ASUS P5BW-LE 1.01

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

Hi guys, last few days I solve very frustrating issue on the ASUS P5BW-LE revision 1.01 motherboard that is made for HP Desktop PCs. I bought it as a used piece and it is the worst thing I could do since there is no support for this piece of crap. I really confused of this motherboard because I watched out the whole HP website for support of this mobo, but didnt found anything related to it. I found out some info on the HP site about P5BW-LA mobo which is made in 2 different versions, with integrated graphics (HP called Buckeye) and without it (HP Basswood or Basswood2). I really dont know the difference between -LA and -LE versions of this crap. Anyway my Award BIOS ID is "Broadwater-Buckeye-00" version 0.06 (!??) dated 01/20/2006. I solve this strange issues: After installing WinXP I am not able to shut down the computer regularly since it permanently reboots when shutting down. Another strange issue is that it is not possible to install graphic drivers for the G965 chipset, this attempt ends up watching black screen:o( There is some windows based BIOS update for P5BW-LE/LA mobo on the HP site, but it is used only for Windows Vista and should solve the restarting issue. I've tried it to extract and got winflash utility and some strange .ROM file that could be the new BIOS but is is not recognized by any flashing utility even the included winflash (!?) I desperately need some new BIOS file for this mobo. Is anybody so pleased and send it to me? Please if anyone of you uses HP Pavilion Media Center Desktop PC versions m75xx, m76xx, m77xx or Compaq Presario Media Center SR20xx, SR19xx (xx=various numbers) it would be very very nice of you to make a backup copy of your bios by some flashing utility (uniflash or winflash should be working) and send it to me. I will very appreciate it. Thanks for your help.

[edwin]

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/gene ... R1002_AUEN

Description

P5BW-LA/P5BW-LE Motherboard BIOS update resolves system shutdown and reboot issues.



Fixes

# Resolves system shutdown and reboot issues.

This is:

11/24/2006-Broadwater-P5BW-LA-00
5.04 11/24/2006

and should work for your board.

edwin wrote:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericSoftwareDownloadIndex?cc=au&dlc=en&lc=en&softwareitem=pv-45411-1&jumpid=reg_R1002_AUEN

Description

P5BW-LA/P5BW-LE Motherboard BIOS update resolves system shutdown and reboot issues.



Fixes

# Resolves system shutdown and reboot issues.

This is:

11/24/2006-Broadwater-P5BW-LA-00
5.04 11/24/2006

and should work for your board.

Thanks for your info, I have found this patch but is not working ending up with message "upgrade is not suitable for your system". I think this is because I have tried it on WinXP and in the enclosed info is written "for Vista systems"..and I won´t buy Win Vista just because of flashing this crap. I need the raw BIN file for flashing regardless of which OS I use.

[edwin]

the winflash utility should work both with winXP or Vista. Anyway, you've got a raw file in your mail.

edwin wrote:

the winflash utility should work both with winXP or Vista. Anyway, you've got a raw file in your mail.

Hi Edwin, it is very nice of you to help me in fixing this issue, but I'm afraid of no luck with this "BIOS" file. I have extracted it too from the HP patch and even the enclosed winflash utility is not able to recognize it as a valid file. Have you seen the header of it in some HEX editor? It starts with some crap, continues with some bwg_1384.dat file and the true BIOS data start after all this trash. I have flashed hundreds of boards but haven't seen any crap like this! It seems to me that HP made some "all-in-one file" with both BIOS and handling data for the flashing utility. This is my explanation of this nonsense. The only way to get the true BIOS file is to backup some BIOS from the machines I stated above since I know HP put this board in these models. Anyway thanks for your help!!!

Sincerely

Martin

[edwin]

it's exactly 8megabits in size and this board has an 8mbit firmware hub. modbin won't touch it but then again it's not a real award bios but an asus one and I have seen quirks between those and modbin before. It is the real bios file. That 504c.bin is just one of the module names as is the .dat piece.

