Greetings everybody,
I badly need your expertise and help.
I tried to upgrade my Award Modular BIOS v4.51PG on Gigabyte GA-6BXC motherboard (ID string 08/18/1999 - i440BX-8671-2A69KG0DC-00) with the aid of BIOS bought at esupport.com, but I failed*. Consequently, I can't boot the PC.
I do hope that my situation isn't completely hopeless, as the keyboard and floppy drive LEDs go on for a sec after restart, although my monitor is black with warning 'Attention. No signal INPUT' displayed, and a series of beeps after the keyboard and before floppy drive check can be heard. If I restart from a Clean Boot floppy, then the floppy drive tries to read it (noise heard).
In addition, the front panel power switch (with green LED on) refuses to power off the system, although reset switch works, at least in certain situations.
1. Maybe this upgrade was just too advanced for my old motherboard
2. I don't know if this BIOS supports jumper and/or Boot-Block recovery and Gigabyte claims that such details are no longer on their records. Does anybody know by chance more about it?
3. Your advice on what to try next would be also highly appreciated.
Thanks in anticipation for your help.
Regards,
AndrewMSB
PS. Just in case, I'm enclosing below the details about my upgrade procedure.
*The failed upgrade details:
- The bflash loader started automatically by loading the BIOS upgrade file (6Z69KG0B.bin). I chose (the Backup & Flash New BIOS option, as recommended), and the original .bin file was created on my floppy. Unfortunately, a discouraging message - 'The program file's part number doesn't match with your system' was blinking and I didn't have details on what to do in such a case with exception of advice to retry in case of problems, or doubts.
- When I was returned to the main flash menu, it had extra options, with the last of them - Help, which was inaccessible. Having neither access to Help, nor details on the command line parameters, I didn't want to risk by making random choices and selected again (on advice displayed there) the previously used option. This ended up with the same result.
- At this point, I decided to return to my original BIOS (the Restore Original BIOS option). After the 'Flashing Complete' appeared, I removed floppy and hit F1, as instructed. I left the PC for 15+ minutes, but this changed nothing - my screen was black, so I decided to reset the PC (without a floppy).
- After restart a series of beeps was heard. My monitor displayed the warning: 'Attention. No signal INPUT', and the LED indicating floppy drive activity went on for 20 sec, or so, to finally go off.
- I checked all the cables and connections and restarted PC - this time with a Clean boot floppy. The only difference I found, compared to the previous situation, was that floppy was probably trying to read (specific noise) and that warning about lack of the signal input disappeared for a moment from the monitor.
BIOS flash failure
-
Denniss
- BIOS Guru
- Posts: 3153
- Joined: Thu Mar 21, 2002 8:16 pm
- Location: Near Hannover (CEBIT) Germany
- Contact:
1) Why on earth did you buy a Bios from esupport.com instead of using the latest file Gigabyte offers ?
2) It's highly likely esupport did sent a wrong Biod file - your ID was G0DC-00 but esupport sent you a Bios for G0BC-00.
If your Bios is still beeping it may be possible to recover your Bios. You need a freshly formatted floppy disk - search for drdflash.exe to get a bootdisk creator
2) It's highly likely esupport did sent a wrong Biod file - your ID was G0DC-00 but esupport sent you a Bios for G0BC-00.
If your Bios is still beeping it may be possible to recover your Bios. You need a freshly formatted floppy disk - search for drdflash.exe to get a bootdisk creator
Hi Denniss,
Thanks for the reply and your advice.
ad 1 the answer is very simple. I knew that I would have to switch to 100GB+ hard drive, before purchase of a new computer. Of course, I turned my first steps towards Gigabyte and I was unable to believe what I saw on their Website - the newest beta BIOS of 2002 with max. capacity of only 75 GB!
Therefore, I contacted five national support centers, incl. their head office in Continental China, and I've got everywhere the same answer 75GB. In addition, they were surprised that I was still using that old motherboard. At the same time adverts of support.com, a company derived from Award, seemed to offer what I wanted and ... much more.
ad 2 I really don't know, because I don't have an access to the newest database of the ID strings.
