Gateway FX 6800-01e BIOS Update from Gateway Unsupported - Page 5 - Chipsets-Bios

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The problem here is the EISA partition is Partition 0
and the Operating System Partition is Partition 1

When the system Boots, Gateway (Acer) loads certain processes related to the EISA Recovery partition. These processes monitor the system and as necessary, update the Recovery Image and drivers stored on the EISA partition. This is what is interfering with the ATI installation/update.

This is one of the reasons why it is preferable to do a clean install of Windows without all the OEM crap that is included when you purchase the system.

Now the reason why I recommended installing a new drive and installing windows to that drive is to get around some problems. One such problem is the OS being on the second partition which if you remove the first partition, this can cause a known problem which off hand I can't remember right now. (currently sick with fever). Another thing is you wouldn't have the Gateway processes loading in the background and you don't have to worry about the drive accidentally being converted to an EISA partition.

A Plus is more drive space and a clean installation.

You don't even need the EISA partition really. Instead, you can get Gateway to send you the Restore DVDs (there are 2 of them).

The Disk title is:

Applications, Drivers, & Operating System Restore DVD P/N DD G410X SVA
1-4D5MCY

On the back is a Red Warning Sticker about the software may not be returned for a refund if the seal has been broken or tampered with. There is also a part number on the sticker - Part No: 3004919

Reply to Renegade_Warrior

Register or log in to remove.

OK. Thanks. I'll do a bit more research. From what I have been reading, you do have to make sure the remaining partition does what it is supposed to do. Get well soon!!

Reply to BenL9

Renegade_Warrior wrote :

Sorry 'bout that.

Here Are The Two Methods For Updating Your BIOS

-

All the files you extracted from the Zipfile need to be in the same directory, especially the driver files or it won't work.
(preferably in directory off the Root of the drive such as C:\Update or some such)

Next, not knowing if you have the original or the fixed version, using Notepad or your favorite text editor, open the file flash.bat

The only line you should see in the file is AFUWIN.EXE 842P161G.ROM /p /b /x /L2 /REBOOT

-

To be on the safe side, disconnect your system from your network or broadband modem to isolate it.

Then disable your Anti-Virus program and make sure nothing else is running in the background.
(This is to make sure that nothing interferes with the Flashing of your BIOS) as a Corrupt BIOS will ruin the system.

Then select Start > Run and browse to the folder where the files are and select flash.bat - then hit Open.

It should work.

DO NOT Touch anything until it finishes.

-

The other method would be to run AFUWIN.EXE in Windows Mode.

Same as before, all the files will need to be in the same directory.

Make sure your system is disconnected, the Anti-Virus is disabled, then
select Start > Run and browse to the folder where the files are and select AFUWIN.EXE Then hit - Open

You will see a Dialog Window pop up with three tabs, Select the Setup tab.

Under Block Options, you'll want to select the following.

- Program All Blocks
- Boot Block

Under CMOS Options Select - Load ROM File's Optimal

Under Miscellaneous Select

- Do Not Check ROM ID
- Restart After Programming

Next Click Open and select the ROM file - 842P161G.ROM

Click the Flash button and let it do it's job.

DO NOT Touch anything until it finishes.

- I hope this helps

One thing that confused me was the boxes kept unchecking themselves when I followed your steps for option 2. So, under block options I just checked program all blocks and it checked all the other boxes in this column also. I did this after opening the rom file and checked the other 2 boxes you said to under micellaneous. It updated my bios and everything seems to be working just like it used to. How can I tell if turbo mode is working?

Reply to Kashamodo

Here is a Tomshardware article from last year that hopefully will explain this for you.

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/T [...] ,6193.html

Reply to Renegade_Warrior

I've tried all of the suggestions in this thread to get this BIOS update to work with absolutely no luck at all. The flash runs, the computer restarts, and nothing. Absolutely nothing.

OK, finally got it to work, somewhat. Now my BIOS is AMI R01-A4 2/11/2009. Is this OK or did the wonderful folks at Gateway send me the wrong thing?

