Bios flash screw up. Any help would be appreciated.

[bluewest11]

I have just recieved a phone call asking me if I can recover a bios after an attempt to flash upgrade went wrong. I have never messed around with a bios flash related problem before and told him so but I said I would ask the tech wizards at Windrivers forums. Here goes,

This person bought a Jetway 920 BF ( Supports socket 370 and Slot 1 ) with on-board sound and vid. The processor, I believe, is a Cyrix (Via) 500mhz. The motherboard was having difficulty in recognising the CPU's correct speed so he decided to look for a bios update fix. This person as flash updated a few computers bios before without any probs. After flashing the Jetway the computer is now dead ( will not boot ). It looks like he's killed the bios. The old bios has been saved on floppy. Can anyone explain in simple terms how I can fix this mess. Any help would be appreciated.


Thanks in advance for your time.


PS: Got the gigabyte GA-7ZXR (rev 2.2) today. Will fit it later tonight and give it a test run. The duel bios on this board sounds more appealing even more today.

[Shard92]

I know I just saw a post on this awhile back. It had a site to go to for instructions on recovering from a bad flash. Try searching the forum for bad flash or something. I just tried a search and got a lot of hits but I have to leave here in a few minutes and don't have time to search through them. Maybe the person who posted that will see this and help. Sorry I can't be more help right now!! Good luck


GLSmith

[techguy13]

Hi bluwest11

I believe shard92 is refering to the following:
(Note: when flashing a BIOS remove all cards other than video ,some AGP vid cards seem to cause problems, and peripherials.)

Recovering A Corrupt Award Bios

To recover an Award bios you will need to create a floppy disk with a working bios file in.BIN format, an Award flash utility and an AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Award bios will not automatically restore the bios information to the system block, for this reason you will need to add the commands necessary to flash the bios in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. The system
will run the AUTOEXEC.BAT file, which will in turn flash the bios. Here are the steps you
need to take:

1) Create a bootable floppy disk.
2) Copy the bios file and flash utility to the diskette.
3) Create a text file with any standard text editor and add the following lines
@ECHO OFF
FLASH763 BIOSFILE.BIN /py

In the above example I am assuming that you are using the FLASH763.EXE flash utility. You
will need to replace the FLASH763 with the name of whatever flash utility you are using and replace the BIOSFILE.BIN with the name of the bios file you are using. You will also need to change the '/py' to whatever command is for your flash utility to automatically program the bios without user intervention.
If you do not know the command to automatically flash your bios, type the name of the flash utility with a space and then /? to display the utility's help screen. The help screen should specify the command switch to automatically flash your bios. If you are using the FLASH763.EXE utility then the switch to automatically flash your bios is '/py'. After you've created the disk, put it in the floppy drive and reboot your system.

Recovering A Corrupt AMI Bios

With motherboards that use "Boot Block Bios" it is possible to recover a corrupted bios because the boot block section of the bios, which is responsible for booting the computer
remains unmodified. When an AMI bios becomes corrupt the system will appear to start, but nothing will appear on the screen, the floppy drive light will come on and the system will access the floppy drive repeatedly. If your motherboard has an ISA slot and you have an old ISA video card lying around, put he ISA video card in your system and connect the monitor. The boot block section of the bios only supports ISA video cards, so if you don't have an ISA video card or your motherboard does not have ISA slots, you will have to restore your bios blind, with no monitor to show you what's going on.
AMI has integrated a recovery routine into the boot block of the bios, which in the event the bios becomes corrupt can be used to restore the bios to a working state. The routine is called when the system block of the bios s empty. The restore routine will access the floppy drive looking for a bios file named AMIBOOT.ROM, this is why the floppy drive light comes on and the drive spins. If the file is found it is loaded into the system block of the bios to replace the missing information. To restore your bios simply copy a working bios file to a floppy disk and rename it AMIBOOT.ROM, then insert it into the computer while the power is on. The disk does not need to be bootable or contain a flash utility. After about four minutes the system will beep four times. Remove the floppy disk from the drive and reboot the computer. The bios should now be restored.

[bluewest11]

Thanks for the help with this one guys, I've saved this page with the instuctions and will have a go tomorrow. It's a job I've never been asked to do but it was only a matter of time before someone messed up.


Thanks very much!!!