Tech Support Guy banner
Status
Not open for further replies.

Solved: Flash bios, a little help needed please

3K views 12 replies 4 participants last post by  jamie1949 
#1 ·
I want to flash the beta version of Asus bios file P4P800SE-ASUS-1012.001

? is, if I use AFUDOS.exe, do I change the bios file name to P4P800SE-ASUS-1012.001.ROM or to P4P800SE.ROM?

Thanks

James
 
#2 ·
You can name the file pretty much anything you want as long as
that file name ends with the correct extension such as .rom.
Use that exact file name when running the utility.
If you are running from a floppy,you would probably run
a command like AFUDOS.exe filename.rom.
Some utilities,you just run the executable and it will ask
for the file name or location.
Be careful,a bad flash can kill your motherboard.
 
#3 ·
Is there a specific problem you are having or feature you need that is addressed by the new Bios? If not it is not advisable to flash the bios unless you really need to. As leroys1000 said a botched flash can turn your motherboard into a useless collection of Resistors, diodes and Capacitors.
 
#5 ·
Hi dustjay,

I have an issue I am trying to sort out and have been for some months. A little difficult and lengthy to describe. When I boot up the ASUS logo screen is often corrupted, sort of missing chunks of pixels here and there. When the Windows logon screen appears it is covered in interference lines. These appear to be "on top of" the windows graphics. Like interference lines on an old TV set over the picture. If I select a panel (such as "My Computer") and drag it around, it leaves a trail of pixels that will not clear. Refreshing the screen makes no difference.
I can usually log on and everything seems ok but after a while the display degrades and becomes unreadable. A reboot can sort this, sometimes I have to reboot several times before I get a workable screen. Problem is, this doesn't always happen and I can boot up ok and work all day with no problems. All my drivers are correct and up to date. The power supply output voltages are ok. I checked the voltages on the motherboard (with a multimeter) and they are all fine. All the fans are clean and running (including the graphic card cooling fan), CPU and other temperatures are all fine. I tightened up everything possible, checked all internal connectors were good. Ran a RAM test, checked the hard drives for bad sectors. Replaced the Windows boot file with a clean copy I know is good. Nothing else new has been added to the system to cause this problem to happen, either software or hardware. Antivirus and Spyware, etc all up to date. XP Event and Systems logs do not show any error. Having run through all the obvious I decided to start with a process of elimination.

My plan was to update the bios, make a clean install of Windows XP and see if this resolved the problem. Next stage was to replace the graphics card and to work up the food chain until I found out what was causing the problem - hardware or software.

So, that was my reasoning for flashing the bios with the latest version.

Thanks for your interest - much appreciated,

James

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Water is the last thing a fish discovers; if I have overlooked the bl***ing obvious, someone please tell me!
 
#6 ·
This sounds more like a graphics card problem than a bios problem. If it were a bios problem one would think that it would be constant everytime you turn the computer on instead of being fixed by a reboot or several reboots as you say.
 
#7 ·
Thanks for your reply.

It's easier when a component just goes dead, you know what to do then. Yesterday everything ran fine, I loaded some test graphics and pushed the graphics card to its limits with no issues. This morning I opened my email client and started to write an email and the text started to degrade, slowly getting worse until the whole screen just covered in cyan stripes and became totally unreadable. A reboot and everything worked fine again and has been doing for 3 hours. If a chip on the video card is drifting it's hard to understand why it would be sorted by a reboot. When the computer played up I, again, checked the working voltages on the motherboard and graphics card and they were all stable and in tolerance. A surge of current to the Mboard or graphics card were all I could think of that would give this fault.

Neither ATI nor ASUS have been able to come up with any suggestions. :down:

Real piss off this one!

Appreciate your comments.

James
 
#8 ·
First of all, I would NOT be using a beta bios. Use the latest release bios unless there is some reason you want to be a beta tester.

Next asus boards have a bios flashing utility built in to the bios. It should be called e-z flash. No need for a boot disk or anything. You simply have the bios file on a floppy, flash drive or usually a fat32 partition of a hard drive. Once you start the bios update utility and show it where the bios file is located, it does all of the work for you. I do not recommend using any windows based bios flashing utility. Flashes should be done from the bios or from a boot disk.

As posted above, make sure you fully understand the bios flashing procedure before you start this task. An incorrect or corrupted bios flash will render your board unbootable.

BTW your problem does sound more like a video card and or failing pw supply rather than a bios problem.
 
#9 ·
Hi,

Thanks for your reply, appreciated.
As I understand it e-z flash should not be used to update a BIOS, only to repair a corrupted BIOS. Point taken about a beta BIOS. Everything is pointing to the graphics card so I think I will start there and see what happens next.

All the best,

James
 
#10 ·
No. EZ flash is to be used to update the bios. It is the best method for updating a bios. There are two others; using afudos and the windows update.

Asus has what it calls crash free bios however it does not work all of the time. Sometimes it does and sometimes it does not work.
 
#11 ·
Not arguing the point but it is worth pointing out the following warning from ASUS support for people with older mobos:

IMPORTANT EZFLASH WARNING:
EZ Flash should only be used to return to the original, factory-installed version. Use of EZ Flash (ALT+F2 method) to update to a new BIOS is NOT recommended, as results have been hit-and-miss.

Internal BIOS formats changed in late 2003, and it took several releases to get EZ Flash working again. The ROM-resident EZ Flash code on many older motherboards is incapable of installing the newer type of BIOS, and some aspects of your motherboard will not function correctly after attempting this.

If recovery of a dead BIOS is necessary, use EZ Flash to return to the factory condition. Then use AFUDOS to perform any updates.

SO, I guess it depends on how new your mobo is. :)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
You have insufficient privileges to reply here.
Top