BIOS Disaster

Hot-swapping and Boot-Block flash & Boot block flash and floppy support
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st0nedpenguin
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Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Sep 03, 2003 5:35 pm

First of all, hello!

Now.

Well, last night I decided to give ABIT FlashMenu a try, to update my NF7-S Rev 2.0, and needless to say first impressions are not good.

Halfway through the flash (performed with all settings at stock), my machine was rebooted, and then started up with this beautiful message.

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BIOS ROM Checksum Error

Detecting Floppy Drice A Media
INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

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So, I inserted a disk I have used to flash the BIOS in the past, thinking, OK, it'll just re-flash and be sorted, my mistake, next message was.

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Automatic Load AWDFLASH.EXE

Source File Not Found!

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I have tried disks containing every BIOS available for this motherboard, none of which has worked, any ideas?

I get the impression that I need to rename the BIOS file in order for it to work, but I haven't got a clue what I need to rename it to.
Denniss
BIOS Guru
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Joined: Thu Mar 21, 2002 8:16 pm
Location: Near Hannover (CEBIT) Germany
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Do you have a flash prog named to awdflash.exe on your boot floppy ?
If not copy the version Abit suggest to use to this floppy
st0nedpenguin
New visitors - please read the rules.
Posts: 2
Joined: Wed Sep 03, 2003 5:35 pm

I gave the discharging the battery technique a try, no luck, I left it overnight so I think I can say it didn't fix it.

I did get an e-mail from ABIT tech support though, containing this choice paragraph:

"Sometimes when BIOS is corrupted it is possible to recover the machine. It all depends on whether there is enough of the BIOS left to seek the floppy drive.
If when you turn on the machine, after a few seconds, the floppy LED comes on and the message "This "award bootblock bios rom checksum error, detecting floppy drive" on the screen. Then the following recovery procedure may work.
1) Format a diskette as a system disk.
2) Copy onto the diskette AWDFLASH.EXE, ABITFAE.BAT and the relevant BIOS .bin file.
3) Write an AUTOEXEC.BAT file to the diskette, which will run the BIOS upgrade. (E.g. to flash the MX BIOS onto a BX6 the AUTOEXEC.BAT file should simply contain the line: ABITFAE BX6_MX.BIN)
4) Put this diskette into the floppy drive of your machine, switch on (cross your fingers) and walk away for a minute or two.
5) If this process has worked then when you come back the computer will have attempted to boot and stopped, telling you that your CPU is "unworkable".
6) Simply set the CMOS up and off you go."

I'm going to give it a try tonight, and order myself a BIOS savior today, I'm not taking this risk again.:D
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