.punj.co.uk/punjwebfiles/telecom/bbrouterproblems.html

On this page we are going to show you how to use the OpenDNS service on BT Broadband using the BT Homehub and some additional cheap hardware. BT has currently disabled their users from entering their own dns settings on the BT Homehubs using the current BT firmware. BT had adopted to disable certain features on their homehubs to close certain security vulnerabilities on their hardware.

So first of all lets briefly find out what the OpenDNS service is.

OpenDNS is a dns service which can help in providing the user in controlling and blocking Internet sites which the user deems as inappropriate. This can be useful if you have kids on your home network and you want to filter and block web sites which you deem appropriate for them to visit or use.

OpenDNS also provides anti-phising and  malware / botnet protection to further protect the Internet user. We do however advise strongly that the user still incorporates security software on each PC / Laptop and home  network devices that they currently use to ensure a high level of protection.

Now we will give a brief explanation of the BT Homehub.

BT provide all their customers exclusively using the BT Broadband product their branded wireless router known as the BT HomeHub. In providing this great piece of kit  BT can provide support for the BT Broadband customer. The latest BT Homehub version 3 includes the smart wireless N technology, provision of a gigabit LAN port and the USB port for connecting a printer or hard disk to your home network. This version of the home hub can also be used on BT's ADSL and Infinity product. Overall we have been very impressed with this latest BT Hardware and congratulate them in providing such an outstanding piece of kit.

          

By using some additional hardware and setting the home network correctly we can use the OpenDNS service and still get support from the official BT support channel as we are still using their provided piece of kit on the BT Broadband product.

In order to use OpenDNS we need to configure the dns settings on our home network to use the OpenDNS servers. This can be done in a couple of ways. The user can either at each computer or laptop  access the  network configuration and manually enter the OpenDNS server settings, or use these dns settings at the router  to globally use the dns service for all devices on the network. Entering the dns settings within network configuration at each device can be quite time consuming and can also be quite easily bypassed by someone  by just entering their own dns settings. By configuring the router correctly we can ensure that the chosen dns service is the only dns service used.

Our tip includes the use of an additional router which will be configured with the OpenDNS setting and provide DHCP to all devices on the network. In using our method the user is required to disable the DHCP on the BT Homehub for providing IP addresses to devices on the home network. In brief the DLink will be used as a slave router providing DHCP and DNS in lieu of the BT HomeHub.

In our method we chose the DLink DIR-615 version D2 router as our additional piece of hardware. We chose this router as it cost just £1.50 plus £3.50 shipping from eBay. The DLink DIR-615 is a wireless  broadband router with wireless N and four 100mb Ethernet ports.

The first thing we did with this router was to upgrade the firmware from the DLink to the DD WRT firmware.

The DD WRT firmware is a free Linux-based firmware offering a great number of functionalities. This firmware allowed us to setup this router as a slave router which provided all devices on our network with DHCP and the DNS settings for the OpenDNS service. In addition we configured this router to intercept the dns port to prevent users from using their own dns server.

The following setup configurations was used within the DLink configuration page. All other settings were left as the default settings.

Wan Setup

Wan Connection Type - Disabled

Network Setup

Local IP Address - 192.168.1.1

Subnet Mask - 255.255.255.0

Gateway - 192,168.1.254 (IP address of BT Homehub)

Local DNS - 208.67.222.222 (OpenDNS server)

Wan Port

Assign WAN Port to Switch - Tick check box (This enables the Wan port to be used as a LAN Port)

Network Address Server Settings (DHCP)

DHCP Type - DHCP Server

DHCP Server - Enabled

Static DNS 1 - 208.67.222.222 (OpenDNS Primary server)

Static DNS 2 - 208.67.220.220 (OpenDNS Secondary server)

Static DNS 3 - 208.67.222.220 (OpenDNS Server)

Use DNSMasq for DHCP - Tick check box

Use DNSMasq for DNS - Tick check box

DHCP-Authoritative - Tick check box

All other settings can be left in their default.

The final step was to disable the DHCP within the BT Homehub. All that is needed now is to connect the DLink router to the BT HomeHub via the LAN Ports using an Ethernet RJ45 cable and re-booting the two routers.

This is the basic setup to use the OpenDNS service using the BT Homehub within the network by using an additional slave router providing the DHCP and DNS settings. Additional settings can be entered into the slave router to prevent users on the network using their own dns settings. The DD WRT firmware offers other additional functionalities such as custom DDNS which can be very useful. We have not shown these  additional settings but may cover this at a later update.

We hope our readers have enjoyed our project and will come back to www.punj.co.uk for our views on more technological projects and products.

If you have enjoyed our latest tip or wish to discuss this further then please leave your comments and suggestions below.

Read this topic on http://www.punj.co.uk/punjwebfiles/telecom/bbrouterproblems.html 

Disclaimer :
There is a chance you can brick your router if something goes wrong, also this can then void your guarantee / warranty of your router.
So by flashing the firmware of your router you  do so at your own risk 

punj