how does one flash the BIOS in a floppiness PC?

[richardycc]

just wondering whats a good way to flash the BIOS in a pc running win xp without a floppy drive. I tried the F8, but it won't just give me a command prompt like older version of windows. any suggestions?

rich

 

[DJMiX]

Bootable CD ..

or get a floppy drive.
or if you have big BALLS you can use a windows based flasher.

 

[Peter]

Halfway recent mainboards can also boot off USB sticks, some even boot off media cards in a USB card reader. Format one of your such media to be bootable to plain DOS, and off you go. Your camera won't mind!

 

[pebe]

Peter, can you explain a bit more how to do that. please

 

[magratton]

Ahh.. floppiness. It is just such a floppy state to be in.

1) Create a bootable CD. You need to go into the bios (likely anyway) and under advanced settings change your first boot device (or which ever is before the Hard Drive) to be the CD.
2) Change it from within Windows. There is a program called "FlashMenu" that downloads the Bios update and will install it all from within windows. If you use this I suggest you use the "step-by-step" process vs. the One Click process. Just safer, though I have used the one-click and it worked perfectly fine.

BTW: What motherboard do you have? Browsing around the support and download section of your mfg's web site should also provide you with the information you need.

 

[Peter]

Originally posted by: pebe
Peter, can you explain a bit more how to do that. please

Just like with any other media:

Boot to DOS. Use FDISK and FORMAT commands.

Only that not all BIOSes support USB storage media in a way that lets DOS see them.