[flashrom] Error: Programmer initialization failed.

[Richard A. Smith]

On 11/26/2010 09:56 AM, hann martin wrote:

> My daughter was given a laptop that had suffered a disk crash

The word "laptop" here is significant.  Laptops are problematic for rom 
flashers because often you have to work through the embedded controller 
and laptops have many different methods of allowing the host to get to 
the firmware rom.

See:
http://flashrom.org/Supported_hardware#Supported_laptops.2Fnotebooks

> (I also
> suspect it had suffered a vicious virus).  I replaced the HDD but could
> not get the damned machine to load windows from CD.  I tried everything
> and then tried installing Ubuntu instead - worked first time - amazing!
> Problem is my daughter needs to use a specialist app which is not
> supported under Linux so I need to get Windows on there somehow.
> I suspected that the BIOS is corrupt as it just refuses to boot windows
> from CD (tried 3 different copies) so thought I would try Flashrom.

I highly, highly doubt a corrupt BIOS is your problem.  Corruption in 
your firmware image would almost certainly render the laptop unbootable. 
  The steps the BIOS takes to boot a Linux CD image are the same as for 
booting a Windows CD. Its what happens after the code is loaded from CD 
that is different.

Its much more likely that your CDROM is generating random bit errors.  A 
Linux live CD will deal with that condition much better than a windows 
install CD.  Most Live linux distros have a boot option that lets your 
run a CD check where it checks the hash of all the files on the CD. 
That will exercise your CD drive a lot. Try that and see if it passes.

If the laptop has the ability to boot from USB CDROM then you can also 
try to use an external CD drive.

You may also be able to work around the windows CD crash by remastering 
the CD adding, removing or updating the drivers.

Tools like nlite will let you remaster the Windows boot CD.

http://www.nliteos.com/

I also seem to remember reading somewhere that its possible to create 
fake ram-drive CDROM.  Copy all the files in there (with slow verified 
copy) and and load the windows setup from there.  That would get you 
until the fist windows reboot.  Sounds pretty messy though so you would 
need your local tech geek to help figure that out.

A bit of googleing on alternate methods of trying to install XP turned 
up the following where they have links for how to install XP via network.

http://www.boot-land.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=2322

If nothing else then the forums at boot-land.net may be a more 
informative place to seek help than here.

-- 
Richard A. Smith  <richard at laptop.org>
One Laptop per Child