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Bootable CD for BIOS upgrades

G

Goi

Diamond Member
Hi guys...my FDD is dead so I need to make a bootable CD to upgrade my BIOS. I've tried making 2, one with nothing in it, using Nero Burning ROM's built-in bootable CD creator, and the other with the FreeDOS ISO file. With either of these, I'm able to boot into DOS, but I'm unable to access my HDD, so I'm not able to flash the BIOS...I'm also not sure how to include the flash files within the CD so that I wouldn't even need to access my HDD if its not possible...

Help please?
 
Well if you're on NTFS for your hD you're sol from the HD.

If you goto Bootable CD's a plethora
and create a basic bootable CD ....making sure to put your bios flash file, and bios signature file in the correct folder so it copies to your CD Rom....you're all set.

If for some reason that your bios won't allow you to flash from a CD ROM b/c of the -R (read only) attrib.....that boot cd also includes the MS ram disk, so you can just copy it to there (last time I used it, the ram drive was Q🙂

NOTE:
I've read ppl having problems flashing BiOSes from RamDrives....but I've done it b4 w/ zero problems.

Only problem is that if you do it this way, and you still can't access your HD, you can't back up your BIOS to anything other then a RAM-drive so if you hose your bios once you reboot, your old bios is in the immortal words of Jack Handy......"It's Gone Man"
 
Also, if you have a recent mobo, you can boot from one of those USB flash drives that are on sale fairly often. They're a lot more convenient than burning CDs.
 
Mine's an ECS K7S5A, and the option to boot from USB Thumbdrives is grayed out within the BIOS...

As for the system doing the burning, yeah it is running on NTFS, and I'm trying the bootable CD-RW on a FAT32 system. However, why should the file system matter if I'm burning an ISO image file?
 
NTFS = cannot be read in DOS by FAT32.

When you burn a FAT32 image file, it loads a FAT32 partition (either on the floppy drive, or in the case of most bootable cd roms, a floppy emulation drive) and hte partition type is FAT32.

Where you burn from partition wise, and what type of partiotion you're burning doesn't matter.

NTFS= cannot be read by FAT32. IT's just that simple

[edit]
well, ntfs can be read by Fat32.

NTFS cannot be read by Fat 32 without a third party product
there
[edit]
 
Hmmn, so you're saying that if I burn a downloaded ISO image file from an NTFS partition onto a bootable CD-R, that CD-R cannot be read by FAT32 systems, but only by NTFS systems? The burnt CD-R will be written in NTFS?
 
Hmmn, so you're saying that if I burn a downloaded ISO image file from an NTFS partition onto a bootable CD-R, that CD-R cannot be read by FAT32 systems, but only by NTFS systems? The burnt CD-R will be written in NTFS?
Click to expand...

I've never seen a ISO-9660 file that's written in NTFS. I don't even think it's possible...but I dunno....i don't know enuf about the specifics of how sectors are written in the diff't partitions. The product I have for reading NTFS from a fat partition still uses a fat partition, but adds libraries loaded at boot time to read NTFS partitions.

Second:
NTFS = can read Fat16, Fat32

Fat 32= can read Fat 16

Fat 16=can read (but not always) fat 32 partitions

Fat 32 = can not read NTFS partitions
 
You're confusing partition types with operating systems.

FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, ISO9660, etc. are file systems. They define how files are stored on some storage device. That's it.

NTFS can't "read" FAT32 because both are just specifications. That's like saying OpenGL can read Direct3D or CDs can read DVDs.

Reading and writing to a file system is a function of the OS, i.e. DOS, Windows, Linux, etc. When you make a bootdisk, by definition it has some operating system (most likely DOS). It is this OS and not any file systems whatsoever that determines which file systems you can access.

Let's say I put Linux on a bootdisk. When I boot up, Linux will be able to access any file systems that Linux supports (and won't be able to access any it doesn't support), regardless of what file system the disk has.

DOS can't read NTFS without 3rd party utilities. It can read FAT12/16/32.

I hope that's clear.
 
I keep seeing some of you refer to third party utils able to allow fat32 to read ntfs. Just what are the names of these and where can I get them?
 
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