I assumed that they knew what to sell me on basis of the report produced by the software they asked me to run on my computer, before downloading their upgrade file. It would be very useful to know, now, if the reported difference was really meaningful. Therefore, if you can help, I would appreciate it.
Although you sound reassuring, I'm pretty new to BIOS and wouldn't like to make the situation even worse. Therefore I'd appreciate having more details about the procedure to be applied:
1. Is it useful to clean my CMOS first?
2. I've already created a boot disk with the flashing files of Gigabyte, as now it's essential just to revive my PC. I must admit that drdflash.exe is impressive by its size, thank you!
3. I understand that your assessment is based on experience, but you aren't sure if my BIOS supports jumper and/or Boot-Block recovery and this info wouldn't be easily available.
You also assumed that after all operations that I had performed, my BootBlock is still intact and recovering from it would be possible, right?
4. Finally and most importantly, how can I proceed with the BIOS recovery/upgrade, if my monitor is black?
Can I achieve it by having both system and flashing files in the main directory of my boot floppy and putting the flashing instruction into autoexec.bat, locatedalso in the same directory, in order to make the upgrade automatic?
I really do appreciate your help on this
Thanks
Thanks for the reply and your advice.
ad 1 the answer is very simple. I knew that I would have to switch to 100GB+ hard drive, before purchase of a new computer. Of course, I turned my first steps towards Gigabyte and I was unable to believe what I saw on their Website - the newest beta BIOS of 2002 with max. capacity of only 75 GB!
Therefore, I contacted five national support centers, incl. their head office in Continental China, and I've got everywhere the same answer 75GB. In addition, they were surprised that I was still using that old motherboard. At the same time adverts of support.com, a company derived from Award, seemed to offer what I wanted and ... much more.
ad 2 I really don't know, because I don't have an access to the newest database of the ID strings.
I assumed that they knew what to sell me on basis of the report produced by the software they asked me to run on my computer, before downloading their upgrade file. It would be very useful to know, now, if the reported difference was really meaningful. Therefore, if you can help, I would appreciate it.
Although you sound reassuring, I'm pretty new to BIOS and wouldn't like to make the situation even worse. Therefore I'd appreciate having more details about the procedure to be applied:
1. Is it useful to clean my CMOS first?
2. I've already created a boot disk with the flashing files of Gigabyte, as now it's essential just to revive my PC. I must admit that drdflash.exe is impressive by its size, thank you!
3. I understand that your assessment is based on experience, but you aren't sure if my BIOS supports jumper and/or Boot-Block recovery and this info wouldn't be easily available.
You also assumed that after all operations that I had performed, my BootBlock is still intact and recovering from it would be possible, right?
4. Finally and most importantly, how can I proceed with the BIOS recovery/upgrade, if my monitor is black?
Can I achieve it by having both system and flashing files in the main directory of my boot floppy and putting the flashing instruction into autoexec.bat, locatedalso in the same directory, in order to make the upgrade automatic?
I really do appreciate your help on this
Thanks
-
Denniss
- BIOS Guru
- Posts: 3153
- Joined: Thu Mar 21, 2002 8:16 pm
- Location: Near Hannover (CEBIT) Germany
- Contact:
Every Award 4.51PG Biosd should support some sort of emergency flash procedure but it depends on how much damage was done. Please check your motherboard manual - maybe there is a bootblock protection jumper.
The support 75GB is malformed on gigabyte website - supporting 75GB means native support up to 128GB because there is no limitation other than 64 or 128GB but not 75GB.
The support 75GB is malformed on gigabyte website - supporting 75GB means native support up to 128GB because there is no limitation other than 64 or 128GB but not 75GB.
OK. Unfortunately, my manual says nothing about any emergency procedure, and Gigabyte Support told me that they didn't have many details available for so old motherboards. The only jumper that could be of use is the CMOS jumper.
Do you find the suggested by me, in point 4 of the previous posting, procedure reasonable, or I should try something different?
