Verify Error during Winflash - have not rebooted yet - HELP

[jooppy]

Hi

I am trying to downgrade the bios from version 1.9 to 1.7 on my MSI K8N Neo Platinum motherboard using Winflash.

I have chosen the option to update all (DMI and Bootblock) and ticked the Clear CMOS box too.

Here is what happens when I hit the upgrade button:

1) Programs the DMI section, no issues
2) Quick flash of word "Erasing", cant make out exactly what it says, but I think its trying to erase the Mainblock.
3) Programs the Mainblock. It gets to 2% really quickly, then goes really slowly up to around 66%, which takes around 5 minutes, at which point the flash speeds up all the way to 97%, then goes slowly till 100%
4) Starts verify of Mainblock, but only gets to 2% and then pops up error window saying Error: Verify

I have tried shutting down Winflash, and retried the reflash with numerous different bios versions (1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.56, 1.6, 1.7, 1.9 and 1.91) but get the exact same behaviour everytime. I even tried different versions of Winflash, from 1.51 all the way up to the original 1.76 version I first used. I have tried all combinations of Winflash version and bios version, nothing works.

I have not rebooted my system yet, but know that I wont be able to reboot if I do. On the MSI forums, there are two other guys with the same problem. One guys is in the same situation as me, he has not rebooted, while the other guy did reboot and can now not boot up his system. He has tried a boot floppy disk, but the system will not boot off the floppy disk.

I have emailed MSI, but they might take ages to reply, so any help here would be appreciated.

Anybody else ever experienced this behaviour before, and if so, was it recoverable, or did you end up needing a new bios/bios reflash?

One more question, I suspect that the bios might be write protected, or might have had the antivirus option on, and this might explain why the erasing of the Mainblock flashes past so quickly. Is this a possibility, and if so, is there anyway to deactivate this, or manually erase the bios before
running Winflash?

Thanks
Jooppy

[fairyliquidizer]

As Joopy knows from the MSI forum I have the same problem. I decided to bite the bullet and see what happened after the reboot. I am now bootblocked.

Question: If I reset the CMOS is there a chance I will loose the bootblock option?

I don't want to chance loosing what seams like a last chance for me!

I don't have a floppy drive so will have to buy one if I am to follow the bootblock procedure. Moreover I might need two as I need to get the files onto the floppy and my laptop doesn't have a floppy either!

I assume that although my AGP graphics card works in bootblock a USB floppy drive wont.

Fairy