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Message edited by m1a1mg on 11-18-2009 at 07:23:17 PM

Reply to m1a1mg

I've recently purchased an FX6800-01e. Lot's of great info on this thread. Thanks.

I do have one question that I have had no luck in finding an answer to regarding this PC. I can't get S/Pdif out to work with the onboard sound. According to the manual, the sound ports are multi jack and the grey one is s/pdif out. I've tried both an Coax and MiniTos..neither of which worked.

When I go to look at Audio Devices for playback..I only see HDMI but no S/pdif. I've tried updating the Realtek drivers and still nothing. Am I missing something?

I do notice unused S/Pdif headers on the MB. I'm guessing that is what is being used for those RCA Jacks that are on the media panel in the manual of some (not mine of course). Do I need to get my own S/pdif cable or something? Any advice appreciated.

Thanks

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Reply to SquireX

m1a1mg wrote :

I've tried all of the suggestions in this thread to get this BIOS update to work with absolutely no luck at all. The flash runs, the computer restarts, and nothing. Absolutely nothing.

OK, finally got it to work, somewhat. Now my BIOS is AMI R01-A4 2/11/2009. Is this OK or did the wonderful folks at Gateway send me the wrong thing?

As long as your BIOS is showing AMI R01-A4 2/11/2009 and you're not getting a check sum error, then your system is Ok as this is the newest BIOS that Gateway has publicly released so far.

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to Renegade_Warrior

SquireX wrote :

I've recently purchased an FX6800-01e. Lot's of great info on this thread. Thanks.

I do have one question that I have had no luck in finding an answer to regarding this PC. I can't get S/Pdif out to work with the onboard sound. According to the manual, the sound ports are multi jack and the grey one is s/pdif out. I've tried both an Coax and MiniTos..neither of which worked.

When I go to look at Audio Devices for playback..I only see HDMI but no S/pdif. I've tried updating the Realtek drivers and still nothing. Am I missing something?

I do notice unused S/Pdif headers on the MB. I'm guessing that is what is being used for those RCA Jacks that are on the media panel in the manual of some (not mine of course). Do I need to get my own S/pdif cable or something? Any advice appreciated.

Thanks

You're probably right about the S/Pdif headers being for the missing RCA Jacks which are on the front panel of some models.

Just a quick Image Google using the search term S/Pdif gives you a fairly good idea just looking through the various images.

As for configuring the jacks and sound setup, use the dark orange speaker (RealTek Sound Manager) in the System tray.

BTW... if nothing is plugged into a jack, then it'll be grayed out until you plug some speakers into it.

Edited to fix broken link

Message edited by Renegade_Warrior on 11-19-2009 at 01:46:37 PM

Reply to Renegade_Warrior

Thank you very the quick reply.

My issue with configuring the jacks though is that S/pdif does not show up at all in sound setup (not even greyed out). Shouldn't S/pdif show as a playback option? Right now, I only have ATI HDMI, HDMI and Speakers.

And when I plug an Optical jack into the grey port , it only detects it for Speakers as an analog RL and not Spdif.

Reply to SquireX

My system doesn't have the RCA jacks either, so with out the motherboard manual there doesn't seem to be much we can do unless we can figure it out ourselves.

I wonder if there is a specific driver needed for the S/pdif?

Or if you need to use the X-Fi MB to access it?

BTW...

the X-Fi MB from Gateway for Vista won't work with Windows 7 and both Gateway and Creative doesn't seem to be inclined to provide an update for the X-Fi MB OEM software. (note the "MB" designation of the X-Fi software)

Reply to Renegade_Warrior

Awesome thread! Just wanted to say thank you to Renegade. I have learned a lot.

Reply to Kashamodo

Renegade_Warrior wrote :

As long as your BIOS is showing AMI R01-A4 2/11/2009 and you're not getting a check sum error, then your system is Ok as this is the newest BIOS that Gateway has publicly released so far.

Thanks. I never would have figured this out myself. Gateway certainly did not help.

Reply to m1a1mg

If you didn't notice I'm new here... Hello!! Let me start by giving a big thanks to Renegade Warrior (others as well) for helping us Gateway FX6800 bastard children out.

