ASUS A7M dead after flashing Bios

Hitman · Tue Mar 26, 2002 2:51 pm

Yesterday I tried to flash the new 1006 BIOS on my ASUS A7M266 using Asus' Dead-Update program. My PC locked and I got no response after the reboot. Is there any hidden feature on the motherboard which I can use to reset my BIOS? (it's not in the manual). The only thing that's described is how to reset the admin password.

Can anybody help me? I'm almost panicking now

Tue Mar 26, 2002 3:14 pm

Whn you power up the board, does it try to boot from floppy?

Hitman · Tue Mar 26, 2002 4:50 pm

No, it does absolutely nothing. Black screen, and the Harddisks stop running after a couple of seconds.
I've contacted a friend of mine to do a hot-swap tonight, but if somebody knows any other way, I'd try that first. Any tips for the hot-swap (do's and dont's)?

Tue Mar 26, 2002 5:47 pm

If it does not do anything, there is no other solution.

read http://rainbow.ht.st/hardware/hotflash.html for more info

triple check chip orientation before inserting in the socket (the half-circle key on the chip must match the key on the socket)

Hitman · Tue Mar 26, 2002 10:37 pm

Well, I'm back from my friend, and everything worked out fine! Strange thing is that I tried to flash the new version, but it gave a checksum error! So there must be something wrong with that bios version. Thanks for the help Rainbow, at least somebody reacted to my panic call

I hope noone else makes the same mistakes I did, so here are the things I learned:

- Never use the Live-update program from Asus
- Always backup your old bios first before flashing
- If the update didn't work 100%, flash the old version first
- If the bios wasn't flashed correctly, Don't turn off your PC
- Try to get a friend to buy the same motherboard as yourself

Tue Mar 26, 2002 10:48 pm

I used the flashing feature from Live Update to update BIOS on my Asus P2B board from Windows ME and it worked fine.

Hitman · Tue Mar 26, 2002 11:07 pm

Rainbow wrote:I used the flashing feature from Live Update to update BIOS on my Asus P2B board from Windows ME and it worked fine.

Then you are very lucky I guess. To be honest, I've used the Live Update one time before this, and everything worked fine aswell, but I think people are safer if they boot to dos and use the aflash program.

Wed Mar 27, 2002 4:30 pm

I can safely flash from Windows because I hot-flash a lot

Hitman · Wed Mar 27, 2002 11:03 pm

Well, that explains it I guess

Thu Mar 28, 2002 1:06 am

Until they find a way to make 100% sure your windows install is healthy when you flash: just don't.

There are too many factors that can be of influence. anti-virus programs, bad drivers, monitoring software etc.

DOS-flash is easy: bootable floppy disk, no other stuff than the boot files, the flash util and the bios file.