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Flashed Wrong Bios


Daos

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@ jaclaz,

“Thank you for the advice, but my board works perfectly, it's Daos' one that has the problem.”

Thanx, changet it ;).

@ Astalavista,

“hehehe I am always nice.”

I´ve seen other thing before ;)

Q) you moved from Holland to Mexico? Well.... u can still get pretty good weed in Mexico. But not ask good as in Holland. LOL!

A) Thu. The police here will bust your a**, some thing that will not happen in Holland for a joint :P

Q) Just curious how much do u charge and hour.

A) Like a lousy 1.1 US$, 12 pesos, I know it´s not much but the other ones charge 8-10 and still this cyber has the most customers.

Q) Are u using DSL or Cable modem. How much is your monthly to your ISP?

A) We use Cable now, 600kbps, witch is fast for Mexican terms. Soon we move to a bigger place, then we will have a dual WAN router with both lines, one Cable one ADSL, 600+512kbps down, 140+128kbps up (WOW!, hehehehe)

Q) What software do u use to monitor how long they are logon?

A) All is done by pen and paper, they report there selfs at the service desk, then they walk to any computer they like, when they are finished they go back to the service desk, pay there consumables and time. Mexican style…

“Hummm... just thinking of Mexico i can smell the paella the black one with squid ink. ahhh... yummy! lechon de le che (Roast Pig)” - “heheh the Philippine was a colony of Spain for 400 years so we enjoy Spanish food here as well.”

I don’t like Mexican food so much, but I’ve learned to eat the green pepper :P

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if you have flashed the bios with an incorrect one and you cant boot from anything, then its a NO GO.

No media to store the .bin / .rom file and the program to do the flash = no getting back to the right version.

If it posted and you could use the floppy but didnt get a output to the monitor you could use a autoexec.bat but seeing as the floppy aint even responding you gonna have to get a new chip which is basically the price your going to be paying for a preflashed one is the same as a new motherboard.

Astalavista is right, most modern motherboards will refuse to flash the bios with an incompatable one.

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you gonna have to get a new chip which is basically the price your going to be paying for a preflashed one is the same as a new motherboard.

There is still the hot-swap option.

Moreover, re-thinking about it, I remembered recovering a BIOS flashed by a virus this way:

1) I went to a used PC shop and bought for about 2 Euros a defective motherboard they were throwing away that had the SAME type of Award BIOS chip

2) I exchanged the chips and tried booting with the floppy and flash program (and a correct bios image)

3) The boot block worked even if the motherboard whence the BIOS came was from another manufacturer, most probably bootblock is the same for all AWARD's of the same release, as the motherboard manufacturer just changes the BIOS code, leaving the bootblock untouched.

jaclaz

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Just a few notes to add at this point.

1. You cannot usually flash the boot block as doing this requires applying a trigger voltage to a certain pin on the flash memory chip. This is so only the factory can program or erase the boot block. In other words, the boot block is a special hardware protected area of the flashable chip. There are exceptions to the way the boot block is handled. Some bios chips use a protected backup scheme for the boot block, so that it can be updated by the end user. But, in this case, it will revert to the backup if the update is invalid.

2. The remaining area of the Bios Flash Memory chips is a passive device, many are not designed to be able to detect what is about to be written to them and cannot reject it if they don't like it. Some attempt to protect themselves by requiring a "Digital Signature" in the new bios. This can sometimes be circumvented by hacked flashing software. Most however can be set to not allow any flashing at all, in the bios settings, to protect against viruses that overwrite the bios. Some have a jumper on the motherboard to protect against unintentional flashing.

Seems like we never got all the details that would be needed to come to any firm conclusion. There is a lot more to the subject than one would expect.

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you gonna have to get a new chip which is basically the price your going to be paying for a preflashed one is the same as a new motherboard.

There is still the hot-swap option.

Moreover, re-thinking about it, I remembered recovering a BIOS flashed by a virus this way:

1) I went to a used PC shop and bought for about 2 Euros a defective motherboard they were throwing away that had the SAME type of Award BIOS chip

2) I exchanged the chips and tried booting with the floppy and flash program (and a correct bios image)

3) The boot block worked even if the motherboard whence the BIOS came was from another manufacturer, most probably bootblock is the same for all AWARD's of the same release, as the motherboard manufacturer just changes the BIOS code, leaving the bootblock untouched.

jaclaz

Yeah but I was under the impression this was legacy hardware and the chances of him finding a board with the same Bios chip will be slimmer if that is the case

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

I'm sitting here looking at my "K8T Neo-FIS2R". I'm lost. I can't get the bios recovery feature to work. After the bad flash, my system won't post at all. It powers on and seems to be in a constant reset state. My two cd rom drives led lights keep flashing as the system resets continually. The system won't even try to access the floppy drive, which has the bios recovery disk in it. I also have an AMI bios recovery setup CD & an Award bios recovery CD that I have tried in each cd rom drive at startup. Neither disc works as the system resets just about every 3 seconds and doesn't have time to read the disc (if it will read them at all). I am at a lost of options. Does anyone have other recovery steps that I could take? I went out to purchase the exact same board yesterday, but it was out of stock, so I had to settle for the "K8T Neo-FSR". I don't want this board, so I have 10 days to decide what I'm going to do before my cash return option is up. The bios seems to be soldered onto the board, so there won't be any hot swapping the bios between boards to reflash that way.

