BIOS modernization problem

[billionaiire]

I have ASUS K8N (nForce 3 250GB chipset) motherboard.

It originally had AMIBIOS version 1009. But, due to some memory timing issues, I downgraded the BIOS to 1006 using ASUSUPDATE utility in Windows XP.

Now, each time the computer starts, it says "Flash Chip not supported"

Amazingly enough, the computer works absolutely fine, and the memory timings are displayed (don't know whether they actually work at that frequency) correctly.

Every attempt to reflash the BIOS back to 1009 or above failed.

The ASUSUPDATE utility fails to start, and Windows throws a BSOD if I click on that program

On other flashing utilities, it says "flash chip not present", "size mismatch" or "asus mobo not present" (this in case of window based utils).

Surprisingly this has happened once before, and I was able to reflash it using Ctrl + F2 which takes BIOS file from bootable asus driver disk. Now I can't.

Any help by the GURUS? any utility which forcibly updates the BIOS? any gains by removing the BIOS chip and reinserting it and stuff like that?

[billionaiire]

I have read somehwhere, that ASUSUPDATE program is not very well suited to SP2.

Any clues?

[Ritchie]

Can you boot to a command prompt and try an alternative flash utility?

[billionaiire]

well.. I have tried every other utility (command prompt) etc. but in vain.

[Ritchie]

I would suggest trying Uniflash except I am not sure if this is meant for Asus boards.

If someone else can verify this detail this is probably the next I would suggest.

[billionaiire]

I tried using uniflash. It does not work either!!!!

So now I have a BIOS which cannot be upgraded, downgraded and erased. What should I do?

[KURIAKI]

Afudos for Asus K8N:
http://dlsvr01.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/flash/AFUDOS211.zip
Latest beta BIOS, 1011-003, released a few days ago:
http://dlsvr01.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/soc ... 11-003.zip
Latest official BIOS 1010:
Fix default memory timing setting.
http://dlsvr01.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/soc ... 8n1010.zip

[lostra73]

Hello,

Did you solve your problem?
Because I have the same very problem!!

Downgraded to 1006 and then stop.
No update, no erase...
Same situation.
Thanks

[curious]

it seems the last post was almost a year ago, by now everybody should have solved their k8n bios problems. I want to write this in case somebody still suffers the same problem.

As mentioned before uniflash didn't work but it seems uniflash (1.40) versions work to some extent. It seems current uniflash correctly flashes new bios bootblock and EZflash then hangs up without completely flashing the bios. After reboot, bios displays a checksum error and new EZflash activates and if you have Cd with K8N.ROM in root directory the updated EZflash correctly flashes the new bios.

I hope this info may be useful.

UPDATE: After a couple of successful tries uniflash method no longer worked. I don't recommend using this method. It still boots EZflash but EZflash fails to update bios. I had to use another mainboard (MSI) and MSI's flash program to rewrite k8n's bios.

[nacc]

I recently updated my system using a K8N-DRE board ... found for cheap online ... and the board came with the 1002 BIOS installed. This was rather annoying, as the 1002 BIOS seemed to not be transmitting the processor stepping of my Opteron 280s, so the fans were pegged at the fastest/loudest settings. `dmesg` indicated that there was a firmware/BIOS bug and upgrading the BIOS should help. The BIOS refused to flash using the regular tools and uniflash claimed it couldn't figure out the chip. So I tried using flashrom (http://www.flashrom.org/Flashrom) with the 1005 BIOS from within my Linux install (Ubuntu Lucid), and it worked like a charm, both reading and writing BIOS. I am now running with the 1005 BIOS, and everything is rock-solid. Hopefully this helps anyone else with a similar situation.

[edwin]

thanks for the link, it's a welcome addition to the toolbox, it seems they started where uniflash left off some time ago.