M2N-SLI Deluxe: BIOS bad flash, flash memory write-locked?

My system was acting strangely at boot- it would sometimes lock if certain USB devices were connected, but not every time. That kind of flakeyness is not comforting. So I decided to bring the BIOS up to date.

The flash updater included in the BIOS had worked fine before, so I used it.

The progress bar 'finished', and then nothing else happened. I left it for an hour just to be sure. When I cold-booted it, all I got was a BIOS checksum error, and then it would go looking for the original mobo driver CD so it could attempt to run awdflash.exe and then write the .bin file on the CD.

When it runs, it writes the first block ok (white), but the rest come up red. At the end of the attempt, it says something to the effect of "flash memory is write locked. check jumper configuration."

The problem is, this mobo is jumperfree, so there isn't a bios read/write jumper.

Any ideas, or should I start shopping for a replacement mobo?

Sounds like a bad flash and RMA possibility. You could try unplugging the system from the wall and removing the MB battery for 5-10 minutes. Also, the instructions for defaulting the BIOS are in the MB manual. Reset CMOS.

Try to use the newest adwflash.exe version

well, it IS looking like an RMA. crud. even after clearing the CMOS and trying a few more times, every time I ended up with failed writes... and the blocks that wouldn't write were not consistent. I think it is a hardware failure. hope the warranty is still good...