If I can't recover my bios with MSI's help options, and I will end up having to buy another board anyway, I'm not too sure that I will support this company anymore.

EDIT: Bad Flash = Flashing stopped half way through and gave an error about a bad sector on the floppy disk (in my case). :)

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I cannot say if it will help, but you should have the floppy for the PROPER BIOS (i.e. Award OR Ami) and disconnect ALL other devices, including Hard Disk and CD-ROMS, external HD, mouse, LAN, EVERYTHING.

Just keep floppy, Keyboard and Video card/monitor connected.

If the Video card is not in the motherboard, you can try to take it out as well, the PC speaker (if you have one should emit BEEP CODES).

Finally, usually a corrupted BIOS hangs the PC, does NOT re-boot it, you could have a Power Supply or memory problem.

jaclaz

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  • 1 year later...

hey tech dudes

listen i was readin about daos's problem. i also have the ms-6390 that has been flashed wrong. i get bad checksum error also. i think i kinda narrowed it down,heres what i found out.

the m.b. is a msi (ms-6390) but it has a hp oem bios chip v3.0 (this is the real problem)

stock msi bios updates only got up to like v2.8 or somthing. i can not find a v3.0b update anywhere on the web. i have googled for 3 days now and nothing. so here i am also like daos. hp wont give any info (of course,buy another one)

hotswapping not an option chip is not socketed

esupport bios people want 49$ (the cost basically of another m.b.)

i have made a bootable dos disk just command.com io.sys ...etc.... added autoexec.bat (edited with awdflash.exe /x /x/x/x blabla.bin) deleted config.sys

i disconnected all drives except floppy.took out battery moved jumper then rebooted it asked for disk hit enter the floppydrive makes bunch of noise different then usaual.(the drive is good) then it keeps asking insert system disk

heres the specs and pics of the m.b. http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/generic...=reg_R1002_USEN

the exact model bios string everything. the whole reason i wanted to flash is my cpu was runnin at 2000mhz but was capable of 3000mhz but of course hp wouldnt allow you to tweak it in cmos (greyed out)

i really need your help guys. at this point just the original stock bios backup file would be better than an expensive paperwieght. oh and i did take out agp video card got beep codes (1long 2 short) but i also got a black screen.its weird i can see the screen with agp card in...also i looked for that fisrtbios program cant find it.i guess i need to try a hacker program of some sort,i dont know how to do the hexadecimal thing though

Edited by deltawing
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ok listen, remove the chip, the bios chip, and replace it, I'm not sure if it's in a socket or not if you have soldering skillz unsolder it but it probably best to find another board.....or hopefully another chip.

I feel for ya......what about a network flash, I've heard stories of this but it probably needs to be running in the first place. get that chip repalced

Here's a picture of your board, looks like a socket.......

screenshot230681jz.th.gif

Edited by EAT MY DUST
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@deltawing

from what you say it DOES seem like a bad floppy.

The bootblock is what makes the BEEPS and the Insert System Disk, so it should be working.

Try making another floppy, doublecheck it, try booting with it on another machine

(REMming out the awdflash commands !!!)

jaclaz

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hey thanx for the replies guys. yeah the chip is soldered. i could unsolder it but i cant use a stock msi bios it has to be hp bios. (im waiting on reply from tech at msi to be sure)i took the floppy drive out of this machine and tried it on machine that needed flash it made the same sound as the first floppy.its just the way the computer is accessing the drive it did it with both floppy drives.what i need is sombody with the same board to make a backup of thier bios and post it. or a hacked/mod bios that will work. but other than that i guess im runnin outta options. what m.b. in your guys opinion is the most tweakable for like overclocking ?asus? i have a amd athlon 2400 cpu .im attaching the original bios backup file. i made it before i flashed.but for some reason it wont take its own copy. dont know if its corrupt or what maybe you guys can anyalize it and give me some feedback.when i saved the file it went to h.d. then to a burned cd. if that helps.anyways thanx again

Edited by deltawing
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If you can get into awdflash or whatever flash program is used, there should be an option to force the flash even if the checksums are mismatched. That's how I once messed up my BIOS ;). Forced it to flash even though the BIOS reported that the file was for a completely different mobo. Usually it's a better idea to just replace the mobo.

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