flashing BIOS, boot from floppy neccessary?

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AluminumStudios

Senior member
Sep 7, 2001
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I have an Epox 8K3A+ botherboard. The directions for flashing the bios say to boot from a floppy and have the BIOS update file on the floppy. Is this simply precautionary or will it screw my system if I try to update the BIOS from a bios file on one of my non-RAID hard drives? (like will the hard drive become inaccessible during the update before it's finished reading the file?)

My system doesn't have a floppy drive and it's a pain to plug one in, plus the only one I had broke. I have a Windows 98 CD that I can boot to DOS with (to ensure there are no programs in memory when I update.)


Thanks.


 
Adul

Adul

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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danny.tangtam.com
you can flash from the hd just fine. Just as long as the HD is not in NTFS format. You can also make a bootable cd adn do it, but you kind of need the floppy drive for the boot image.
 
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Woody419

Senior member
Sep 22, 2001
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To be on the safe side burn a boot disk with just command.com, io.sys, and msdos.sys, along with the awdflash, *.bat, and *.bin files needed to flash the BIOS. Of course you will also need the generic dos cdrom drivers and properly configured autoexec.bat and config.sys included on the disk so you have access to the cd-rom drive.

By the time you get this figured out it you will have discovered it would have been easier to get a $10 floppy and plug it in.
 
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AluminumStudios

Senior member
Sep 7, 2001
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I have a CD that will boot me into dos. My question is is it OK to run the award flash utility and read the bios file from a hard drive (after I've booted to dos from a CD.) My concern is that during the flash operation the floppy may be the only device not affected or that remains available hence the directions saying to do it from floppy.

And no, it would not be faster for me to go buy a floppy, I know what I"m doing, I just don't know the internal details of what the system does when it's flashed, so that's why I"m trying to figure out if I can go against the directions and flash with a bios file on the hd rather than on a bloody floppy.

 
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Woody419

Senior member
Sep 22, 2001
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Originally posted by: AluminumStudios
...if I can go against the directions and flash with a bios file on the hd rather than on a bloody floppy.
Click to expand...
Yes you can.

 
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AluminumStudios

Senior member
Sep 7, 2001
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Thanks for the responses. I booted to DOS from a Windows 98 CD that I have that lets me boot to DOS, then ran the flash utility from a fat32 partition and flashed my system just fine.

 
Spicedaddy

Spicedaddy

Platinum Member
Apr 18, 2002
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I make a bootable CD containing aflash.exe and the bios file with a CDRW in Nero. Works better than a floppy since it's much faster.
 
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Gonad the Barbarian

Lifer
Oct 16, 1999
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Originally posted by: AluminumStudios
Thanks for the responses. I booted to DOS from a Windows 98 CD that I have that lets me boot to DOS, then ran the flash utility from a fat32 partition and flashed my system just fine.
Click to expand...

That's the way to do it. I don't quite understand the continued insistance on flashing from a floppy. They aren't the most reliable media in the world you know.
 
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tcsenter

Lifer
Sep 7, 2001
18,884
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Boot from a floppy isn't necessary. You can do it from ATAPI (CD/ZIP), or if you have Win98, you can boot from the HDD by pressing F8 a couple times (right before the "Starting Windows 9x" message) to invoke the Boot Menu. From the Boot Menu, choose #6 "Safe Mode Command Prompt Only".

At the C: prompt, CD to the directory where your flash utility and binary file are located. Then flash away like there's no tomorrow.

The only thing required is a DOS environment without any extended/expanded memory managers loaded such as HIMEM.SYS or EMM386.EXE. How you get there is not important.
 
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TronX

Member
Apr 9, 2003
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Originally posted by: AluminumStudios
I have an Epox 8K3A+ botherboard. The directions for flashing the bios say to boot from a floppy and have the BIOS update file on the floppy. Is this simply precautionary or will it screw my system if I try to update the BIOS from a bios file on one of my non-RAID hard drives? (like will the hard drive become inaccessible during the update before it's finished reading the file?)

My system doesn't have a floppy drive and it's a pain to plug one in, plus the only one I had broke. I have a Windows 98 CD that I can boot to DOS with (to ensure there are no programs in memory when I update.)


Thanks.
Click to expand...


If you have WinXp just put in a floppy disk and select format with the mouse.
There should be another option for making a system bootable disk next.
Then scan it with checkdisk for bad sectors.. full scan.

Then add the flasher program and the bios files and setup your motherboard bios
to boot from the floppy.

If you have an Asus motherboard you can use one of their programs to flash from the desktop.
But I think I saw that you have an Epox.

I've failed a few flashes in all my tech years, even from the floopy.
You do your best and no matter what sometimes those chips just die.

I'll tell you why to use the floppy though. The main reasons are all those hidden programs
that might fight the flasher like Virus programs. Also some windows setups.. the really tight
secure system will block flashing from the operating system and this is to stop a virus from
killing your hardware.

I've had a virus once many years ago that killed 2 of my Sony
monitors. And many years before that a Monkey-B virus
killed my harddrive. So my point is that most motherboard makers setup
hidden settings to lock people out of flashing from windows. It's just safer
for you and cheaper for them not to RMA so many bad flashes.


 
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