Here's were I stand... Bought one of the refurbished units from Tigerdirect back in August. Bought 3 additional mbs of OCZ Intel i7 memory at the same time, which installed and worked great. With help from RW, I updated the BIOS and then upgraded video drivers from the ATI's site.

Fast forward to 10/22/09 when I finally received my Win 7 student upgrade key for Win7 premium. I first tried installing it by just upgrading, since I wanted all the stock utilities to work. About 3/4 of the way through the first problem happened, my 26" Westinghouse Vista compatible monitor went black then displayed the message "out of range". I used a 32" LCD TV to finish the installation. Whatever I tried, I could not get the monitor to work with HDMI / DVI cable. I tried the VGA only cable with DVI adapter and it works, but defaults to 59mhz (won't switch).

Computer seemed real sluggish with the upgrade version of win7 (slower than vista), so reinstalled using the clean install option. Monitor still does not work with HDMI, but seems to be as fast as before. I also started to get a "memory dump" failure about every 6th time the computer goes into sleep mode.

So... I ordered up a 1tb Samsung Spinpoint F3 to use as my primary drive and I created a bootable ISO version of my windows 7 DVD. I plan on installing that to get rid of the EISA partition and starting from scratch.

Here's what I need help with

- How do I stop the Memory Dump crash?
- How do I get my HDMI ready 26" monitor to work without using a VGA cable (no driver support from Westinghouse).
- How do I get some of the drivers and software back to use with Win7, like Creative MB XFI, Label flash, Memory card icons, Creative Alchemy.. ect.

I'm beginning to think that switching to Win7 was a big mistake :pfff:

Reply to Killer95Stang

I updated the FX to Windows 7 64 bit. The GATEWAY site says the new bios is for vista 64 (which came with the machine). Can this bios update be done safely for windows 7?

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Reply to rgbm3

Killer95Stang

Tried to reply late last night twice, but each time, my browser crashed when I right clicked to check the spelling of some words. Was using 64-bit FireFox 3.6 Beta 2

So now I,m just using the 32-bit FireFox 3.6 Beta 6 to hopefully avoid the crash this time and so far, it seems to be working as I'm able to Right click without crashing the browser.

Creative X-Fi MB is an OEM product and as such Creative won't supply any updates for this product and Gateway doesn't appear to be willing to supply any updates either.

For a clean installation of Windows 7, the only drivers you should need to supply is the Intel Matrix Storage Manager and the ATI Catalyst 9.11 Windows will supply the rest.

I would not advise trying to install any of the software that came pre-installed from Gateway.

The memory card slots will work just fine. I wouldn't worry about the icons, the individual slot will show up in Windows explorer when a card is present in which ever slot is in use.

The label Flash software can be found here.

For HDMI support, you need to have Windows fully installed and the ATI Catalyst Suit installed. Once you do this, then on the Display Option page of the ATI Catalyst Control Center, make sure Force TV detect is checked, then click OK and close the Control Center and use the HDMI adapter.

As for the memory dumps it's possible you have a faulty piece of hardware in the system or maybe you reinstalled some of the gateway software back on the system. It's hard to say what is actually causing the dumps without checking it out first hand to see what's going on.

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to Renegade_Warrior

rgbm3 wrote :

I updated the FX to Windows 7 64 bit. The GATEWAY site says the new bios is for vista 64 (which came with the machine). Can this bios update be done safely for windows 7?

It should work just fine under Windows 7, just be sure to follow the instruction.

The DOS method works.

Reply to Renegade_Warrior

I too recently purchased the FX6800-01e as I too am attempting to update bios. After following your instructions the program goes through the progress phases (read,erase,program and verify) and that's about it. The system does not restart or anything. I have also upgraded to Windows 7 ultimate. Please help!!

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Reply to dpizzle1968

Renegade_Warrior wrote :

Killer95Stang

Tried to reply late last night twice, but each time, my browser crashed when I right clicked to check the spelling of some words. Was using 64-bit FireFox 3.6 Beta 2

So now I,m just using the 32-bit FireFox 3.6 Beta 6 to hopefully avoid the crash this time and so far, it seems to be working as I'm able to Right click without crashing the browser.

