Hey all. I have always thought myself to have a decent amount of knowledge when it came to PC hardware, but now I am feeling like a complete amateur again due to a bricked laptop.
I have had one of walmarts cheap Motile 14" laptops for a couple of months now. It was prompting for a BIOS update from within windows so I thought I would let it run. The batch file flash got as far as erasing part of my BIOS before it got hung for hours. Long story short the laptop will not boot now because the BIOS is hosed.
Before seeing what the warranty was like I tried to educate myself and it appeared I might have some luck flashing the BIOS. I ordered a Ch134a programmer with a gator clip off Amazon and followed some youtube videos to get the programmer seemingly talking to the chip. The problem I have now is the BIOS you can download from their support site is a .rom file and the programming software wants a .bin file. If I try to feed it the .rom file it complains it is too large. I have read up a bit on cutting the rom file, and using uefitool to do this or that but I am in way over my head. I am not certain I have the programmer connected right but I am able to flash various things and then verify it so it appears to be working - I just don’t have a working BIOS to flash to it. Using UEFITool I was grabbing different pieces of the .rom file and extracting the body of different pieces of it hoping I would get lucky in flashing different bits onto the chip but it is a fools errand.
On weekends I will have access to the same model laptop - I thought about trying to dump the chip from that one and then flash mine with that but I am not 100% sure my programmer is working right and i for sure don’t want to accidentally brick the other laptop.
In reading through some of the other posts here it seems like you guys should be able to interpret where I am at. I would love some assistance or maybe a nudge in the right direction. The BIOS update file is located here: http://motilecustomerservice.com/m142.html
I greatly appreciate your time, thanks for reading!
@pamplemousse5 - Please upload your dumped BIOS for me. And tell me what is your BIOS chip ID, and what software/version did you dump with, this way if you need to use certain software/version to dump or write I can tell you.
Since the original post I was actually able to return the machine and get a different one.
I have not attempted a BIOS update on the new one. At some point I would like to use the programmer on an old laptop and see if i can successfully dump and wipe and restore the BIOS just for fun, and to see the viability on making a backup of my current laptops BIOS in case I find myself in the same situation.
I do appreciate your time and response and all the neat stuff you do here.
Apparently updating the firmware through Windows is likely to brick, according to some on the r/motile subreddit. Here’s a guide to update the firmware through an EFI shell (https://www.reddit.com/r/motile/comments…eeding_windows/)
@pamplemousse5 - Sorry to hear you had to return, but good to hear you have a replacement (hopefully free swap!)
When you get around to your test dump/write, let me know and I can help advise if you need, some BIOS chips need to use certain software/version, so you need to look around about that first before you dump and or write.
Thank you! 
@wishindo - Yes, this is common with any software, always best to flash from DOS/EFI or with built in BIOS flash tools when possible.
Thanks for posting that link for others 