Via Kills Motherboards With New Software

KingFish

Via Technology has rather spoiled its holiday weekend by releasing a new version of its Mini ITX bios software - because the BIOS version appears to blow motherboards.

Via's own support arena is filling up with complaints from small system builders - big fans of the miniITX board because of what it allows a small OEM to do - all of whom have upgraded to version 1.16 of the BIOS, and found that their board is unable to switch on.

Holiday season absences mean that no comment was available from Via. One source close to the company said: "They are all on holiday in the US, and Taiwan is in bed. It may be Monday before we can get a reply to you."

Builders and experimenters say they have been waiting for several days for any kind of response from the Taiwanese PC giant. "We assume they're working on it," said one, asking for anonymity, "but there's no visible response."

The only advice available is a standard one - and it's one that has raised a few eyebrows. On Via's support pages, there's an article on "How to recover from a major BIOS failure" - but builders say it looks more likely to cause failure, than cure it. The article suggests removing the BIOS chip from a working PC while it is switched on.

"That's about all you can do," admitted Via's John Gatt, Web Media Liaison and technical support engineer, posting on the support forum.

Quality control, are you there? -KF

Source: TechWorld

Gobbles

nice... another reasone why ill never ever own another via chipset. KT7 abit mobo was the only and last via crapset ill ever own... Id rather go intel then own via..

Garg

This is another reason why not to rush out and install BIOS upgrades the second they're available. Let somebody else be the guinea pig

madmat

Funny that these "systems builders" seem to have never heard of "hot flashing" a bios after "hot swapping" it. I've had to do it a time or 3, it's no more dangerous than anything involving a bare mobo on a running system is.