Updating, not always a good thing ?

[fatcat]

Hi all, it's my first post here and I am taking this opporitunity to salute everyone on these boards.

For my first post, I though I would tell the tale of a dude(me) who is rather serious about keeping his software and drivers as much to date as possible and got into troube doing so.

A couple of days ago, I have decided that it was time for my yearly "clean slate" operation. The is a rather simple process c:Format. Since I like to try all kinds of programs on my computer, I think it's the best way for me to clean my system of all crappy left overs of programs that are lurking here and there in the registeries. Usually, when I am reinstalling OS and drives I take the time to check if new BiOS and Chipset drivers are available. As it happened, there was so I DL everthing and flashed my BIOS and installed the latest chipset drivers.

After doing that, XP was having a hell of a lot of problems to boot. It would take maybe 10 minutes before it got working. Ok, I thought maybe for some reason I have a bad HD, it happened to me before. I check the HD with the tool from seagate and found nothing wrong. Then, I said ok I will flashed my BIOS back to a preceding version. I have never done this before but it seems that you can't, at least not with this MB which is an Asus A8N-E. It seems to have a sort of protection against downgrading its BIOS. Maybe it's possible but I don't know how.

Anyways, I was getting out of patience. I went back to Asus support FAQ about my MB then I saw something that caught my eye. There was a thread titled Windows won't boot. There it was : If you have upgarded to the latest chipset drivers and are using a Sata II Seagate 7200.9 then you are in trouble. According to Asus, this particular HD has limitations of some sorts that cause this problem, it has to do with firmware or whatnot and they recommand that you send back your HD to Seagate to get it replaced. I thought that was pretty darn funny really. I had to have the only damn HD that causes compatibility issues with my MB. Even funnier is that both my HD are the same.


Anyways, I am not sending it back, I just bought another HD from WD and will use my Seagate elsewhere. I might be a little more caustious next time I go on a Upgarding Rampage....

 

[waylander]

just a couple of points...

You are correct that the asus online update tool will not let you update to an older bios version but can go to an older version of bios by using a floppy boot disk, once in dos you can upload the award bios flash tool, which you can find on the asus download site under bios.

Version V1.17 2006/05/03update

OS DOS

Description Phoenix-Award BIOS flash tool V1.17

If you want to clean out your registry without a clean install of xp you can also use registry cleaner tools like "Tune up utilities"

http://www.tune-up.com/

As for the chipset drivers you can probably do a sytem restore to before you installed them.

 

[fatcat]

I tried the Floppy methode for my BIOS Flashing, in fact that is the way I did it the first time. I did not use the online tool to do it. When I tried to flash it back to a previous verison, a message appeared and said the the seize didn't fit or something of the sort, not sure of the terminology.

As for cleaning registery, I was aware that some tools are available but I was wondering how efficient they are ? A couple of years back I tried a couple of them and they were not too good but obviously things change fast in the computer business.

Anyways thanks for your reply and I might take a better look at this procedure there is somthing I might have missed.

 

[pat]

I tried the Floppy methode for my BIOS Flashing, in fact that is the way I did it the first time. I did not use the online tool to do it. When I tried to flash it back to a previous verison, a message appeared and said the the seize didn't fit or something of the sort, not sure of the therminology.

As for cleaning registery, I was aware that some tools are available but I was wondering how efficient they are ? A couple of years back I tried a couple of them and they were not too good but obviously things change fast in the computer business.

Anyways thanks for your reply and I might take a better look at this procedure there is somthing I might have missed.

Maybe RAID is simply enabled by default in BIOS and since you've flashed it, then it may be at this point. Disable it and you may be ok

 

[KlaasVaak]

A couple of days ago, I have decided that it was time for my yearly "clean slate" operation. The is a rather simple process c:Format. Since I like to try all kinds of programs on my computer, I think it's the best way for me to clean my system of all crappy left overs of programs that are lurking here and there in the registeries.

Tip: After I have installed Windows with all critical updates, drivers etc, I create a Ghost image. The benefit of this is 1) if you ever need a clean windows just restore the ghost image and 2) if something goes wrong you will always have a backup of a good working windows. I burn the ghost image onto DVD for safe keeping.

To extend the tip: I also create a temporary ghost before I install programs. If I keep the programs I delete the temporary ghost image, if I do not like the programs I restore the ghost image. This is to keep my system clean.

 

[dunklegend]

I agree with KlaasVaak it´s a good thing to make an image of your system. I always do an image with just windows XP, office, and all the drivers and updates. Then I create an image with everything installed. The best about creating an image is that you´ll have your system running again in 30 minutes or less (Depending on your pc´s speed)

 

[fatcat]

Good advice, I have never use an image but that seems to be a good idea and probably a lot faster than reinstalling windows and all the drivers. Any particular program I should be looking for to accomplish this task ?

 

[dunklegend]

I´ve used Powerquest Drive Image and more recently Acronis True Image
I liked Powerquest Drive Image better but on the version I had you had to boot from a floppy disk and the floppies get corrupted very quickly. With Acronis True Image you can boot from a CD.