bad flash...son of a...

**Sockhatguy** · June 19th, 2005, 02:54 AM

man...what a day.

this on top of being sick and 2 weddings to attend coming up...come on...

anywho, enough of my bickering. I thought I was doing good when I looked up Asus for any updates for my k7m Rev. 1.04 mobo. The biox is Phoenix Technologies 4.00 Bios dated back in 2000. I found the k7m on the Asus site and found they had an updated bios from 2002. So I downloaded the bios...

it said that it was for all OS's.

well, I started the utility, and it said that it was only for 95/98 and would not work on my XP pro system. so I exited setup.

crash.

reboot.

crash with blue screen telling me I have a bad bios.

WTF?!?

Anyone have any idea where I can find another K7M Mobo? or a good amount of explosives and a new computer?

this one needed the smileys.

**Ferrit** · June 19th, 2005, 10:03 AM

AHH I am not too sure exactly what yer saying here.
A"bios" is irrelevant of windows operating systems.
It flashes the BIOS, Basic Input Output System which is long before the windows operating system is booted.
Now if you are talking about a flashing program that works out of windows that may be another thing entirely.
http://usa.asus.com/download/mbdriver/mb-slota.htm

that should be the page for the bios update you need

http://usa.asus.com/download/mbdriver/mb-flash.htm
and that should be the source for the flash program
I would get that and then try a reflash with a PCI or ISA video card

**Ruslan** · June 19th, 2005, 12:29 PM

Originally Posted by Sockhatguy

... so I exited setup.

crash.

reboot.

crash with blue screen telling me I have a bad bios.

...

"Blue screen" you said? Does it mean it passed POST (Power On Self Test)?
And it is just only memory error dump?
Can you get into the BIOS settings?

**Sockhatguy** · June 27th, 2005, 10:51 PM

Hey everybody...you were all correct in that it was not a bad flash...the flash worked, but the ram was what was crapping out. I got Peeved-off and started stripping my tower to check the hardware...and to see what I could sell for a good price...when I noticed that my Kingston ValueRAM KVR-PC100/128 CE was missing the #1 (front) and #84 (back) gold connections. replaced the chip with an older chip that I know works well, assembled the necessary ingredients outside the case, powered-up and got it to post. Got rid of the HP splash screen to where I could see the POST, and everything passed. The only problem I'm running into now is my VIA bus master IDE drivers...I get the "found new hardware wizard" every time I reboot, and windows can't find the drivers online. I fould the drivers for my chip (the VIA VT82C686A) but it has a note that says that if an XP user screws this up, the only way to fix it is a complete format...that wouldn't be too bad if I had my XP Pro disks...but I bought the compy with XP pre-programmed on the system, and it didn't come with the disks. Should I go ahead and risk the install, or is there an easier way to work around this?

Sorry for the long explanation/story, just wanted to make sure I got everything in there.

I also found out that my fans are about to fry...my compy sounds like a small RC car running on half power. when I'm playing a graphically intensive game like GTA3, GTA VC, or NFSU2, the inside of the case gets pretty warm (I took the side of the case off to check the temp while in-game). I have a large box fan that barely fits under the desk that works wonders for cooling. but I get the dry-throat feeling due to the dust from the case and the constant airflow. any idea of some cheap yet effective fans on the market? I'm tempted to pirate a fan from my old compy, but its larger than the fan that I have. can I swap the motor out? or would it be less of a hassle to go to a local discount computer store and buy one? (the closest Best Buy or other large store that carries computer parts other than sound and video cards is about 95 miles away.) hmm...ebay sounds good about now...