I don't think a BIOS can be flashed if it is locked. I could be wrong but it seems counterintuitive.
There are a at least two solutions but neither may work (in which case the laptop needs to be returned to the manufacturer). All of them will require you to do a bit of surgery and unfortunately, this part tends to be a lot easier to on a desktop system.
The first thing to do is check whether your BIOS has a resetter. You just push it with a pin and that should be all it takes. If that is not an option, you will have to find a way to power BIOS down. For example, take out the battery for a few hours.

There's nothing wrong with the laptop - you just hosed the Windows installation. You can:

Get Linux installed and working and live with that, or,

Buy a new copy of Windows and re-install.

All this recreational whining isn't helping you at all.

It depends, does the BIOS stop you from being able to boot anything, or from changing the settings, or from booting just some things ?

A lost BIOS password can be reset if you remove the CMOS battery. The password is not "burnt" to flash memory (like the BIOS itself is), it is held in CMOS RAM, like your RTClock, and will disappear if all power is removed for a few minutes.

Removing the battery might be awkward on a laptop, compared to a desktop, but see here: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000235.htm

Download super grub from somewhere and tell it to restore your mbr,you might be pleasantly supprised.


preg

GRUB? I don't see what the MBR has to do with BIOS...

This is why you should always double check your settings when you install a new operating system and you should backup before formatting, or partitioning anything. Your laptop is not wrecked, it(physically) is perfectly fine.

jay73 Nothing to do with bios,However I did not see where he said he had actually LOOKED at the contents of his drive.I have lost a partition before and recovered it with SUPER GRUB,not just "grub".In the future I will offer no further ideas or help,but simply look in awe for substantial answers from the Senior Members.And I might add this person did what many Newbies do,blame a linux distro for a sloopy no research install.


Have a nice day!

well I'm sorry folks, I thought that in 2008 things were expllained, and had enough safeguards built in to prevent easiliy- preventable diasaters! Still no one has explained why, with 150 gig of free disc space, the installation had to use part of the obviously nescessary used section to do the blinking install!

Answer that and I promise you a vegetarian Haggis!!

Love and light
John
zog49@hotmail.co.uk

I dunno, I'm sure if you go into the field of computing you can design and implement safeguards and attempt to make a system foolproof. I can tell you that you can never make anything foolproof, fools are too foolish and bypass any foolproofing mechanism you might invent. Instead, try acting upon the fools not the machines they are destined to use. Tell them to RTFM, and tread carefully, because the system is not foolproof.

There is a safeguard, its called always having a backup

because if it was preinstalled with vista, that means it is ONE partition. no matter what size it is, two OS's can't be installed, instead you HAVE to create a new partition. and zenwalk will install itself to it. compare that to a windows install that doesn't let you install on a new partition and instead uses the whole disk.

I would love to "re-flash" my BIOS and get back in control of my machine. I trust that a competent repair shop will have the whwerewithall to accomplish this? Because Clairewood Computers in Academy Street Dufmries sem to just glaze over when I go in to see if they've made any progress!

I'll try to download zenwalk lite to a stick now and hope for the best!

Thanks for your help

Did you read my post @ #19?
Did you follow the link I gave you there?