A7N8X-E De Bios Upgrade Woes

[fbionyourtail]

I've been trying to upgrade my bios to the latest version 1012-e but
am having problems. To begin, using an NTFS based HD, how could you
even think of saving the BIOS anywhere if you are booting up with
DOS/early Windows? None of those OS will read the NTFS partitions.

Second and more important, I can't seem to get past that first backup
screen. I get prompted after I say "no" to back up the bios with "do
you want to program" and then I answer "yes" but it just hangs there
and does nothing, requiring me to reset. Has anyone had this problem?
Should I upgrade to 1012-E? I'm primarily doing so because installing
WIndows SP-1a has wreaked havoc on the multimedia center for my ATI
All In Wonder video card and I'm getting crashes launching the TV with
a blank screen or muxed screen. I've done everything and nothing seems
to work. Help is appreciated....

MJ

 

[fbionyourtail]

OK, more issues. I think I backed up my current bios by swapping the
floppy disk but then I get a "file not found" error or something like
that. I have the same problem if I try to use awdflash booting up and
hitting alt-f2 because it won't find a floppy where the file is
located. How on earth do you upgrade the bios on this thing? It does
NOT work like the asus web site instructions say it should.

 

[fbionyourtail]

OK - The problem with everyone having awdflash is that you cannot use
windows or any variety to create the dos disk. I downloaded a dos 6.2
imager and that worked fine after stripping off all the extra. Problem
now is that 1012-e is giving me an error "unknown flash type." Say
what? This is the bios from the asus site for the a7n8x-e deluxe,
which i own!

 

[Sam]

Sometime on, or about Sat, 18 Sep 2004 14:05:19 -0400, fbionyourtail
wrote:

OK - The problem with everyone having awdflash is that you cannot use
windows or any variety to create the dos disk. I downloaded a dos 6.2
imager and that worked fine after stripping off all the extra. Problem
now is that 1012-e is giving me an error "unknown flash type." Say
what? This is the bios from the asus site for the a7n8x-e deluxe,
which i own!

As you discovered, you need just a plain DOS disk. I've found that I
can create one from XP by just typing format a: /s at the command
prompt. You'll get a basic bootable DOS floppy that way.

This floppy doesn't need to read NTFS... it's not writing or reading
anything to the hard-drive. I'd recommend saying yes to backing up the
BIOS before flashing it, just in case something goes wrong. However,
you do have to be sure there's enough room on the floppy for the old
BIOS file (somewhere around 512K). What I do is put the flash and bios
on a separately formatted (non-bootable) disk, and just swap at the
A:\ prompt to do the flash.

Sam

 

[fbionyourtail]

Sometime on, or about Sat, 18 Sep 2004 14:05:19 -0400, fbionyourtail
wrote:


As you discovered, you need just a plain DOS disk. I've found that I
can create one from XP by just typing format a: /s at the command
prompt. You'll get a basic bootable DOS floppy that way.

This floppy doesn't need to read NTFS... it's not writing or reading
anything to the hard-drive. I'd recommend saying yes to backing up the
BIOS before flashing it, just in case something goes wrong. However,
you do have to be sure there's enough room on the floppy for the old
BIOS file (somewhere around 512K). What I do is put the flash and bios
on a separately formatted (non-bootable) disk, and just swap at the
A:\ prompt to do the flash.

Sam

Thanks Sam -- I was able to save the backup on the same disk. That
still doesn't prevent that damn message "unknown flash type" no matter
which bios I use. I tried 1012, I tried 1011, it's all the same. What
the HELL is going on? I've never had such trouble just trying to flash
the bios...

BTW, I'm not sure if the XP one works since some of the others I
created that way froze up awdflash. I don't know what's flying here
and I guess I'm stuck with 1008 and endless crashing with my ATI video
card...

 

[fbionyourtail]

Thanks Sam -- I was able to save the backup on the same disk. That
still doesn't prevent that damn message "unknown flash type" no matter
which bios I use. I tried 1012, I tried 1011, it's all the same. What
the HELL is going on? I've never had such trouble just trying to flash
the bios...

