[Biostar M5VNB][VIA MVP4] Req BIOS Update.

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

Hi, does anyone have or know where I can get the latest BIOS update for a Biostar M5VNB?

Reason for update request: Buggy APL code in BIOS. Causes very high system instability, with or without ACPI disabled in BIOS. Crashes are consistent across all OSes and independent of HDD/RAM/CPU.


Here are my mobo details:

Brand: Biostar M5VNB
Chipset: VIA MVP4 / VT82C686A southbridge
Bios: AWARD v4.51 PG
Firmware date: 04/03/2001.

Yes, I've checked the BioStar FTP, they still have this update and the older 06/07/200 update, but not the newer one.

The newer one, according to eSupport, fixes the ACPI/APM code so that it's compatible with WinXP and is stable. I could purchase it, but I feel spending $30 for this old board isn't worth it, considering I could get a newer board+athlon processor at a lesser price on eBay.

So can anyone help me out please?

(Btw, I *am* willing to pay/reward the person if you find the new update. Don't expect >= $30 though )

[Denniss]

There's nothing newer available it seems. If the older Bios does not help then try to get a new board with better support.
Don't hold your breath on eSupport Bios, they often cause more problems than they fix. At least for a board that old 30 bucks are way too much.

[cp]

is there any special reason you suspect the acpi code to be buggy? just wondering since you stated that the board is instable with or without acpi. btw. what do you mean by instability? and which OSes did you test?

[edwin]

http://www.memtest86.com first. Unexplained crashes are often due to bad memory...

@Denniss: Thanks for your advise.

@cp: At the time when the PC crashes, the Event Log in Windows shows events with code 5 or 6. 5 is for ACPI BIOS attempted an illegal read, while 6 is for illegal write. I don't have the exact message as the error logs have been now overwritten, but this is a common problem for boards of this era, when ACPI was implemented. The solution was to either disable ACPI in the bios, or change the PC type to "Standard PC", or both, and/or reinstall windows with ACPI off in BIOS and choosing Standard PC while installing windows. I tried everything, but nothing worked. The OSes I've tested it on are Windows XP, FreeDOS, Knoppix and Puppy linux. The only solution I haven't tried so far is to get the newest BIOS, which would cost me $30

@edwin: Thanks for the reply, but yeah, I did run memtest for over a day, I also ran Microsoft's new tool WinDiag overnight, I even swapped with 6 different memory modules.

--

As far as the crash itself is concerned, after talking to a couple of experts who've worked with the MVP4/MVP5 chipsets, it appers that this whole series was extremly buggy/unstable. Some of them had success in running Puppy Linux without crashing. At present, I'm running Puppy, it's somewhat more stable than windows, but it did crash a couple of times. Each time it crashes, I'm changing a setting in the BIOS and/or the kernel bootup options and/or the devices/resources being used in hope that I can find a workaround.