Bios flash with Win XP

steved · Wed May 08, 2002 1:36 pm

What kind of clean boot disk will work with XP? Can I just download a DOS boot from drivers.com or do I need to download the XP boot disk from M.S.? I know how to get the Bios flash from Soyo, but just don't quite understand the lingo about using a clean DOS boot disk when XP doesn't run over DOS. Please excuse my ignorance and help me.

Wed May 08, 2002 1:47 pm

Get a DOS boot disk.

a_user · Wed May 08, 2002 3:03 pm

The boot disk can be DOS, Win98 or what ever as you are working with the hardware and not the op/file system.

Hardware Junkie · Sat May 18, 2002 3:26 am

Forget that. Just download one from here:

http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm

I suggest a Windows 98SE/ME disk

Sun May 19, 2002 2:11 am

http://www.bootdisk.com and get the DRDOS 7.x one that is specially made for flashing (no drivers/memory manager BS).

joegib · Sun May 19, 2002 12:09 pm

Don't really understand why steved being told to go through the rigmarole of downloading a DOS boot image and then decompressing it to a floppy. Like Great said, generating a perfectly good DOS boot disk in XP is no more trouble than formatting a floppy. The XP boot disk IS a WinME boot disk. Better still, it is similar to an old DOS "SYS" disk so it is ideal for flashing.

These sites holding boot disk images are a useful resource for, say, Win2K users because they don't have the means to generate a DOS disk. Trouble is, they hold all sorts of images and inexperienced people can end up downloading Win98/ME Startup disks. These are NOT good disks for flashing -- unless you kick them into "Command Prompt only" or "Minimal Boot", they'll load all sorts of crud like CDROM drivers, a memory manager and even a RAM disk which can foul up the flash process.

After leaving the facility to create a DOS boot disk out of Win2k, presumably Microsoft recognised that it was still needed for purposes like flashing and restored it. So if it's there, why not use it?

Sun May 19, 2002 12:25 pm

Do you know what is Windows ME boot disk? Its IO.SYS conatins HIMEM.SYS which can cause many troubles.

Hardware Junkie · Mon May 20, 2002 2:54 am

I have never had an issue using a Windows 98SE boot disk to flash. I always choose "Without CDROM support", mostly because it is not needed.

Mon May 20, 2002 3:33 am

joegib: the DRDOS disk I point at is a perfectly clean no driver/no memory manager bootdisk. Go ahead, try it, see how much trouble it is and how much shebang is in there.

joegib · Mon May 20, 2002 9:06 pm

I was surprised by Rainbow's suggestion that the WinME version of IO.SYS contained a copy of HIMEM.SYS. This was because I had a WinME Startup Disk to hand and this contains HIMEM.SYS as a separate file -- I still don't understand why that should be. Anyway, I found an MS article which confirmed Rainbow's information. I also did some tests on minimal boot disks (IO.SYS, MSDOS.SYS, COMMAND.COM only) based on DOS 6.22, Win98SE and WinME using a DOS memory diagnostic program. These showed beyond doubt that the WinME and XP versions do load a memory manager.

I must have flashed the BIOSs on my 3 PC systems at least 20 times using the WinME minimal disk. Plus DVD ROM drive firmwares at least 10 times, all without problems. Anyway, I'll certainly be looking at cleaner alternatives so thanks for the information gents.

Mon May 20, 2002 9:18 pm

HIMEM.SYS usually does not cause troubles, but it can - especially if you are trying to boot from BootBlock BIOS to recover corrupted BIOS.