Thread: Bad Checksum (CMOS) BIOS Error after BIOS update

Hi all. I'm looking for some insight from you on this. I have a Toshiba A215-S6804 Satellite with Vista Home Premium SP1. I had read that this model had a history of "black screen/freezes" and that Toshiba had issued a BIOS update to resolve the issue. Well, I recently experienced the freeze up, so I decided I had better update the BIOS. I downloaded and ran their update - everything flashed properly (or so it seemed), and the program had told me to expect the computer to reboot after the flash was complete. Upon beginning the reboot I got an error:

0251: System CMOS Checksum bad - default configuration used
Press <F1> to load defaults, <F2> to setup

When I checked their "ask iris" database on their support site, it mentioned something about "Bad RTC (Real Time Clock) battery, bad Checksum (CMOS)". Check system, then press <F1>". Well, this is not the error I had. So I called Toshiba tech support and the guy told me to press F1....then he started reading off the RTC/bad checksum info from the ask iris web link - I said "That's NOT the error I got!", but had already hit F1 per his instruction.

My questions are, what did I do by pressing F1? What was the actual problem? Did I mess anything up because the guy didn't listen to me properly and I pushed F1 before I realized he wasn't answering the correct question? Should I have pressed F2 instead and set something up? I'm pretty lost when it comes to this kind of stuff, so any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!

I would of thought pressing F1 was the correct thing to do, if you strill geting the problem press F2 to enter the BIOS setup , and make sure the date and time are correct, also you should get an option to load the bios defaults which you could try.

once all that is done, select the option to save and exit