Flashing Abit NF7-S BIOS?

[BZeto]

I'll be receiving my Abit NF7-S shortly and I would like to know what method I should use to flash the bios. I hear that it ships with a BIOS Flash utility you can flash from within windows, or you can do the traditional method from a floppy.

Is the Abit utility as safe as the old fashion command prompt method?

What about changing jumpers to clear my CMOS after the flash?

 

[MegaWorks]

download this baby and you can change the bios from windows, it's really safe if you flash the right Bios!

flashmenu

------------------------------------------------------
AMD Athlon XP T-Bred B DLT3C 1700+ @ 2.3GHZ (1.775v) 400FSB = 3200+
Abit NF7-S V.2 (nForce2-U400)
Corsair TwinX XMS 3200LL 512MB @ 2-3-2-6 (2.6v)
Sapphire Radeon 9500 Pro 128MB
Antec TrueBlue 480W
Thermalright SLK-947U with 92mm Vantec Tornado @2800RPM
Antec PlusView 1000AMG
Cambridge SoundWorks MegaWorks THX 550 5.1

 

[BZeto]

Thanks, after doing some reading I've only heard good things about Flash Menu, looks like I'll use it.

 

[MichaelD]

Hello fellow Zombie,

I'll add my two cents. Even though most folks will say that the Abit Windows Bios Flash Utility is safe, the fact of the matter is that you're STILL running a command line window from within WINDOWS.

Now...we all know Windows. It's stable...until the most inopportune time. :Q True, these risks can be slightly lessened by:

Being plugged into a UPS
Not being overclocked while flashing
Not having intensive apps running in the background

But the truth of the matter is that there is NO SAFER way to flash a motherboard bios than in a pure DOS environment. I.E. booting to a DOS bootdisk and going from there.

The odds of something going wrong while flashing from a Windows environment are slim, but they are almost non-existent (comparitively speaking) from within a pure DOS environment.

Good luck, though.

 

[will889]

And not being overclocked

 

[Corporate Thug]

the Abit utility is fine

 

[BZeto]

MichaelD,
You bring some good points. I guess it all comes down to convenience. Either way I suppose its not a big deal, doing the floppy boot method isn't much harder. But I beleive I will give the Abit Flash Menu utility a try.

 

[jiffylube1024]

I still flash motherboards only from floppies in DOS. So many of those Windows based flash programs are flaky, poorly written hack jobs done by the company.

 

[will889]

Yes. Safer is dos, just type the commands right.

 

[Noid]

Doesnt the FlashMenu completely rewrite BIOS ...?
(Mine does)

The DOS flash only flashes changes in modified sections within BIOS.

I never trusted the Windows FlashMenu until now.
It has never failed me, and the complete 're-write' fixed some issues for me once.
(But, I make sure my OC is stable. Others having problems are users with bad OC's ... IMO)

 

[will889]

I have used winflash without trouble (done the bootblock too) - but I recently went back to old school. I always upgrade the bios with no OC and default CPU and mem settings, and voltages.