Try uniflash.

edwin wrote:

it's exactly 8megabits in size and this board has an 8mbit firmware hub. modbin won't touch it but then again it's not a real award bios but an asus one and I have seen quirks between those and modbin before. It is the real bios file. That 504c.bin is just one of the module names as is the .dat piece.

Try uniflash.

I tried the last award flasher version 8.73 and the last uniflash utility version 1.40 but none of these indified the flash ROM, since both were very old (the mobo was made in 2006). The only flasher that recognized the flash chip was the included HP winflash version 1.82P, but even this utility couldn't open the BIN file. I made a backup of my crappy mobo BIOS by this utility and the structure of it is whole different than the HP BIN file.

I tried the last award flasher version 8.73 and the last uniflash utility version 1.40 but none of these indified the flash ROM, since both were very old (the mobo was made in 2006). The only flasher that recognized the flash chip was the included HP winflash version 1.82P, but even this utility couldn't open the BIN file. I made a backup of my crappy mobo BIOS by this utility and the structure of it is whole different than the HP BIN file.[/quote]

OK guys a bad news, I downloaded some special version of awdflash that supports my flash ROM (I found out it is ST M25P80) and flashed the new BIOS to my mobo, now I have a dead board There is no way back since nothing is working even the floppy.

Uniflash/award flash does not work with this board, because its too new I think. I was able to get the BIOS image with Winflash (the one with the "segment picture" of your bios areas). I haven't flash anything/done anything to my Basswood motherboard because I don't want to crash it and not able to recover via bootloader/failsafe mode.

Does anyone know if I can flash a Basswood2 bios into Basswood mb??

There seems to be a Basswood3G that supports "Intel Core 2 Quad (Kentsfield core) Q6xx0 with Quad Core technology"... but the motherboard color looks different.. an extra PCI x1 and no PCI Expansion. Gigabit ethernet, totally different.

thanks

I had a problem with a P5BW-LA motherboard on a de-branded HP machine. The refurbished computer would cyclically reboot and never get to the OS. I purchased another motherboard of the exact same type - guess what? I got the same problem again. It wasn't until the second mother board with problems was installed that I started to look closer at the BIOS settings. I found that the board was set for a hard drive array instead of a single hard drive. After changing this drive setting, my board worked perfectly. I believe this problem to have been caused by a BIOS update - that the update pushed the drive setting to drive array but I have not been able to substantiate this statement. I can factually state for users with problems on the P5BW-LA board to check their BIOS drive setting.

What is de-branded HP machine?

My "de-branded" HP machine was a machine built on HP's specs and with HP parts but did not carry the HP name or had the HP name removed from the case, documentation, and other visible aspects. It may have been due to a refurb agreement - the machine previously had problems and was sold as part of a group of PCs to be checked out and sold off as a generic PC even though it was originally built for HP. Whatever the reason, the PC was built with HP parts but was not longer allowed to carry the HP name.

ttaege wrote:

I had a problem with a P5BW-LA motherboard on a de-branded HP machine. The refurbished computer would cyclically reboot and never get to the OS. I purchased another motherboard of the exact same type - guess what? I got the same problem again. It wasn't until the second mother board with problems was installed that I started to look closer at the BIOS settings. I found that the board was set for a hard drive array instead of a single hard drive. After changing this drive setting, my board worked perfectly. I believe this problem to have been caused by a BIOS update - that the update pushed the drive setting to drive array but I have not been able to substantiate this statement. I can factually state for users with problems on the P5BW-LA board to check their BIOS drive setting.

Just curious, was your motherboard the buckeye or basswood? My father's motherboard went bad and I am trying to find a replacement buckeye board so I do not have to worry about the windows security crap with trying to boot the hard drive off of a different bios.

If anyone has one lying around that they are not using I would like to purchase it.

- Jason

I have the "first" motherboard. It is a Basswood. I need to validate that that its problem was the BIOS drive setting but otherwise the board should be fine. It is for sale if you are interested.
P5BW-LA Rev. 1.05 a/k/a Basswood