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dead bios?

Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2003 6:17 pm
by SERTECH
I flashed my bios chip & now I can't even boot up. I saved my backup rom but how can I use it ?

Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2003 7:46 pm
by NickS
- Did you clear the CMOS ?
- Does it beep ?
- Does it look at the floppy drive ?
- Check out www.wimsbios.com FAQ, paras #9 and #27.
- You could also look through the "My Motherboard is Dead" forum for some ideas.

Posted: Thu Feb 20, 2003 7:40 pm
by capisi
Q. What went wrong?

A. Lots of things go wrong with bios upgrades:

1. The exact right file must be used. Most often the wrong file was used for the upgrade. Being off by a single revision is often enough to kill the board. If the flash seemed to go perfectly but try as you might the board remains dead, suspect having used the wrong file.

2. Sometimes all you need to do is clear the CMOS and then go into SETUP and set things back they way they should be. You clear the CMOS by using the appropriate jumper or shorting points on the motherboard. This is usually called CL CMOS or CLRTC. The jumper is used with power removed or the shorting points are shorted with a wired or screwdriver. If you can't find either of these then remove power, remove the CMOS battery. Short the terminals that the battery plugs into on the motherboard, and replace the battery.

3. Many Upgrades will require the use of a "smart fan" plugged into the right header on the motherboard. Modern CPU's can overheat and burn out in under 5 seconds. To protect them they put protection into the bios requiring you to have the fan spinning at 2000RPM in under 5 seconds or the board will power down. If you power up the board and it turns back off after about 5 seconds, suspect this problem.

4. You flashed in a Window or over the internet. This is computer Russian Roulette. It is only safe to flash from a bootable floppy with no drivers, autoexec.bat, and no config.sys. Even this is not risk free. You should ALWAYS save the old file to floppy.

5. You have a defective chip. You can just about bet on it if you peel back the sticker on your chip and find it is made by MX or ASD or marked with an H.T and then a string of numbers. Only about 1 out of 10 of these chips will take a reflash due to their poor quality. It is the failure of this chip that likely caused your flash to fail, unless you know you used the wrong file. If the flash utility properly detected your BIOS chip and gave you a verification error or a write error part way through it is very likely your chip is bad. If your flash utility can not identify the chip, suspect the chip is bad. If your flash went normally, gave no errors, but your machine no longer works, suspect a wrong or corrupted file.

6. Your flash utility is too old or too new for your board. New chips and chipsets are added all the time to flash utilities. They are also removed. You may need and older or a newer flash utility than the one you have.

If all else fails you can have it flashed for you on a new chip or yours at BadFlash.com[/url]

Posted: Thu Feb 20, 2003 10:56 pm
by soupy
You're not going to keep pasting that every time someone has a question, are you?

Motherboard dead also?

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2003 1:30 am
by Ms7of9
Hi to all,
I'm new here. I have the same problem. Originally when i booted up BIOS was recognizing my hard drive, kept on saying "OPERATING SYSTEM NOT FOUND". I checked BIOS and my hard drive wasn't there so I took out the battery to clear the CMOS. I put it back but now I can't even boot up. I took out the hard drive and still nothing, no lights on floppy or cdrom or keyboard. The only thing that works is the power fan and the fan on the motherboard. Can someone tell me if my motherboard is dead or what else could be wrong? I even changed the battery for a new one. I have an ASUS model A7V-VE.

THANKS
7

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2003 1:36 pm
by NickS
Checked the battery voltage with a meter ? If you don't get lights at all on the keyboard, the 5V is not coming up which means that the soft power control is not working.

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2003 3:11 pm
by Ms7of9
hi and thanks for replying, does this mean that my motherboard is dead and i need to replace it? why is the fan working?

thanks
7

Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2003 10:48 am
by NickS
It could be dead; however, I have known boards which would not do anything until you had a good CMOS battery, which is why I suggested checking the battery voltage. Can you test your CPU and RAM on another motherboard ?
The CPU fan may be running because of something odd in the soft power control circuitry; depending on how it is designed, when the motherboard is OK you may see it run for a second or two and then stop, or never run at all. Does the hard drive spin up if you connect it to the power ?