BTW, I'm not sure if the XP one works since some of the others I
created that way froze up awdflash. I don't know what's flying here
and I guess I'm stuck with 1008 and endless crashing with my ATI video
card...

OK I've FREAKING HAD IT WITH THIS POS. I tried loading my current BIOS
which I saved and even THAT one says "unknown flash type." What in the
blazes is GOING ON HERE????

 

[DDStech]

I just used the Alt-F2 method to flash the bios. I know this is a stupid
question, but I have to ask. Did you unzip the file? Put it on the root of
the floppy as 1012-E.bin.

 

[fbionyourtail]

The alt-F2 method just hangs there. I formatted a floppy with nothing
on and put the file, unzipped, extracted as is on the floppy as
1012-E.bin.

What did you do exactly to flash the bios using alt-F2? Nothing seems
to work... Thanks much!

 

[fbionyourtail]

Tried using your method -- I got a "file not found" error. Didn't
matter what file I put on the floppy but for whatever reason it seems
that the bios tool is not seeing the floppy. Bizarre and driving me
crazy.

 

[DDStech]

Well, at the boot screen, I just hit alt-f2, then the flash utility asked
for the file name, then it loads it off the floppy and flashed the bios.
However, I was having problems posting/booting etc with this board (another
thread perhaps?), so, I set the system to 100mhz FSB. You might want to try
that to make sure the problems you're experiencing aren't related to system
hangs. Once you flash the bios, you can set the system back to "normal".

I have had many problems getting this board to get past post and not hang or
blue screen upon booting. If it wasn't for my old DDR133 chips from my old
system, I believe I would never have got this board to work. Oddly enough,
after a successfull posting with DDR133 memory, and setting all values to
auto and 200mhz fsb, I could then install my DDR400 chips and boot without
any problems. Now I am stable with this configuration, however, I cannot
understand why after reseting defaults, the DDR400 wont post.

 

[fbionyourtail]

FINALLY!!!!! I decided to unplug everything and flash the CMOS once
more. I let it stay on there for quite a while. Then plugged
everything in, booted up and used the bios tool. At first it didn't
see the file automatically but typing it in it automatically found the
disk... whew!!! It finally worked. I'm glad that this frustrating
thread will hopefully help those out who can't figure out what's going
on with all these messages that tell you nothing...

 

[DDStech]

What about the Asus update utility? Can you boot into windows?

 

[Sam]

Sometime on, or about Sat, 18 Sep 2004 16:55:46 -0400, fbionyourtail
wrote:

FINALLY!!!!! I decided to unplug everything and flash the CMOS once
more. I let it stay on there for quite a while. Then plugged
everything in, booted up and used the bios tool. At first it didn't
see the file automatically but typing it in it automatically found the
disk... whew!!! It finally worked. I'm glad that this frustrating
thread will hopefully help those out who can't figure out what's going
on with all these messages that tell you nothing...

I've never had it find the file automatically... I've always had to
either type it in manually or use a batch file to do the same thing.
The text in the batch file I use is:

awdflash 1012-E.BIN BIOS.OLD /py /sy /cd /cp /cc /LD /E

Save that in a text editor (like Notepad) to a file with an extension
of .bat. I use update.bat. (No period at the end). Then copy it to
your floppy and just type that name from the A:\ prompt. Change the
BIOS file name to the actual one you're using. BIOS.OLD is the name of
the backup file it will create. Note: this will wipe out your custom
BIOS settings and put them back to their defaults. You'll need to
re-do any custom stuff. But that's a good thing... after a BIOS update
it's better to start out fresh.

Sam

 

[fbionyourtail]

Thanks DDS. The only thing that worked was unplugging everything,
initializing the CMOS by moving the jumper and then botting up and
using the alt-F2 awdflash built in and it worked like a charm... was
frustrating trying to figure out what to do with cryptic error
messages.... thanks for your help.