Do you find the suggested by me, in point 4 of the previous posting, procedure reasonable, or I should try something different?
get the bios
get awdflash 7.xx (or get another version elsewhere)
create a bootable disk
modify the autoexec.bat on the disk to something like this: awdflash.exe name_of_the_downloaded_bios.bin /cc /cd /cp /r /py
put the disk into the drive and push the button
wait for the pc to read the drive...wait for the end of the flashing procedure....you're done.
get awdflash 7.xx (or get another version elsewhere)
create a bootable disk
modify the autoexec.bat on the disk to something like this: awdflash.exe name_of_the_downloaded_bios.bin /cc /cd /cp /r /py
put the disk into the drive and push the button
wait for the pc to read the drive...wait for the end of the flashing procedure....you're done.
Thanks a lot for your advice.
I've just returned from Easter break and would like to proceed with that recovery.
There is one problem, however. The newest BIOS upgrade file from Gigabyte, which I've already downloaded has the .f4c and not .bin extension (it's used with their flash884.exe BIOS loader). It's likely that the awdflash.exe can recognize only files with the .bin extension. In such situation:
1. May I just rename the Gigabyte BIOS upgrade file extension from .f4c to .bin and safely proceed using your prescription?
2. Shouldn't I also add the /sn flag in order to avoid backing up the original BIOS which can be erroneous?
3. Can this 30 KB awdflash.exe file be used directly after download, or have I to e.g. decompress it first?
Thanks in anticipation for these detai
I've just returned from Easter break and would like to proceed with that recovery.
There is one problem, however. The newest BIOS upgrade file from Gigabyte, which I've already downloaded has the .f4c and not .bin extension (it's used with their flash884.exe BIOS loader). It's likely that the awdflash.exe can recognize only files with the .bin extension. In such situation:
1. May I just rename the Gigabyte BIOS upgrade file extension from .f4c to .bin and safely proceed using your prescription?
2. Shouldn't I also add the /sn flag in order to avoid backing up the original BIOS which can be erroneous?
3. Can this 30 KB awdflash.exe file be used directly after download, or have I to e.g. decompress it first?
Thanks in anticipation for these detai
Wait a sec! Now I've got really confused.
- Before you advised me to use awdflash.exe with several flags, from within autoexec.bat. Being familiar with these flags, I found this solution exciting, as, if I understood you properly, the whole process, as well as restart would be done automaticaly for me. This is essential in my case, as I can't boot to DOS, my monitor is black and I wouldn't be able to see respective menus and react properly during flashing, if required.
- Now you're advising me to use the original flasher of Gigabyte (flash884.exe) in the similar way with an option /a, which meaning is completely unknown to me.
Are you trying to say that the latter will do the job of awdflash with all the mentioned flags, without a need for my intervention during the flashing? As far as I know this flashing procedure is very conversation intensive.
- Before you advised me to use awdflash.exe with several flags, from within autoexec.bat. Being familiar with these flags, I found this solution exciting, as, if I understood you properly, the whole process, as well as restart would be done automaticaly for me. This is essential in my case, as I can't boot to DOS, my monitor is black and I wouldn't be able to see respective menus and react properly during flashing, if required.
- Now you're advising me to use the original flasher of Gigabyte (flash884.exe) in the similar way with an option /a, which meaning is completely unknown to me.
Are you trying to say that the latter will do the job of awdflash with all the mentioned flags, without a need for my intervention during the flashing? As far as I know this flashing procedure is very conversation intensive.
right.AndrewMSB wrote:Wait a sec! Now I've got really confused.
- Before you advised me to use awdflash.exe with several flags, from within autoexec.bat. Being familiar with these flags, I found this solution exciting, as, if I understood you properly, the whole process, as well as restart would be done automaticaly for me. This is essential in my case, as I can't boot to DOS, my monitor is black and I wouldn't be able to see respective menus and react properly during flashing, if required.
option /a? there's no option /a in the autoexec.bat in the file from the gigabyte website. and i didn't write anything about an option /a either. they've already done the work for you..they created a nice autoexec.bat, included the flasher and the correct bios file. put them on a disk and boot it.AndrewMSB wrote: - Now you're advising me to use the original flasher of Gigabyte (flash884.exe) in the similar way with an option /a, which meaning is completely unknown to me.
i just ran the flasher without flashing anything..just to see the available options. "/cc /cd /cp /r /py" don't exist anymore in the 8.40 release of the flasher, so i guess it will just ignore them or complain about them.AndrewMSB wrote: Are you trying to say that the latter will do the job of awdflash with all the mentioned flags, without a need for my intervention during the flashing? As far as I know this flashing procedure is very conversation intensive.
without trying (i have a 6BXC lying around somewhere..) my first guess is: the flasher will just start flashing. just boot it, wait for some minutes and you'll see..
