My first Dell computer about 15 years ago was humming along nicely. I decided after about 2 months to upgrade the bios. I downloaded the file, transferred it to disc, and booted with the disc as the instructions stated. The system got half way through the upgrade and hung, apparently a bad disc. Not knowing what to do I shut down the system and upon restart absolutely nothing happened. Still under warranty I called Dell to be told, sorry your eprom is toasted. They had to send out a service peson with a new motherboard.

Now while I have had other mini disasters, like doing an apt-get upgrade with Knoppix and trashing my system this bios upgrade problem was certainly numero uno.