[RESOLVED] Stupidest way to flash a bios

[Compudoc]

I have been doing this business for about 3 years. I went to a customers house. On one side of the room he had an amd K6-2 cpu @300mhz running some sort of flight simulator. On the other side he had an AMD Athlon @ 700mhz. The smaller K6-2 ran the game perfect. The Athlon was choppy. I looked at this and that. I updated his drivers, checked for other programs in ram, ect. Nothing worked. I explained to the customer that he had a first generation Athlon chipset, and that a bios flash may help. So I figure out what board it is, and download a Bios flash. I copied to a clean boot disk, and proceeded. Well I loaded the flash program from the floppy, and typed in the bios image name in the box. The pc reported it cannot read the image. I tried and tried. Then I remembered that I have a copy on the Hard drive. So I typed in the location on the Hard drive. I knew there was a problem when it took less than a second to flash the bios. Needless to say I got a black screen after reboot. Its a constant reminder that I am human http://www.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum/smile.gif

[klenard]

Nah, the stupidest way to flash the BIOS is to hit it with a hammer. we are all human dood. sometimes we think to hard about a situation and forget the proper procedures......

Other times, We can just do a complete Brain fart.

[Indigo]

I have flashed from the HDD many, many, many times.. never a problem. In fact I prefer to flash from the HDD.

[LargeLarry]

how do you flash from the HD? I got a dead computer here cause the bios update program froze, I rebooted and it won't read a floppy. I push the on button and all i get is a blank screen and nothing happens. Thanks.

[AnyTwo]

Stupid ways to flash the BIOS; well I'd put on some sexy music, step up real close to the motherboard and slowly pull my shirt up......

Sorry, I just couldn't resist - it's been one of those daze.

[Indigo]

Flashing from the HDD: Download the bios image and flash util. Place them in c:\bios or whatever you want to call it. Make sure you extract the bios image if its exe'ed or ziped. Reboot and hit F8 and goto safe mode command promt. Type cd bios <E> then flash.exe "bios name" <E> follow instructions on screen.. Thats it.. Reboot!

[stevet]

When I did my first BIOS flash about 4 years ago, I followed the manufacturer's directions and flashed from a floppy. Something didn't go right - the system would boot, but I lost the floppy controller. And where was the backup of the previous BIOS? You guessed it - on the floppy disk. Since then I have always flashed from the hard drive and have never had another failure.

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Steve Taylor - Instructional Computing Tech
North Idaho College (http://www.nic.edu)
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

[This message has been edited by stevet (edited September 19, 2000).]

[cyberhh]

Stupidest way to flash a bios was shown to me first hand by a Packard Bell phone support technician. I could not get the onboard modem to disable by following the instructions in the manual (a common problem, I found) and my boss demanded that I call PB tech support. I got a "Technician" on the phone who wouldn't give me an extension, name or tech#. He told me to jumper pins 26 and 24. The manual specifically said "DO NOT jumper pins 24 and 26". I told him the manual said not to. His response "I am a certified PB tech and I'm telling you to jumper 24 and 26". I did, turned on the machine and the BIOS was flashed with smoke and flames. Then he hung up. PB claimed no responsibility and my boss was out a new PB mobo.

[Doctormike]

You all know that if you have a bad flash, you can still boot the machine while holding the "INS" key down while powering the computer, It will Boot the computer in Basic Bios Mode..(BBM) from there you will be able to read from a floppy only.. I learned this tip due to a bad flash. Way I looked at it was i had nothing to lose, but it worked!

[Doctormike]

Originally posted by LargeLarry:
how do you flash from the HD? I got a dead computer here cause the bios update program froze, I rebooted and it won't read a floppy. I push the on button and all i get is a blank screen and nothing happens. Thanks.

Do you have the old bios file on floppy?
If you do check my message on this topic, if any questions you can email me at Dr.Egan@eshores.com

[LargeLarry]

Thanks for the info. I had a bad flash and i turn it on and nothing.. I mean NOTHING happens. Power light comes on... that's it. It's in the closet, but I'm gonna get it out and try the INS key trick http://www.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum/wink.gif I got the bios on a floppy. I'll let you know what happens.

[LargeLarry]

well.. didn't work. I set the computer up, plugged everything in and turned it on, held down the INS key, and nothing. power comes on, HD spins (doesn't try to read it though)and the monitor is blank. Doesn't try to read the floppy. http://www.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum/frown.gif It's a NEC 9847. PB810(FM530) motherboard. 266 cyrix chip. Computer crashed during flash from floppy and it's been dead ever since. I sat there looking at the screen for about 30min. The update was frozen at about 60 percent. I knew if i shut it off it was dead, but what else could i have done. So, i turned it off. I bought a new computer right after that, but I'd still like to get the dead one running. Any other suggestions? Thanks !

[shawnMt]

The only thing I've ever known the INS trick to do is load bios defaults on some boards.

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GENERAL FAILURE READING DRIVE A:
(A)bort, (R)etry, (G)et a beer?

Paint your old laptop! (http://www.auwebdesign.com/shawnpages)

[Green Iguana]

Originally posted by shawnMt:
The only thing I've ever known the INS trick to do is load bios defaults on some boards.


That's right. It won't bring back any bios defaults after the bios has been hosed by a bum flash.

