bad flashing, can be repaired?

[neCroManCer]

are the bad flashing bios can be repaired. plz tell me how to. or give me reference about its. the clear and long explanation is recommended. thanks a lot about your attention. and a big help is always appreciated!

CMC

 

[WingDing]

How are people supposed to help when you tell them nothing about your system.

Barton 2500+, 512MB Corsair Platinum XMS 3200 CL2, Radeon 9700, WD Raptor 10,000 rpm S-ATA HDD, Asus A7V600, Enermax 460W SilentPlus PSU.

 

[phsstpok]

Supposedly, I say supposedly, the BIOS boot block is protected even during a bad flash. This would mean that is possible to recover from a bad flash.

Unfortunately, the boot block only enables the barest of hardware, the keyboard, a floppy drive, and an ISA video card. Since most PC no longer have an ISA slot you must do your recovery blindly.

Here is a <A HREF="http://www.madshrimps.be/gotofaqlink.php?linkid=555" target="_new">link for the procedure</A>.

One thing the article fails to mention is that it can take a very long time before the PC decides to read the floppy drive. It could be 10 to 20 minutes. You might speed up things by removing all unnessary adapter cards and disk drives. (I used to have a link to more detailed article but I can't find it).

Frankly, I recall reading about only one person who has successfully recovered his BIOS this way but I guess it's worth a try.

If you have another PC with the same size BIOS ROM you can try a hot flash. It's risky.

If the PCs are identical you loosen the BIOS ROM on the good one. Next, your turn on the PC booting to DOS and load the flash program. Just before it is time to write the new BIOS update you swap in the other BIOS chip (the computer stays on). If it's the rectangular type don't get it backwards or it will go "poof" (I know). Flash the BIOS, shutdown, and put the chip back in the original computer.

If the PCs are different (the ROMS still have to be the same size 128KB, 256KB, 1MB, whatever), you can still do a hot flash but you need a program called UNIFLASH. The regular flash programs won't let you write to the wrong EEPROM.

Don't ask me for help. I just read about this stuff. I tried UNIFLASH once but my BIOS ROMS were different sizes and I couldn't make it work.

If these methods don't work you can order a BIOS replacement chip from the manufacturer. I got one from Abit a couple of years ago. It only cost $12 shipping included back then.

There are places online that can reflash your chip for you. If your chip is undamaged they charge you just for the reflashing if it's damaged you pay for the flashing plus a new chip.

Here's a couple links.

In the USA
<A HREF="http://www.badflash.com/" target="_new">http://www.badflash.com/</A>

In Europe (plus worldwide shipping)
<A HREF="http://www.flashbios.org/" target="_new">http://www.flashbios.org/</A>

<b>56K, slow and steady does not win the race on internet!</b>

 

[pIII_Man]

what's risky about a hotflash?

I have a dead mobo that i was thinking of hot flashing, i have another board that uses the same chipset (440bx) and both use an award bios.

I don't know alot about this procedure (only how to do it) but i really don't see much of a risk, worse case scenerio is you further screw up your dead bios.


If it isn't a P6 then it isn't a procesor
110% BX fanboy

 

[phsstpok]

There's plenty of risk.

You could zap or damage EEPROM while you are hot swapping it. Now you have two non-functional mobos, one damaged BIOS chip, and one chip with a corrupt BIOS.


<b>56K, slow and steady does not win the race on internet!</b>

 

[TKH]

One more thing is if the other BIOS rom is not yours (like friend, dad/mom, son/daughter, siblings) and you screw up again...

Me fail English? That's Unpossible!
<A HREF="http://www.anandtech.com/mysystemrig.html?id=22996" target="_new">My System Rig</A>

 

[4Ryan6]

Its possible to recover from a bad flash, as long as you haven't turned the computer off, but if you've shutdown the computer after a bad flash, you're pretty much screwed, and as Wingding said you haven't given us enough information to do more than stab in the dark with suggestions.



<b><font color=purple>Listing your system specs, will greatly aid us, in being able to help you solve your problem.</font color=purple></b>

 

[neCroManCer]

thank you for the usefull links!