Bios Update with an old motherboard

[gabrielbird]

Hi all,

This has me stuck...

My mother is running an old 2006/7 Packard Bell iStart which has a motherboard branded as P5VD2-NVM/S, which I think is just Packards version of the Asus P5VD2-VM model.

Recently the Pentium 4 processor packed up and we had a spare kicking round which was a 3.0ghz Intel Pentium D.

It seems to be having some minor run issues (occasional crash, the log points to the bios) and I need to upgrade the bios in order to iron these out.

Unfortunately, finding the file has got me to a dead end.

Asus do a file to support the P5VD2-VM board but I'm not sure I should use this. Even if I did, I have no idea how to flash the .bin file as I have no floppy drive, the motherboard won't boot from USB and I am running Windows 7.

Thoughts?

Any help appreciated

 

[COLGeek]

You can certainly try to flash the motherboard BIOS with the most current version to be found at:

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_775/P5VD2VM/#overview

Just use the Vista utilities and instructions for flashing the BIOS.

Keep in mind, this may not work or it could brick the mobo.

Also, check that the Pentium you installed is actually supported by the mobo. There are several Pentium variants and not all with work with all mobos. That info is available at the link above.

Good luck!

 

[swifty_morgan]

doesn't ASUS have an auto BIOS update tool that you can run straight of the desktop ?

 

[gabrielbird]

You can certainly try to flash the motherboard BIOS with the most current version to be found at:

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_775/P5VD2VM/#overview

Just use the Vista utilities and instructions for flashing the BIOS.

Keep in mind, this may not work or it could brick the mobo.

Also, check that the Pentium you installed is actually supported by the mobo. There are several Pentium variants and not all with work with all mobos. That info is available at the link above.

Good luck!

Thank you for the quick response!

I got to that page too. Didn't think there was any other way to find the correct BIOS considering how old it is and that Bell no longer exist like they used to. I will run the risk!

They have a program on the site called 'Phoenix Award BIOS flash tool version 1.32' but it fails to run in Win7 even when it is set to run as an XP program in the compatibility mode.

How do I get this program to run? It seems to be an MS-DOS program and you mentioned 'Vista utilities'. Is this something different?

 

[COLGeek]

Go here for instructions:

http://support.asus.com/Documents/detail.aspx?SLanguage=en&p=1&m=P5VD2-VM&s=22&hashedid=2sYAtam7ng8vCngf&os=&no=1704

 

[gabrielbird]

Go here for instructions:

http://support.asus.com/Documents/detail.aspx?SLanguage=en&p=1&m=P5VD2-VM&s=22&hashedid=2sYAtam7ng8vCngf&os=&no=1704

Perfect. Thank you for the help.