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System was not new AWARD BIOS

Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2002 2:45 pm
by nik80
Hello,

i tried to update my AWARD BIOS because of random OS-freezing. I have a K7VZA Elitegroup board.
I flashed the BIOS but now at boot-time it says "bios checksum error" and asks me for a Boot-Disk.
When i boot in DOS-Mode and try to do a new BIOS-Flash with the AWARD-Tool, i get this error message from the Tool:

System was not new AWARD BIOS version
Please update ROM BIOS first

what can i do? please help!

thanks
Dominik

Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2002 4:27 pm
by soupy
Have you tried a newer version of the flash utility?

Posted: Tue Nov 19, 2002 5:43 pm
by nik80
i got it!

the problem was the write-protect-jumper on my mainboard. the jumper was reverse than it was described in the manual. (write protect should be pin 1-2 but actually was 2-3 on the board).

dominik

Posted: Wed Nov 20, 2002 2:06 am
by KachiWachi
OK...now I got a question...

The Write-Protect jumper should have made it impossible for nik80 to have flashed, since it seems it was in the "protect" position when he originally flashed his BIOS.

So why did it appear to do so, and give him the messages he shows above??

Posted: Sat Nov 23, 2002 4:27 pm
by KachiWachi
OK...Again!!

I just saw this message last night for the first time when I hot-flashed a BIOS for a friend at work. Board is a TYAN Tomcat III, S1563 (i430HX-2A59FT5JC-00).

He said he got the board dead from another friend, and seemed to indicate some kind of flash was done on it, which killed it. I used UniFlash to save a copy of the installed BIOS, which read back using MODBIN v4.50.60 as "TYN TOMCAT V4.00e - 12/12/96" with a BIOS date of 12/13/96. I couldn't find this version at the TYAN site, but flashed (including BootBlock) to version 4.02, the latest for the board. Will post results probably Tuesday if it was successful or not.

When I used The AWARD Flashers I had, I found this message with Version 8.10B, 5.35A (used on my DFI), but not on the version supplied by TYAN (Version 5.2 - Evaluation).

So I had to revert to an OLDER version, not a NEWER one as soupy suggested.


Four Questions...

1) Was the installed BIOS an Evaluation one perhaps?

2) What does this message from AWDFLASH really mean?

3) Does AWDFLASH normally do the boot block as well, and should you? The only reason I did it was because I wasn't sure what was going on, and wanted to be safe. It was optional in UniFlash to do that (Advanced Menu).

4) When saving, does UniFlash (and AWDFLASH) save the BootBlock?

Thanks!!