Well, to be precise, there was the option '/a' in the autoexec.bat of both available upgrades (v3 and v4c) dated 6-4-06 (flash884 6XBC.F4c /a), but Gigabyte replaced these files on 14-4-06. The latest versions don't have the /a option any longer! In addition, the flashers were changed from flash884, to flash840 and size of the f4c download increased from 375KB to 497 KB.
From the fact that you have autoexec.bat with a flashing command in it, it follows only that the flashing process should start without necessity of entering this command manually, of course, if everything goes OK. However, later in the process, flashers usually ask you specific questions to answer.
In my case this is critical, because, as I said earlier, I wouldn't be able to answer these questions without seeing them on the screen!
In addition, I've read the 'Gigabyte DOS Flash BIOS Guide' manual from their Website, which shows clearly that user's intervention is required a few times during the flashing, but I don't know if this guide is up-to-date.
awdflash.exe with proper options in autoexec.bat can do everything automatically from starting the flashing process through resetting the computer and clearing the CMOS without any need of using screen or typing anything and therefore is so attractive in my case.
I understand that you are not sure if renaming of the f4c extension to bin, will force awdflash to do the job (flash my BIOS).
From the fact that you have autoexec.bat with a flashing command in it, it follows only that the flashing process should start without necessity of entering this command manually, of course, if everything goes OK. However, later in the process, flashers usually ask you specific questions to answer.
In my case this is critical, because, as I said earlier, I wouldn't be able to answer these questions without seeing them on the screen!
In addition, I've read the 'Gigabyte DOS Flash BIOS Guide' manual from their Website, which shows clearly that user's intervention is required a few times during the flashing, but I don't know if this guide is up-to-date.
awdflash.exe with proper options in autoexec.bat can do everything automatically from starting the flashing process through resetting the computer and clearing the CMOS without any need of using screen or typing anything and therefore is so attractive in my case.
I understand that you are not sure if renaming of the f4c extension to bin, will force awdflash to do the job (flash my BIOS).
Can you send a copy of this file?AndrewMSB wrote: - The bflash loader started automatically by loading the BIOS upgrade file (6Z69KG0B.bin).
More than 100,000 BIOS strings in my database just now!
http:/ /www.kuriaki.has.it/
http:/ /www.supportbios.info
------------------------------------------
Saludos desde Cancun, Mexico
KURIAKI
http:/ /www.kuriaki.has.it/
http:/ /www.supportbios.info
------------------------------------------
Saludos desde Cancun, Mexico
KURIAKI
okay...here we go again:
i just flashed my board with the gigabyte files (aka bios, flasher, autoexec.bat). i floppied them, booted it and it just started plain flashing without any user activity. and YES: it did not modify anything and i only used the files contained in the archive i downloaded from gigabyte's website.
just for your pleasure and to save time you CAN (i will surely work without) add /R to the command line in the autoexec.bat (like: flash840 6BXC.F4c /R). it only makes the board reboot automagically after the flashing process is complete..but it will also work without. just wait 5 minutes after the floppy stopped working and you're safe.
happy flashing.
i just flashed my board with the gigabyte files (aka bios, flasher, autoexec.bat). i floppied them, booted it and it just started plain flashing without any user activity. and YES: it did not modify anything and i only used the files contained in the archive i downloaded from gigabyte's website.
just for your pleasure and to save time you CAN (i will surely work without) add /R to the command line in the autoexec.bat (like: flash840 6BXC.F4c /R). it only makes the board reboot automagically after the flashing process is complete..but it will also work without. just wait 5 minutes after the floppy stopped working and you're safe.
happy flashing.
