Flashing my bios problem

[KitSileya]

I have an HP Pavilion dv5 notebook pc which I've had for 6 months now. Lately I've had some problems with my adobe flash crashing Internet Explorer, and I know what I should do is uninstall all versions of adobe flash and install the latest version. However, that is not my problem. Today, I came home stressed from work, and when I saw the HP Health check had run, and recommended something with Winflash I foolishly clicked to fix it, and followed the instructions. I came to "do you want to flash your bios" and I clicked yes - at which point my machine froze, just after it started working furiously. The fan was going full tilt, and since it said not to turn off my computer, I didn't. For an hour. The I tried ctrl alt delete, and then the off button, but nothing happened until I physically disconnected the battery. I then started the machine in safe mode with networking - things worked fine, but I couldn't find anything about it in the help section, and the network didn't work. So I restarted the machine in ordinary mode, and everything seems to work fine, except my network is slow (just a trickle seeding on Azureus, a couple of seconds extra wait for webpages to load.) So I'm wondering if there's anything I should do or check? Is there damage lurking on my machine I don't know about, and if so, how do I find it?

[Seldona]

1. Check to make sure bios settings weren't reset to default when

you flashed your BIOS, if you are comfortable with that. If not find someone who is and go from there. At least that is where I would start looking. Check all the relevant forums you can, someone has had this problem before assuredly. Weird things happen when a bios flash hangs, for whatever reason, in my experience.

Those are just some general ideas. PM if you don't find your answer and I can do some checking for you.

[KitSileya]

4. How do I find out the settings, and what the default setting is?

I swear, you'd think they would have made these things simpler by now. Thanks for answering, by the way. I'm glad for any help I can get.

[Seldona]

5. The reflash idea is good. Check out your motherboard,

and get the model number. Then get all appropriate bios files from the mb manufacturer.

[PennDem]

2. I would try a manual reflash

Download the latest BIOS version for your system from HP and then run it manually. Make sure your laptop is plugged in to AC power rather than running on battery power when you do the flashing. I'm not fond of any manufacturer auto update programs such as HP's Health Check, especially for hardware drivers.

[KitSileya]

3. I thought I was at least semi-literate in computers, but apparently not.

So, to manually reflash my BIOS I stop running any and all extraneous programs, and then...? I've read up on what flashing the BIOS actually is now, and what with BIOS and POST and whatnot I'm pretty confused.

And thanks for the help.