Best way to boot for BIOS updates, firmware, ect.

[seismik]

I just went through the process of updating my motherboad BIOS, and then a few days later my DVDR firmware, both requiring booting to DOS and then running the appropriate files from there. As my system is XP, my Win98 boot disk wouldn't recognize my NTFS partitions, so I had to copy everything to a number of floppies and then trade disks back and forth until all was done. Annoying process, there must be a better way. Is there a way to get a bootable DOS disk to read NTFS partitions? That would help as I wouldn't have to copy everything across. Or perhaps a bootable CDROM image that I could (very) easily add the firmware/BIOS update related files to?

Hints/tips appreciated, this will continue to annoy me until I find a better way to go.

seis

 

[ss284]

I used to have this problem. Since I disgust floppies, I used partition magic to make a really small fat 32 partition on one of my harddrives. now I just use a standard windows boot disk, and run the bios update directly from the drive. Its safer and faster this way.

-Steve

 

[seismik]

That sounds like a fantastic idea. Is there a freeware util that I can use to do a similiar thing, don't really want to buy Partition Magic just for that...

 

[imported_Phil]

If you use Nero (or, I suppose, equivalent), then have a play with WinImage- use it to make an image of your Win98 bootdisk. Tell Nero to make a bootable CD, specifying the image you made with WinImage.
Place the files that you need for whatever you're doing in the root of the CD, and burn.

Boot from said CD, and you have access to the files you need. Burn onto a CDRW if you need to make regular changes.

 

[Lord Evermore]

If you make it a multisession CDR burn, you can just keep adding new versions of the BIOS or firmware as needed. Lots of wasted space due to the burning of tracks with only a few KB of data, but so what.

Some mainboards now give you the option on bootup to load the BIOS flash program directly from onboard ROM. Just put the binary file on a floppy and type in the name of it.

CD is really the easiest way aside from having an extra hard drive partition.

If you go the route of putting a small partition on for it, you may also want to avoid the floppy altogether and make the partition bootable, so you end up with a dual-boot system, WinXP and DOS. Just use the sys command from the Windows floppy. Only need to have the 3 basic DOS boot files. You'll have to do some editing in XP to add the other partition to the boot list, but then you can just make XP the default so it shouldn't be an annoyance. Assign the new partition a drive letter like X or Q so that it doesn't have any potention to interfere with any later drives you install. It will always be the C drive when you boot to DOS since the NTFS drive is ignored.

If you use a CDR with a burned image of a boot floppy, you can modify the standard floppy too, get rid of useless files like the drivespace drivers, or really everything since the DOS programs aren't much use on an XP machine. Then copy the latest versions of the flash utilities for your BIOS, DVD drive, anything. Then you don't have to change to the CDROM drive letter after booting (the boot CD becomes the A drive).

 

[23skidoo]

Guess I'm just an old command-line junkie, but I have never updated a bios from my hard drive--and I've got 10-12 systems up and running almost all the time--preferring the floppy drive method as being the most reliable method.

I simply copy the .bin file and whatever flash .exe file the board maker provides for flashing the particular bios onto a floppy drive and then create a small .bat file called RUNME that looks like this:

AWDFLASH xxxxxxx.BIN /SN /PY /CP /CD /CC /R

where xxxxxxx.BIN is the filename of the bios file you are flashing.

I keep a DRDOS bare boot floppy to boot to my A:\ drive with no drivers on it at all and then insert my bios flash floppy and type RUNME and it's off to the races; works like a charm every time.

Of course you could just run awdflash.exe from the bios floppy (or whatever the flasher .exe filename is) without the batch file and without the extensions.

On some boards that allow the Alt/F2 method of flashing I don't even bother with the DRDOS boot floppy as the process will seek out and run the first executable file it detects and my little RUNME.bat will do the job.

 

[Lord Evermore]

I'm lucky if a floppy disk is still readable after writing it on my PC, doing a chkdsk and physical scan on it, and then carrying it to a PC in the other room.

Reliability shouldn't be an issue with using a hard drive to flash the BIOS. Really, is the floppy controller less likely to die than an IDE controller? (Floppy I believe is still controlled by a SuperIO chip, not the southbridge, which is why a floppy drive can still work to fix a bad flash, the SuperIO chip has basic built-in functions along with un-erasable BIOS areas.)

For most people, speed is the main issue. Nobody likes waiting around for a floppy to format and be copied, or booted from, or the program to load and read the image. For me, constant floppy failures make me not want to bother usually. I'd rather burn a CDR to carry a 150KB file than waste time trying to get a floppy disk to work.

I recently went through and found 5 bad floppies in my laptop bag, out of the 7 or 8 that were in there, while trying to make a boot disk. They'd just been sitting in the bag, in a pocket.

 

[ss284]

Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
I'm lucky if a floppy disk is still readable after writing it on my PC, doing a chkdsk and physical scan on it, and then carrying it to a PC in the other room.

Reliability shouldn't be an issue with using a hard drive to flash the BIOS. Really, is the floppy controller less likely to die than an IDE controller? (Floppy I believe is still controlled by a SuperIO chip, not the southbridge, which is why a floppy drive can still work to fix a bad flash, the SuperIO chip has basic built-in functions along with un-erasable BIOS areas.)

For most people, speed is the main issue. Nobody likes waiting around for a floppy to format and be copied, or booted from, or the program to load and read the image. For me, constant floppy failures make me not want to bother usually. I'd rather burn a CDR to carry a 150KB file than waste time trying to get a floppy disk to work.

I recently went through and found 5 bad floppies in my laptop bag, out of the 7 or 8 that were in there, while trying to make a boot disk. They'd just been sitting in the bag, in a pocket.

It makes me wonder sometimes, did floppies from 10 years ago have a failure rate this high? Nowadays whenever I try using a floppy, it always manages to corrupt itself. Thats why i trust a hd more.

 

[LiLithTecH]

How often do you update you BIOS and Why?

You should only update if you are having problems and that
particular item is addressed in the update.

Updating for the sake of keeping it up-to-date is an accident waiting to happen.
More often then not, updating will cause issue you previously didn't have.