BIOS flash screwed up

[Minjin]

I picked up the the amd64 3400+ and ECS KN1 Lite combo a few days ago and I've been running it with not too much problem for a day (always some BS to deal with). As always, I checked to make sure all my drivers are current as well as my bios. Turns out my bios was a few versions old and they had apparently made some bug fixes since then. I figured I'd d/l the bios and update it. It came with winflash and awdflash and I figured I'd try the windows flashing since I've done it before with abit or asus and had no problems.

First I have winflash backup the current bios. Then I start loading up the new one. It went about 10 minutes, progressed to 100% and then when it looked like it was done, it said Flash block verify error!. Oh no. So I figure maybe its a bad bios and I try reflashing to the old bios. Same exact thing. Finishes and comes up with a flash block verify error. Did some google searching and it seems like most people say you're screwed when this happens. I'm typing from this same PC and I have a good UPS so I won't lose power anytime soon. Any idea how I can fix this since apparently if I reboot, it will never come back? Yes, I know that shutting it down and pulling the bios chip and sending it to someone is an option. However, I'd just as soon RMA it as I think I'm still within the window. Any ideas? Should I just keep trying to flash until it works or is that pretty unlikely? Any other forums I should post on? Thanks...

edit:
Ok, an extra tidbit. I just noticed that I never choose any options on the left when I flashed it. This means I only flashed the middle section, the Main block, not the boot block or dmi block. From doing some reading, I think this might have been a good thing.

 

[lyssword]

lol I know it sounds immoral, but try to return the mobo where u bought it from... Or buy another one, might be the easier way out..

 

[Minjin]

Honestly, in this case I wouldn't consider it immoral at all. A properly working board SHOULD be able to update its bios without any problems. I don't feel I did anything wrong. Its like buying a car, having its door fall off, and then the warranty guy says, "well you shouldn't have opened the door." Could something have been messed up? Possibly. But its not like I was overclocking and running some l33t haxor modified bios. Its bone stock settings and I just wanted the most recent bios since it fixes stuff.

Anyway, thats my take on it. I think I'm going to try the boot disk method with awdflash and autoexec.bat and see what happens monday morning. If that doesn't work, I'll RMA it and not feel bad in the slightest...

 

[busmaster11]

Originally posted by: Minjin
Honestly, in this case I wouldn't consider it immoral at all. A properly working board SHOULD be able to update its bios without any problems. I don't feel I did anything wrong. Its like buying a car, having its door fall off, and then the warranty guy says, "well you shouldn't have opened the door." Could something have been messed up? Possibly. But its not like I was overclocking and running some l33t haxor modified bios. Its bone stock settings and I just wanted the most recent bios since it fixes stuff.

Anyway, thats my take on it. I think I'm going to try the boot disk method with awdflash and autoexec.bat and see what happens monday morning. If that doesn't work, I'll RMA it and not feel bad in the slightest...

haha I'm in the EXACT same boat. only I may be more screwed because I tried updating all parts. Please keep me updated.

 

[busmaster11]

update - my mobo lives!!!

went to the web site - got the march 27th 06 bios and copied it onto a stripped down win98se boot disk. rebooted and crossed my fingers. Make sure you have a PS2 keyboard connected first btw.

I was able to boot up and use awdflash...

I then went and reflashed it to the latest bios.

Hope it works for you too.

 

[Minjin]

Alright, finally decided to reboot the computer and try reflashing the bios with awdflash. Everything was going fine and it went into some kind of BootBlock mode and immediately started loading from floppy. I had put the awdflash command into the autoexec.bat so as soon as everything loaded up, awdflash popped up. It went to a screen where it asked me to enter the bin file. Since I had used "awdflash file.bin" in the autoexec, the file name was already there so I hit enter. At least I tried to...Come to find out that the keyboard doesn't work. SOOO close and yet so far away. So now I need to figure out a way to get awdflash to do its thing without any input. Any ideas? I glanced at the options and I don't see anything that will do it. Would there be anything wrong with going back to an older version that allowed no-prompt flashing?

 

[busmaster11]

if you plug in a ps2 keyboard even while hot, it should work

 

[Minjin]

This IS a PS2 keyboard. Even tried a spare. I don't own any USB keyboards.

 

[captfm]

Minjin. Any news on your situation? I am in the EXACT same boat as you, right down to the same motherboard/processor deal. (Newegg?) I,too, am sitting here with the repair disk in the floppy afraid to reboot.:disgust:

 

[captfm]

Minjin. I hope you see this before you rma your board. I went ahead and bit the bullet and rebooted after all day trying different things with "Winflash". I don't think I'll be using that program any time soon. My first experience with it, needless to say, was not pleasant. Anyway, I made the "rescue disk" like you did but the only switches I used in the autoexec.bat file were /Sb /py /sn /R with "/sn", I think, being the one you are looking for. Means "don't save old bios" and I did not have to press "enter" for it to go ahead and program the bios. There was a short delay while it said to press enter but it finally did go ahead without any input. :thumbsup: I put the (very) old 1.0d bios back in that was originally there. But do I press my luck and try updating again? (Without Winflash of course) Think I'll just let my nerves rest for tonight. :shocked: Hope this helps.

 

[Minjin]

Fixed it! And it was the simplest of things: a bad floppy. Apparently what was happening was it was getting into awdflash and trying to load that file and it was just locking up. Thats why it seemed like the keyboard didn't work. After trying a couple different floppies created by a couple different drives (these things are awfully finicky), I finally got it to work with the L327 BIN. I wonder if the newest BIN is hosed or if its just an issue with winflash. Thanks for the input guys.