please help me as asus aint going to

[ashiplikethat]

i need to update my bios due to issues with my x-fi soundcard.
i have tryed there asus update tool and that wont work.
so am now trying to use afudos. i made a ms-dos startup disk as instructed in there manual added the a fudos utility inserted disk and pressed restart. i came up with a message saying disk I/O error and all that would happen is it would keep coming up again every key i pressed.
if i take the disk out it just boots into windows normally.
i have got my floppy as first boot device so i cant think where im going wrong.
please help me ive been trying for weeks to solve this problem.
i have a8n32 sli deluxe mobo
other than restarting the computer with an ms-dos startup disk in the floppy drive is there any other way of getting into dos using XP?

 

[o1die]

You need to create a separate partition to use dos programs. Partition magic might do it, but I've never used it.

 

[mesarectifier]

PartitionMagic is great, it performs its actions during system boot (like CHKDSK)

You can't use DOS in WXP because it isn't there - DOS can't read NTFS anyway, so there's the problem with DOS startup disks not working.

 

[Randy77]

I keep a windows 98 boot disk handy for this. It has always worked for me. Just change the config.sys to skip all the SCSI drivers you don't need, and up the size of the ramdrive by about 2MB. You won't be able to see any NTFS partitions when you boot off a windows 98 floppy, but that's ok. Once you've booted up, copy all the files from the floppy to the ram drive and run the update from there. You could run everything from the floppy, but running it from the ramdrive is much safer.

Alternatively, and what I've done with a8n32sli deluxe, is to put the BIOS onto a CD-ROM and hit SHIFT-F8 during POST. This will cause the BIOS to read the new code off the CD and flash it. Works great. For some odd reason, it doesn't work when you put the renamed file on a floppy, even though the manual says it should, but CD ROMs are cheap. When the flash is done, label the CD and toss it in the motherboard box so you have it to go back to if the NEXT motherboard flash fails.

I don't have a manual handy, so you'll have to double check it to see what you have to rename the BIOS image file to, and to see if I was correct about the hot-key being SHIFT-F8.

EDIT: The biggest reason I use a windows 98 boot floppy instead of an XP boot floppy is that it has the ram drive.

 

[4745454b]

WHOA!!!!!! Lets slow this down a bit before you mess up your computer. Guys, he's trying to update his bios, not access his hdd. His bios isn't formatted NTFS, it sits on a (4mb?) eprom on his motherboard. The afudos program should work, thats what I used to flash the bios on my K8N-E deluxe so that it would work with my Sempron. I did have to try 2 different floppy drives (and about 8 old disks that I had laying around.) inorder to get it to work. I'm guessing your having a similar problem. Floppys just aren't very good. The disks fail, the drives go bad. Try a different drive and/or disks if you can. (hate to say it, buy a new one if you can.) Does your A drive work in windows?

P.S. DON'T USE PARTITION MAGIC TO DO THIS! Thats just wrong advice.

 

[waylander]

I agree, try using another disk as the first floppy I tried using had errors as well. Then I would really suggest putting the AFUDOS tool and new bios .BIN file on a separate disk. Boot with your ms-dos floppy disk then when you see the "A:" put in the disk with AFUDOS and your new bios then type in the commands as shown in your instructions.

Remember to rename your bios file as shown in your instructions.

 

[Da_Banig]

Um... the 2 guys up there lol, he's trying to update his BIOS through a disk not trying to partition his HD.

ashiplikethat I will tell you a simple way to install the update, if you use Asus update, (most of the time) their server is busy and you can not connect, why? Because their server suks and their Global server was down for a week or something.

Best way to do it is, go to their website and download the lastest BIOS to your hard drive. And then use the Asus update software, DO NOT update the bios through server... Just select "Update Bios from a file" and then browse the file that you downloaded, and you can flash it from there easily without connecting to their server and download the BIOS.

 

[waylander]

I wouldn't be too hard on ASUS either as this really seems to be a Creative problem. I would check the Creative forums and do a search for x-fi and you will find many more than just ASUS boards that have problems with the x-fi.

I have read that it's an issue with the nForce4.

 

[Randy77]

Just FYI: I've never had a board fail when I updated from DOS (boot floppy), or from the BIOS. But the ONE TIME I tried to update the motherboard bios from within Windows, the motherboard died and could not be recovered.

I think it's better to be safe and use a boot floppy or save the BIOS to a CD-ROM and use the shift-f8 during POST to update it.