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BIOS - ChipI tried to do a BIOS update from Windows. Flashing finished without an error so I decided to reboot. The tablet shut down and… never turned on again. Nothing of what I tried had any effect, the tablet remained dead. Not A sign of life. So I decided the BIOS flash must have gone wrong. What now?

After some research I found that there were more people with the same problem, and some seemed to have successfully flashed their BIOS again. So I decided to give it a try.

First of all I needed some hardware. I searched online for a BIOS programmer, and found a cheap CH314A programmer that should do the job. It had TTL and 3.3V levels, I knew that the BIOS chip was 3.3V so it should work without frying my BIOS chip.

Next step was to find a way to program the chip without soldering. I knew that the chip was in SOP8 package, so I searched a test adapter for a SOP8 chip, and ordered one.

After about a week the hardware was in, and I could get to work. I found the correct BIOS and found a bin file in the download. Then I installed flashrom and connected all the hardware together.
BIOS - Tablet and laptop BIOS - Adapter

First I made a backup of the current rom using flashrom:
flashrom -p ch341a_spi --read backup.bin

After the backup it was time to flash:
Screenshot from flashrom

After this, I disconnected the test adapter, disconnected the battery, reconnected the battery and tried to boot. And with success, the tablet booted straight up to Windows!

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I’ve purchased a Windows 8 upgrade for my Windows 7 machine. While upgrading I ran into a problem.

The upgrade came to 100%, and then said “Your computer will reboot in a few moments”. After a few minutes it came up with a general error “Windows 8 Setup could not complete” and then it closed. My computer didn’t reboot, and Windows 7 just kept on running.

After removing some applications like my virus scanner (NOD32) and some other applications i tried again. After about an hour I got exactly the same error.

Then I found the following error:
ConX::Setup::Media::CWorkerProc::SetupThreadProc: An error occurred while servicing the boot files from [C:\$WINDOWS.~BT\Windows\BOOT]; status = [0x80070015][gle=0x00000015]

After a lot of searching I’ve found the following solution:
Add a drive letter to the 100MB system partition which resides at the beginning of your harddisk. I assigned the letter S.

After I did this, the setup continued where it previously stopped with an error, and Windows 8 was installed like it should.

When Windows 8 was completely installed, I removed the drive letter from the partition. After this, Windows 8 was running flawlessly.

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tweetdeck-02-676x535I’ve recently upgraded my Windows 7 installation to Windows 8. Unfortunately Tweetdeck wouldn’t connect to my account anymore and showed the not so useful error “Unable to connect”.

After a lot of searching I’ve found a simple and unlogical solution:

  1. Start Internet Explorer
  2. Navigate to https://api.tweetdeck.com
  3. Navigate to https://twitter.com
  4. Close Internet Explorer
  5. Start Tweetdeck
  6. Log in to your account

Now Tweetdeck works like it should, and profile images should appear again.

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I noticed a while ago that my Echofon toolbar button had dispapeared in Firefox. I couln’t find any information how to fix this, except that i should enable the add-on toolbar. But Echofon had Firefox toolbar support, so I souldn’t need the add-on bar.

I’ve found out how te re-enable the toolbar button, and decided to share it here.

  1. Navigate in Firefox to about:config
  2. Accept the warning notification:
  3. Type or paste the following string in the filterfield: extensions.twitternotifier.toolbarButtonAdded
  4. Doubleclick on the item which shows up, and make sure it is set to “false”.
  5. Restart Firefox

Now the toolbar button should have reappeared.

Please leave a comment if this solution has worked for you!

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Ever been in the situation that you had to copy a bunch of files, and later on wanted to copy only the added files by skipping the existing files?
You can do that with xcopy. Only not with the default paramaters.
For example:

echo n|xcopy f:\source_folder y:\destination_folder /E

The /E makes sure subfolders are also copied. The echo n| prevents overwriting of existing files.