BIOS Updates forum

Hi guys.
Writing from Sweden and english is not my native lang så i hope you try to understand what i write as hard as try to write it correct

I just bought my self a new mobo. A Soltek SL-75FRN-L
It's a nForce2 mobo with Award BIOS
It has intigrated LAN. AC97 sound.
I got a problem with it and the problem is that the integrated LAN not working correct.
And the RedStorm oc that is on the screen in POST is not seen anyware i BIOS
I visit Soltek on the web and downloaded awdflash and BIOS nr 75frnl13.bin.
My original BIOS was n75fnl12.bin and the one i downloded is newer.

I Picked up an old msdos 6.22 and formattet a new diskett with /s
Copyed awdflash and the new BIOS file to that diskette.

I'm not fond of flashing BIOS with all the /sn and stuff in the command line
I typed wrong once and after that i flash the hard way with typing y in the right place in the time.

Everything looked great and no errors

After the flash was done i hit the F3 to reboot but the computer was dead. :-/

I had another mobo at home så i hotswapped and reflashed with the same floppy and took the original BIOS file i saved on the floppy when i flashed the first time.
Hit F3 and viola. I was back in biz.

And now for the questions:

1. Any of ypu guys herd of foulty bios file from Soltek?

2. The bios file comes zip'ed and was downloaded.
Is there a tool for checking upp the *.bin before flashing

3. Can you BIOS PRO rekomend a program to open *.bin and edit them?

4. The RedStorm OC feature is new for me.
Is ther a way to activate it are is it just missing on my mobo?

Tanks in advance
Anakin

http://www.soltek.com.tw/English/download/S75FRN-L.htm

unpack with winzip or similar first after downloading. If there is something wrong it will tell you.
Not sure about the Redstorm oc, you'd have to ask Soltek.
The edit prog is called modbin, use a search engine.

I missed the /sn that tells awdflash it's not a original BIOS.

I have flashed many ASUS boards with aflash and never had that problem

So if you guru's read this you learned something new today

"/sn" means "save:no"
i.e. it does not save an image of the original BIOS.

High Anakin
please look at first on your mobo because Soltek boards everytime start with SL 75FRN-L you have or is it SL 75FRN2-L ? Is it origin Soltek or OEM like MBO has had? If you `ve origin Soltek you should go to www.soltek.com.tw there you can find a new bios V1.4 and the right flasher too!!!!!!!!!! Very important !!!
You can take msdos since 5.0 for bootingdisk or linux or something else, but no autoexec.bat or config.sys should be found and never a himem.sys . If this is o.k. the flashing programm can be written on the disk but carefully you kneed everytime the flasher witch can flash the new bin file!!! It will if its necessary create an own autoexec file and your last your new bin file. Be carryfully control this and if you find an autoexec.bat file you should look in it what it will do because some bad flasher don `t restore your old bin . After this is all o.k. you start from floppy disk ! But before starting go into the bios and write all your setting on a paper and then set "bios by defaults". Last preparing is very important too take a look into the motherboard manuel and find first if there are first aid jumpers one for booting if nothing happened and another for cmos reset look what is written. After this start.
At first restore the old bin . Then restart or continue writing the new bin . If all goes o.k. the flasher tells you successfull updated . If not don`t switch the power off only flash again with the old bin file.
You`ve written that flashing works well and using F3 for restart but this won`t do.
Most times you´ll find a read me (first) file. Lock into it what will be new coming into the bios. If you find a message bootsector will be written there will be the danger that nothing works . But in the most times are there other problems coming up. Even Soltek I` ve had founded makes many problems with there low cost boards. First try jumper recovering if you can boot after this o.k.. Go into the bios look if your hdd and other are written well. Error messages from bios like cmos mismatch should be gone after next reboot.
If nothing will start try this : take all card out of there slots . Only your vga is needed. Then reset the cmos jumper. If you havn´t one please take the battery off. After this you should wait for some hours.(Take a walk perhaps don`t worry) Even you can shortcut the empty battery holder but you need waiting min. for one hour too.
Than try your luck. Put the cmos- battery in switch on and start only with vga card. Most times the bios will coming up. If not there will be sometimes mistakes into the new bin. Then you can`t do others that you `ve done take the old bin flash restore if this didn´t work you`ve a real problem . In most cases will be the eeprom dead ?! because it does not work into normal burning voltages you need a special burner to find this out or get a "post-card" which shows what happens before your monitor works. In your case it seems to be a mistaken bin or a cmos which isn`t reseted because you have had restored the old bin file well . And if you`re looking at solteks homepage tw you can see they havn`t good bios made because some weeks later they made updates .
Five times I had the cmos reset problem at Solteks boards.
Other problems were the drivers . My best results I have had after Windows setup first take the AC97 audio look for the newest driver at the chipproducer not by Soltek. Nvidia driver have sometimes the problem if the mobo producer take second chance chips and change therefor the origin application to an oem. (such like Intel did perhaps with Celerons and MSI with Nvidia graficchips and so on)
I hope that I could help a little . If the problems won`t go please write an email to the Soltek Company in Taiwan because they would help you too.
So good- bye and goo luck. Alfredo