Creative X-Fi MB is an OEM product and as such Creative won't supply any updates for this product and Gateway doesn't appear to be willing to supply any updates either.

For a clean installation of Windows 7, the only drivers you should need to supply is the Intel Matrix Storage Manager and the ATI Catalyst 9.11 Windows will supply the rest.

I would not advise trying to install any of the software that came pre-installed from Gateway.

The memory card slots will work just fine. I wouldn't worry about the icons, the individual slot will show up in Windows explorer when a card is present in which ever slot is in use.

The label Flash software can be found here.

For HDMI support, you need to have Windows fully installed and the ATI Catalyst Suit installed. Once you do this, then on the Display Option page of the ATI Catalyst Control Center, make sure Force TV detect is checked, then click OK and close the Control Center and use the HDMI adapter.

As for the memory dumps it's possible you have a faulty piece of hardware in the system or maybe you reinstalled some of the gateway software back on the system. It's hard to say what is actually causing the dumps without checking it out first hand to see what's going on.

Thanks for the reply RW,

I tried forcing TV detectiion... by checking the box and saving. I then disconnected the 26" monitor from the VGA cable and hooked up the HDMI / DVI cable... and POP!! "Out of Range". I'm guessing its a windows 7 driver issue, since the monitor worked perfect with HDMI with Vista 64. Back when I did the initial win7 install, I used a 32" flat panel from my bedroom which worked fine with Win7.

Also.. can you explain to me why I need the Intel Matrix Storage Manager? I'm not exactly sure what it does and why it is necessary.

thanks again.

Reply to Killer95Stang

The Intel Matrix Storage Manager is for the X58 chipset and allows you to hot swap drives in the front bays without crashing the system while it is running.

The only problem I have found with this is if the drive is already in the bay when you boot the system, then it won't give you the option to eject the drive.

Although to tell the truth, I have not tried having the Intel Matrix Storage Manager auto-start with windows to see if this would make a difference.

But if you plug a drive in while the system is running, you can use the Intel Matrix Storage Manager, select Actions > Rescan for Plug and Play Devices and the drive will show up and you will also have the option in the system tray to eject the drive.

Now, as for the "Out of Range" error, you might have to open the ATI Catalyst Control Panel, go to the Graphics panel > Mode tab, select any resolutions which are higher than the TV can display via HDMI and use the Discard button to eliminate those resolutions. Also make sure the Refresh rate is set correctly too, 60 Hz should be appropriate.

Use your TV's manual to make sure you have the correct resolution in place. You only want to remove anything higher than what the TV supports. 1360 x 768 is normal resolution setting for an LCD TV.

My setup uses a Dell 24" 2405FPW LCD monitor 1920 x 1200 and a Sony Bravia KDL-32XBR4 32" LCD TV. I've got a second Dell 24" LCD, but I need to get an ATI 5870 or a 5890 next year.

Reply to Renegade_Warrior

dpizzle1968 wrote :

I too recently purchased the FX6800-01e as I too am attempting to update bios. After following your instructions the program goes through the progress phases (read,erase,program and verify) and that's about it. The system does not restart or anything. I have also upgraded to Windows 7 ultimate. Please help!!

Sometimes when you update a system BIOS, you need to restart the system manually.

So assuming you have restarted the system since then and you're not getting any check sum errors, go to Start Menu > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools and run System Information

In the Right Panel where it says BIOS Version/Date it should say AMI R01-A4, 2/11/2009

If so, then that means that you successfully updated your BIOS.

If it reads the old BIOS version, then that means that it failed.

The BIOS update needs to be run from an Administrator account and the UAC needs to be temporarily disabled along with any security software such as any AntiVirus and your system needs to be completely disconnected from your network and the internet. You can't have anything running in the background which might cause a problem with the BIOS update and most important is making sure your system is completely clean of any parasites.

Reply to Renegade_Warrior

Thanks for all your help Renegade as well as all the posts and most importantly, this site. I finally got BIOS to update!! :pt1cable:

Reply to dpizzle1968

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Gateway FX 6800-01e BIOS Update from Gateway Unsupported - Page 5

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