Bios issues

[Pie_uk]

Last night i was thinking hmm i may flash my bios to a later verion,

my board is an Asus A8N-SLI Premium soc 939.

the verison that was on it is 1007 but then last night i went and did something really stupid .. read on for the embarresment

i restarted the PC and as the post screen came up i pressed alt and f2, then me being tierd and a fool i left the cd in the cd drive that is supplied with the mobo. it then started trying to flash the bios !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! so i pressed the cd button (while it was half way through doing it) not the best plan in the world and then it was stuck saying do not power off or restart. GREAT i thought i had no other option. so i hit the restart and up came a screen saying award bios v1.0

bios rom check error

dectecting IDE ATAPI device


Found CDROM, try to boot from it .... PASS

then it would say no AWDFLASH.exe found

FAILED

noooooooooooo .

luckily i had put awd flash onto a floppy disk earlier, so i thought id give that a go, and it still said failed. then just as i was going to give and and cry it started to flash the bios to another revision!!! woohoo but...

and guess what , that bios rev is version 1006, so ive gone lower ! omg lol now im scared to even go near it again

has any one had any experince with awdflash? with this motherboard. if so please say

[ExceededGoku]

okay its good that the computer actually posted, you can still flash it again. This time disconnect the cd drives (lol) and just put the latest bios file on the floppy and press alt+f2 to bring up the boot flasher. Wala done

[Pie_uk]

ah ha so simple as that lol, god i felt sooo stupid when i left the cd in there. and then to eject it half way through arrghh lol

(ps i wont disconnect the cd drive, however i will make bloody sure the cd isnt in there)

[Lee H]

Am I the only 1 here crazy enough to use the windows based flashing tool ?

Done it with all my motherboards since the lovely NF7-S 2.0 and never really had an issue as the software automatically (when the FTP's have space) downloads the latest version for the motherboard it detects and then flashes and then VERIFIES it before you reboot ensuring that it's flashed 100% correctly.

[BUFF]

I use FlashMenu too on my Abits but I always download the file locally & use "Flash from File" mode rather than "1-click".
& I've got spare BIOS chips just in case ...

[Pie_uk]

lol, well i have a story about that to... i used the flash util that came with my abit av8 3rd eye and it died on restart. it did it again on the same mobo using windows based flash utility.

so i gave up on that.

now this AWDFLASH really works wonders. ive just flashed it back to v1007 with no problems. the problem was my own fault the first time round.

so ever since my abit boards ive been scared stiff of the bios. Hmm can i buy a bios chip from asus? and do i need a special tool ?

[Lee H]

I use FlashMenu too on my Abits but I always download the file locally & use "Flash from File" mode rather than "1-click".
& I've got spare BIOS chips just in case ...

Yeah I could do that buy if it breaks it's a great excuse to get an ABit board ain't it

Here flashy, flashy, flashy, *zeeeep* ... now where's me bank card.

[scrandman]

Some boards work better with the Windows utilities than others. ASUS boards (at least earlier ones) had major issues flashing over the internet let to many dead boards. Probably a reflection on the crap software than anything else. Never had an issue with downloading first then flashing from file in Windows myself.

Wouldn't trust a floppy - I'd rather stick the files on a bootable floppy or a bootable USB flash drive instead. Floppies are just sooo unreliable.

[Deviate]

I have an Asus A8N-SLi Deluxe. I often update my BIOs... I always use 'Asus Update' in Windows to flash... Never had a problem... I've heard people complaining about flashing in Windows, but, personally I can't see the issue.

[Pie_uk]

the problem is, when i try and install the asus updater, it will tell me " no asus motherboard detected" """!!!! that is why i dont go near it lol

[Deviate]

Fair enough then haha

[Lee H]

the problem is, when i try and install the asus updater, it will tell me " no asus motherboard detected" """!!!! that is why i dont go near it lol

ahh the old X-FI and Asus motherboard detection issue

To remedy this please use the following steps to get it working again

1) open regedit and find HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Wow6432Node

2) Change this to the following - HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\aWow6432Node

Then the Asus updater works and installs fine

Please note - I do not take any responsibility for users using the above commands and then butchering the wrong key and making more issues