[Tech666]

allright , this little trick has made me much money in the past...

find a BIOS chip from any motherboard that works , as long as the core logic set is the same , and the bios manufacturer is teh same.If is an award get an award , if its ami , get an ami , you get the picture.

put the working chip in the mother board , and fire it up. this should allow you to boot from the floppy.With the machine booted and still on PULL the bios on the fly CAREFULLY! plug the old bios chip in and attempt a reflash.

at worst , you've scrapped two boards , at best it will work flawlessly.

CIH taught me how to do this , and since i was the only one that could actually fix cih damage , all the local places shot their customers to me.

[underfunded]

I never actually got a machine in with CIH on it. I must have been lucky.

Originally posted by Tech666:
allright , this little trick has made me much money in the past...

find a BIOS chip from any motherboard that works , as long as the core logic set is the same , and the bios manufacturer is teh same.If is an award get an award , if its ami , get an ami , you get the picture.

put the working chip in the mother board , and fire it up. this should allow you to boot from the floppy.With the machine booted and still on PULL the bios on the fly CAREFULLY! plug the old bios chip in and attempt a reflash.

at worst , you've scrapped two boards , at best it will work flawlessly.

CIH taught me how to do this , and since i was the only one that could actually fix cih damage , all the local places shot their customers to me.

[pcshark]

One of our clients is a hospital that uses diskless workstations. By diskless, I mean COMPLETELY diskless. We copied the BIOS flash program to the network and ran it from there, and had no problems at all.

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R. Bret Walker, CNE

Wondering what videos to rent this weekend? Check out The People's Reviews (http://www.geocities.com/pcshark/b-e), movie reviews written for the people and by the people.

[sdrawkcab]

Originally posted by Doctormike:
You all know that if you have a bad flash, you can still boot the machine while holding the "INS" key down while powering the computer, It will Boot the computer in Basic Bios Mode..(BBM) from there you will be able to read from a floppy only.. I learned this tip due to a bad flash. Way I looked at it was i had nothing to lose, but it worked!

This will load "failsafe(haha)" defaults on PCChips mobo's, but it doesn't work on the 5 P1 boards I have in the shop that have been flashed wrong.

Some things to try: Remove your PCI/AGP display card, put in the oldest ISA card you have (I keep a Western Digital Paradise 256 around the shop just for this) and it may give you video. Also try unplugging everything like mouse and KB (you can replug the KB after you diagnose the problem), IDE cables, sound card, modem, floppy cable, and the printer or other parallel devices (believe it or not I had a scanner that never let the computer boot again after I flashed the BIOS on a ABIT PR5R2.)

Also try clearing the CMOS, it could be that values saved are incompatible with the hardware and new BIOS.

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it's backwards backwards

[shawnMt]

Tech666 - That's called hot swapping the bios and does work sometimes. But you gotta be careful with it http://63.236.72.252/cgi-bin/forum/smile.gif

The only other way to recover from a bad flash (that I've seen work) is put an ISA video card in a slot and see if it will POST.

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Paint your old laptop! (http://www.auwebdesign.com/shawnpages)

[Greasey]

Well, when users bring in their motherboards to our shop to have their motherboards re-flashed, they get sent to me...

This was mention'd by someone else, but I dont remember the post. Being an old electronics technician, I have a full set of IC extraction tools (plastic of course).

What I found is you dont even need a motherboard of the same make or model. Just one that uses the same bios chip. Remove the "bad" chip, insert the new one. boot up, start flash program... when you get msg "are you sure to program?" dont hit yes just yet!

Carefully remove the IC from the board, insert the bad one, hit yes and watch the old bios get programmed correctly!

Beleive it or not, this even works on 56k modems! (ive ressurected 15 56k modems from diamond this way!)

Its a nice trick to know, plus you make a cool 50$ for 10 minutes of work (sometimes even less time)

Also, if you would like, send me an email, my email addy is available, and we can arrange for you to ship the motherboard to me an I will reflash for ya...

Greasey.....

[This message has been edited by Greasey (edited September 26, 2000).]

[Doctormike]

Well I know for sure it works on all my MB's, could be only for Award Bios, but i have a AMI bios and it worked too. I have done the hot swap with bios and has success with it but i wouldn't recomend it if you don't have steady hands

[corelogik]

i have done 3 bios flashes,
1. on my compaq presario (save the laughter and scowls please,... it works)no problems

2. on a dell GX100,. $45.00 and no problems

3. on an eMachines eTower466, my cousin screwed that one royally tried to flesh with the wrong update and it actually reverted his to a previous bios version ,..... wouldnt recognize his CD-RW, i found the right one and had it fixed less than 10min after DL.



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CoreLogik - "I Control Your MotherBoard"
DigitalSolutions (http://www.Dreamsoft.com/pages/digitalsolutions)

[pga]

Originally posted by Greasey:
[B]
What I found is you dont even need a motherboard of the same make or model. Just one that uses the same bios chip. Remove the "bad" chip, insert the new one. boot up, start flash program... when you get msg "are you sure to program?" dont hit yes just yet!

Carefully remove the IC from the board, insert the bad one, hit yes and watch the old bios get programmed correctly!
[B]

This really works?!! Swapping the BIOS with the board being hot? (We had a flood of people that were hit by the CIH virus awhile back... wish I had known this then!)

[This message has been edited by pga (edited October 04, 2000).]