Hi
While I was off on vacation the office pc gave my associate the
Award Bootblock Bios v1.0
Bios rom checksum error
keyboard error or no keyboard present (its usb)
You did not describe the system, this "could" be very
important.
On an unrelated note, it could just be that it needs a new
battery, or that the PSU is failing, or the motherboard is
failing.
After attempting to restart it and failing the first half dozen
attempts she finally got it to boot up and it has been on ever since,
about 2 months now, till I tried again last night. It took another 6
attempts or so before it started successfully.
After starting, does it retain the correct clock (time)
settings?
Do you have a lot of USB stuff plugged in? If so, see if
it's jumpered to 5V or 5VSB, and if 5VSB, change to 5V.
Also try unplugging some of that USB stuff, and if that
isn't enough (nothing else helps) try unplugging all other
things nonessential towards getting it to POST, then add
back the HDD and see if it'll boot (Windows?).
Nothing happened the
other 5 attempts it was like the monitor was disconnected. From other
posts I've read it would appear that I need to flash the bios again to
repair pc.
Very unlikely, but "some" boards, if you enter the bios and
try to change and save settings while the system is
instable, might corrupt the bios, then you'd try clearing
CMOS.
Actually, clearing CMOS is the first thing you should try
now regardless of what you try next... do so while AC power
is disconnected.
However my floppy drive appears dead not seeing any disks
entered.
How would you know what it sees if it's not even posting?
Putting in a floppy to emergency flash the bios is one
procedure to try, but we're not necessarily to the point
where it is clear this is a bios problem that would be
recoverable from booting such a bios floppy... and from your
attempt, it appears that isn't the case, and/or wouldn't
work even if it were.
"sometimes" when the bios is bad you can pull out the video
card (unless integrated, then "hope" the bios defeault is
for PCI video initialization first) and put in a PCI video
card and get output on the monitor... but again I dont'
think your problem is the bios and that doing so wouldn't
apply now.
I have found a copy of the BIOS on the driver cd rom that came with the
system located at
E:\Utility\Awdflash\awd826f (it would appear this is an .exe file but I
forgot to check its ext.)
Ok, but it's quite possible the system shipped with a newer
bios than was on the CD- the CDs get made in a run to ship
with later board revisions, but generally they may flash the
newest bios available at the time (of doing it). Your board
EEPROM "might" have a sticker on it suggesting which bios
version it shipped with, and you might try that version, but
frankly I'd be just as likely to get the newest (non-beta)
bios from the board manufacturer, particularly if the
current bios was prone to corruption... but again, I don't
think that is your problem, I doubt it's a bios problem at
all.
However it says to run this from real DOS which I presume means I cant
just shell out using Start>run>cmd.
Correct. Boot something else to DOS, like CDROM or floppy
or USB (whatever it'll boot from, some will boot FAT16
formatted thumbdrives for example).
so I now presume I'm going to have to try and restart pc catch it on
the f8 key and get the command prompt from there.
.... if it has DOS? IMO, easier to just burn a CDR that
boots dos on another system, IF you cant' get a USB drive to
work.
Now is the above file all I need to flash the bios?
You need a DOS bootdisk (of whatever sort you choose),
the awardflash v826 flasher (or if it isnt' the right
version, which does happen from time to time, then a
different version of the award flasher), and the bios file
itself- these files unzipped already if they were zipped or
in another similar compressed format which is obvious by the
extension, but don't try to unzip if it has the bios file
extension already (like *.rom or *.bin) as it will unzip but
that's only because a bios is in compressed format natively,
stored in EEPROM that way... but it wasn't supposed to be
unzipped beyond that point. Normally this isn't an issue,
as a normal zip/unzip program won't default to doing it but
there are ways to accidentally do it.
and can someone please give me the DOS commands required...Its been 10
years since I last had to type any dos
If you type the flasher file's name at the prompt and /?,
it'll show commands. For example,
C:\>awd826f.exe /?
Generally you just type the filename as above then the bios
filename,
c:>awd826 bios.bin
BUT, I still don't think the bios is the problem,
particularly if the system has remained static, was working
fine and you didn't change anything then one day it stopped
booting properly. Examine the motherboard for failed
capacitors, if there aren't any then the "odds" are it's the
PSU, but sometimes the odds aren't in your favor so it might
not hurt to have a full description of all major parts of
the system, including board make/model, PSU make/model,
video, CPU and memory... at least as much of this detail as
possible.