[RESOLVED] bad bios burn? try this.....

[rebelj]

I just had to recover from a bad BIOS upgrade to an Award bios - the "required" flash program refused to flash a bios with a bad checksum (from the 1st burn that went bad)
after a day of poking around the web on my backup machine, i found a flash programmer that actually worked
go to http://www.msi.com/support - there are two utilities there (amifl826a.exe & awdfl783m.exe) that are supposed to be used to switch from ami to award and vice-versa!
I used the awdfl783m xxxxxxxx.bin command and it flashed the 1st try.... with a bad burn, anything is better than trashing a board!

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Being normal is just an excuse for poor imagination!

[shawnMt]

I've had a few flashes go wrong, but never trashed a board as a result.

1. You can hot-swap the bios from a similar board and re-flash. NO it does not have to be an identical board - I've swapped Tyan to Tiger, Asus to Tyan, FIC to Ausus - all were SS7 and Award to Award though. Others can say what they want about this, I've done it.

2. Always at least try an ISA video card to get it to POST - I've seen this work also.

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Paint your old laptop!

[AlienDyne]

Agreed Shawn, but I'll add a third option:

3. If none of the above would work, RMA the board and pretend nothing bad happened.
It worked for me once and they replaced it.

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"Matter is passive. In spite of its power, it can't be controlled without the human mind." Sokrates

My Hardware Info, Hardware Media and Computer History page

[sage19]

also try contacting the manufacturer of the board - sometime, like ASUS, will send you a new bios chip for the board for a small fee. Just look around the website or try emailing them.

[weck]

I agree with Shawn. Just make sure your BIOS chip is loose before you try to hot swap it. Trying to pry a BIOS out while the computer is running can end up being bad things. Usually a motherboard manufacturer charges 15 - 20 dollars for a new BIOS chip so I would try the hot-swap first.

weck

[sage19]

ASUS charges $25 for a new bios chip - not too bad if you don't have another board lying around that would work. I had a bad flash with an socket a board (dont ask) and they ordered a new chip from them. I realize now the advantage some boards with at least one ISA slot have over those that have none...
BTW heres the link to the address where you can order a new bios chip for ASUS boards...
http://www.asus.com/Products/Techref...flash-008.html