PC completely locked up during BIOS flash - now very dead

Hot-swapping and Boot-Block flash & Boot block flash and floppy support
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PlagueHO
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Joined: Tue Mar 26, 2002 6:34 am

I have an ASUS A7V133-RAID mobo. I had been having problems when using more than 1 SIMM. So I decided to flash my bios from version 1007 to 1008. I stupidly used the ASUS Live BIOS update proggy (my first mistake).

The live BIOS managed to successfully clear my existing BIOS. It got 2% into writing the new BIOS and froze. It locked the mouse and keyboard and the entire OS. No response. I left it for about 10 minutes. I eventually decided that I would have to power off (even though I knew it mean death).

So I powered off. The machine (as expected) never came back up. No POST, no beep, no screen. All the drives power up.

I cleared my CMOS - still no go.

Does anyone have any suggestions of what to do next ?

Thnx in advance.
Plague
ajzchips
El cheapo dude
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Joined: Sat Mar 23, 2002 12:41 pm
Location: Madrid, Spain

You could try our FAQ (main page) for BIOS recovery techniques.
PlagueHO
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Joined: Tue Mar 26, 2002 6:34 am

I tried some of the things last night (e.g. formatted floopy with autoexec and aflash), but it was a no go (floppy wasn't even seeking on boot). I don't have another machine that I could try the bios swap trick in, so I decided the only option is new bios chip. So my new Bios is on the way (thanks badflash).
Paulo
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Well, as far as I know ... and I've tried this technique many times and it always worked is:
1 - Get the ecsflash program (available in the net)
2 - Get a functioning version for that bios ... peraps you can try the latest bios version for your board in the asus site.
3 - Have any board functioning.
The procedure is as simple as this and it's called the "Hot-swapping" method:
1 - Create a bootable flopy disk.
2 - Copy the Ecsflash.exe and the bios bin file that you get to that disk
3 - Power on the functioning motherboard with only the graphic card the memory the flopy drive and a keyboard attached to it (no HDD, sound boards,etc.)3.5 - NOTE: to make the procedure easyer and less risky, remove the bios from the working board and put it back on again but in way that the bios pins are in tuch with the dip soket but the bios is not compleatly attached to it (in order for you to remove the bios easyer).
4 - Power on the working board with the floppy.
5 - After that remove the bios from the dip soket from the working and powered board (WITH THE POWER ON ... DON'T SWITCH OFF THE POWER) and attatch the currupt bios CAREFULY.
6 - In the command line write ecsflash and press ENTER
7 - In the menu, select Flash bios (or something like that) It's the first option in the menu.
8 - It will ask then for the file (write then the name of the file and press enter)
9- The procedure should end in a few seconds.
10 - Power off everything
11 - Put the 2 bios back on in the boards.
12 - Before booting any of the boards you should make a bios reset (probably in a jumper near the bios dip socket).
13 - done.
If, when booting for the first time the board where you made this procedure you get a message telling you that the CMOS data is bad, just press del (or F1) to go to the BIOS settings, load fail safe or bios default values, rearange the settings in the bios if you want and all the procedure is finish.
NOTE: I'VE READ THAT THIS PROCEDURE (IF NOT DONE WITH CARE) CAN HARM THE BOARD AND THE BIOS IC WHEN TRYING TO APPLY THIS. AND ALSO THAT THIS SHOULD BE THE LAST PROCEDURE TO TAKE WHEN ANY OF THE OTHER SWORK.
I'VE NEVER EXPERIMENTED ANY PROBLEM IN DOING THIS, BUT THAS DOES NOT MEAN THAT THE PROCEDURE IS NOT RISKY.
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