Replaced Gateway BIOS with Vanilla intel-Need to restorei915

by **dmb** » Fri Jan 27, 2006 5:52 pm

Hello, I have kind of a big problem. The stupid person I am, I replaced my normal gateway bios with the plain vanilla intel bios from the intel site. The best description I can give is a from another forum, where a bunch of other users have the same problem as me, and this is the same exact hardware:

The Intel Motherboard in my Gateway 3250S came with this BIOS:

EV91510A.15A.0123

I made the mistake of "upgrading" to the latest plain-vanilla Intel BIOS:

EV91510A.86A.0470

As a result I've lost use of the onboard Firewire in OSX.

Gateway ftp site does have a new BIOS for this motherboard:

AG91510J.15A.0816

I have tried installing the new BIOS from within WinXP, and using iFlash from a boot floppy. In both cases the flash aborts when it identifies that I am trying to overwrite an "EV" BIOS with an "AG". I even tried removing the BIOS jumper and the "recovery" mode from a floppy and still get no flash.

I'm pretty sure that iFlash can "force" a flash, which is probably what I need to do, but I have not found an understandable description of the iFlash syntax on the Intel site or elsewhere on the web.

QUESTIONS:

1) Anyone out there have a copy of, or a link to, the old EV91510A.15A.0123 Gateway BIOS ?

2) Anyone out there able to instruct me on how to force a flash of the AG91510J.15A.0816 BIOS ?

Thanks!

Question is, how do I get the normal gateway bios: ftp://ftp.gateway.com/pub/hardware_supp ... AG915G.exe back on the system? I tried uniflash, but appearently, they don't give me a .bin dump. PLEASE PLEASE HELP ME. My problem is actually for a critical task. With this plain vanilla bios from intel, VGA can't be autodetected by the bios(in linux), FANS are all messed up and don't work correctly and hibernation doesn't work correctly. PLEASE PLEASE! I will also refer the other people having this same problem to this forum. THANKS A LOT!!

by **tkerins** » Fri Jan 27, 2006 10:13 pm

Gateway swears up and down that the AG91510J bios is the correct bios for their intel d915G series boards but what they don't understand is that since this is an intel board the bios files are in the intel express bio update format. You can not use just any utility with these files. You have to use IFLASH from dos or use the windows GUI verison of Intel Express Bios UPdate. These utilities have security in them which prohibit you from writing over a bios with a different BIOS ID! The -force option that dmb mentioned does not work because its purpose is only to force an update of an older or same version bios. It will not let you overwrite with a bios which has a different board/oem id. Somewhere along the way Gateway changed the id format they use on their boards and didn't think about how people were going to update bios on the boards with the old format. Sure you can still use the genuine intel bios but the gateway boards are slightly different from the oem intel version and strange things will happen. On my system S3 suspend to ram no longer works. So, the easiest fix would be to find someone with the gateway version "EV91510A.15A" + any version number, have them use a utility like uniflash to copy it off and make it available to those who need it. Unless someone has an idea of how to get Gateway to come forward and find a solution!

by **dmb** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 12:14 am

Do you happen to now the exact file that contains intel express image? Because maybe i can open that in a hex editor and try changing the id. Yes, i know its dangrous, but it may be the only choice. Also, anyone know of a utility which would convert intel express bios images into the standard ones used in uniflash? Maybe the best luck is for someone to extract an image from someone who has the gateway bios already?

by **KURIAKI** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 3:52 am

I don't know if this works:
In the unlikely event that a flash update is interrupted it is possible the BIOS may be left in an unusable state. Recovering from this condition requires the following steps (be sure a floppy drive is connected as drive A):
WARNING: This process is intended to be performed by a trained technician.
Note: The floppy disk does NOT need to be bootable. However, the floppy disk must be formatted.
1. Copy the recovery file (*.bio) to floppy diskette.
2. Place the diskette in the floppy drive (drive A) of the target system.
3. Remove the BIOS Configuration Jumper. See the Technical Product Specification for details including the location of this jumper.
4. Power the system on.
5. Wait 2-5 minutes for the update to complete. No video is available during the BIOS update procedure. When the floppy drive LED is lit, the system is copying the recovery code into the FLASH device.
6. System will turn off when the recovery process is completed.
7. Remove floppy in drive A:
8. Restart system
NOTE: If the error message "CMOS/GPNV Checksum Bad…Press F1 to Run SETUP" appears during boot, then press [F1] to go into the "BIOS Setup Utility", press [F9] to load setup defaults, and then press [F10] to save and exit.
Extract AG915G.exe, copy AG0816P.BIO to the floppy and try.
My only concern is that Gateway and Intel BIO files has different sizes and structure.

by **dmb** » Sat Jan 28, 2006 3:59 am

Yes, I already tried this, even that for some reason doesn't seem to accept the image, and gives me beeps telling me that. I will not however intentionally corrupt my flash, as that is how I actually broke (no repair) last time.

by **tkerins** » Mon Jan 30, 2006 5:25 pm

Hey DMB. The bios image always ends with *.BIO In the dos version I believe it is AG0816P.BIO and in the windows GUI version it is something like; BiosUpdate.BIO.. I have tried changing what I thought was the bios id string using a hex editor but it does not work. Aparently the area that is really used to determine the bios id is NOT in ASCII. If we can determine which bytes are used, we can swap them with the EV bios to fool it.

