Updating BIOS on Toshiba Tecra C-50B using Thumb Drive leads to "Security Failure" error

Hello All,

My friend has been unable to start her computer and has been getting a McAfee Drive Encryption Fatal Error "Failed to deserialize drive". After some googling I figured that this was a BIOS issue as per this link.

I went to the Toshiba homepage and downloaded the latest version of her bios. Unfortunately Toshiba only has instructions for how to update from a floppy disk, a CD, or live while running Windows. My friend does not have a floppy or cd drive and cannot run windows thus eliminating all the possibilities.

I attempted to use the .iso file to create a bootable thumb drive and was partially able to get it to work. It runs the correct DOS application (chgbiosf.exe) but eventually runs into the error "Security Failure" without any further details and returns me to the command line. I have tried several different things to get it to work including navigating to the bios image itself and trying to run that in DOS, attempting to use older versions of the bios (She's using 1.1 and 1.4 is the latest available). There is no Secure Boot Option on this BIOS (at least that I am able to find) so that is not the problem, also Boot Mode is CSM (although I have attempted to use UEFI without effect).

I am about to give up on this problem and tell her to completely reformat (she doesn't have a backup unfortunately) but I thought I'd check to see if anyone else had had any similar problems with Toshibas and if they had found a work around.

Thanks for your help y'all!