P2B and BIOS, flash?

[ares]

I have a P2B board, bios 1007, and I tried putting in a new 40 gig hard
drive. I just a home user who dabbles once in awhile to maintain what I
got. It would not boot at all; would hang up, and I know the hard drive
works as I tried it in another computer after that. I even used the
software overlay, same thing. I currently have a Maxtor 20 gig. I was
going to use win 2000 to upgrade from win 98se.
I am thinking that what it needs is the BIOS to be flashed. I am very
nervous about this as you don't really get a second chance and I'm not all
that great at following directions. Wondering if win 2000 would work with
this board to begin with. Or, what is the max hard drive size I could use
without having to flash the bios. I was having a hard time trying to get
support on their site; but I'd get server not available messages.
I think I have to use aflash.exe on a floppy, backup the old bios on that
floppy and put the new bios on that same floppy? But I couldn't tell which
bios file to use. OK, so I am on this page:
http://www.asus.com.tw/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=P2B&Type=Latest

So my confusion is that there is a file here called aflash221.zip, so is
that the one I'm supposed to use, or aflash.exe?
And the other thing is the 2 files, bxnh1011.zip and bx2i1012.zip; not sure
which of those I would be using as the new bios file.
Any help is appreciated thanks.
ares

 

[ares]

PS, I would rather just get a 30 gig drive instead, if that would work
without having to flash the bios. Then 40 gig drive I tried was Magnetic
Data Technology or something like that, sort of like a WD drive. I might
stick with Maxtor.
ares

 

[Montana Pete]

Go to the beta page. Get the 1014b.003 bios image. Put aflash.exe and
the bios image on a bootable floppy. Boot using that floppy and run
the aflash.exe program and it will prompt you:

1. Save Current BIOS To File
2. Update BIOS Including Boot Block and ESCD
Enter choice:

Pick 1 to save your old bios. Then run it again and pick 2 to update
the bios. Just follow the prompts.

 

[MrGrumpy]

Try this page;
http://www.asus.com.cn/support/download/item.aspx?ModelName=P2B&Type=All
Latest stable Bios 1012

 

[Tim]

I have a P2B-DS running Windows 2003 server currently - it ran Windows 2000
server for a couple of years or more perfectly well.

There is an issue with ACPI and Windows 2000 (possibly 2003 as well) on
early P2B's. My board needed a small h/w revision (remove 1 resister) to run
Windows 2000 correctly. In task manager, the second CPU would show 100% all
the time if I recall correctly. This did not affect performance and was
cosmetic... The h/w revision applied only to early revisions of the
motherboard rev 5 (?) or earlier.

The 1014 beta 3 bios has been out for a very long time and is perhaps the
best bios to use.

Follow the advice on flashing above. Be diligent about checking you are
getting the right bios for the right board - there are P2B, P2B-DS and some
other variants of the board.

If you are installing a new drive then try the Windows 2000 install on that
drive in the system by itself just as a test to see what issues you get and
save the original Win98 HDD as a regression step. When satisfied with the
install method and bios, repeat as you like.

- Tim