By the Way, there will be another file with the *.BIO with the extension *.ITK this is the way intel express bios files are made. This is some sort of info file created along with the bios file using intel express bios tool kit. I have also installed this app(intel express toolkit) which allows you to change any of the default options in the bios file and even view the bios id string but you can not change the bios id. My next step may be to do file comparisons on bios's in an attempt to locate the true id string. I'll let you know if it goes anywhere.

by **dmb** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 12:23 am

Yeh, ill try to do some binary diffs, and then try to convert the whole thing to decimal, and see if i can identify(and change) the bios ID. I don't know if i'll get very far, but i'll see what i can do. Ill try comparing the .bio files. Are your sure you can use the .bio files in the DOS version of iflash?

by **tkerins** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 6:27 am

Well after several tries at changing the bios id, I finally got it right. (not sure what I was doing wrong before). Even after getting intel express bios updater to accept the Gateway bios, it didn't work. It went to restart like it was going to flash the bios but instead of beeping for the flash process and then rebooting it just powered off completely.
Well, it looks like Gateway was wrong about this being the correct bios for my system. There is no other explanation. This is probably the same reason the recovery mode didn't work. There is something about the gateway bios that is not right. Looks like I will have to live with the intel bios for now.
Sons a bitches!

by **KURIAKI** » Thu Feb 02, 2006 11:44 am

tkerins wrote:There is something about the gateway bios that is not right. Looks like I will have to live with the intel bios for now.
Sons a bitches!

If you are going to live with it (0470), try the latest one (0478):
http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scripts ... bmit=Go%21

by **tkerins** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 5:54 am

Already flashed to the latest 478. It has the new intel logo on the boot screen. Otherwise seems about the same. Well, something else weird happened. wen't to logon after my wife had been on the computer and I received a message about the bios flash having failed. This is the normal message you would get after flashing with the windows gui method and after it boots back up you are supposed to get the "flash update successful" message. Well, I got this failed message and I hadn't flashed the bios again. At least not since the day before. I didn't think to much about it until the next morning after my wife had been on the computer again and I noticed the pc was in STR3 "suspend to ram" mode which hadn't been working since I updated to the intel bios. You can tell when STR3 is working because in standby mode the power led flashes. (up until this point, the led would go out in standby and the fans would continue to run). So now suddenly my suspend to ram function is working again and the fans also seem to be acting more like they used to. e.g. loud when pc is first turned on then quiet and only rising when cpu is working hard and they turn off completely in suspend mode. This is a mystery to me why all of the sudden it seems to be acting like it did when the gateway bios was installed..... Well, I won't question it. I'm just glad things seem to be back to normal. GREMLINS!

by **reason** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 2:53 pm

I've got the exact same board, luckily just flashed with the 0816 bios

But i got a side question - i want to remove the Gateway OEM logo from startup, but i can't seem to find how.
So can i either remove that logo somehow or should i flash in the intel bios? If so, how?

Thanks in advance!

by **tkerins** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 6:01 pm

I would definately stick with the Gateway bios on your system. Once you put the Intel on you may not be able to go back. There is a way to change the boot screen if you want. The Intel Integrator Toolkit I believe will let you do this. (do a google search for the name to find it). You must have the bios set with both the .BIO & .ITK files. The intel integrator toolkit loads up the .itk file and uses it to change default cmos values and also to change the boot screen. You can then save the changes and flash with the updated copy. I am not sure if it matters which flash method you use. I don't know if both methods use the .itk file or not. I am not even sure if it utilizes the .itk file during flash. The .itk file may only be used to update the .bio file using intel toolkit. If you use this method, you can let us know. Keep in mind, I'm sure there are some guidlines about the size and color depth of the boot screen you will use. You can probably find that info using google as well. Check the help file in the intel integrator toolkit. It may be in there also.
Good Luck!

by **tkerins** » Fri Feb 10, 2006 6:11 pm

It just occurred to me. Were you only looking to remove the logo and not put another in its place? You know in the cmos you can turn off the boot logo if you just don't want to see it. The setting is called something like; "silent boot enable" or "boot logo". If you turn the boot logo off you will just see the normal bios post messages. e.g. board info, ram count, drives detected, etc.
If you want to put a different boot logo in, then you would have to use the method I described previously. (or use something like "bootskin" and insert your boot logo as you windows boot screen) This method will show the boot logo longer and has a little animation in it.

by **LoneWolf** » Sat Feb 18, 2006 5:13 am

DMB, I'm curious,

How did you manage to upgrade to the Intel BIOS in the first place? I have a Gateway-branded Intel D845GVSR that I'm desparately trying to convert to Intel (it's going in a different system than Gateway, but one that uses the same model of board, the old board failed) and it's a no-go for me. I've tried using both the Intel ExpressBIOS and the DOS upgrade disk, but get a BIOS mismatch. I've tried Uniflash but it doesn't understand Intel's method of breaking the BIOS file up into fragments.

by **dmb** » Wed Mar 29, 2006 10:46 pm

Man, I didn't know this thread continued, because i thought i had notificaiton on. Anyway, nice information, ill try upgrading to the latest intel flash. And yes, i just ran intel express update and it updated.