How to flash a BIOS without floppy???

[pitbull]

..is it possible to flash bios from CDROM?
..my motherboard looks like it is damaged.. it doesn't allow me to boot from Floppy drive, I cn boot from CDrom though. I isnt a problem until I wnt to flash my BIOS.

..is it possible to make Bootable CDROM with BIOS and flash utilities and flash BIOS from CDROM?

Please help.

 

[Moonbender]

Can't see why it shouldn't work. No guarantee, of course.

 

[nickdakick]

Are yuo sure about the defective mobo ? Tried another floppy drive instead ? Looks like it's more likely that your drive is not working. Checked connection mobo <-> floppy ?

 

[compuwiz1]

Actually, if you put the flasher and the .bin file on the root of the hard drive, then boot to command prompt only, using F8 at boot up, you can run it from the C drive.
Just enter the flash program XXXXXXXX.EXE, or what ever, then when it prompts you for the program to flash, you must also enter the path, ie. C:\xxxxxxxxx.bin or whatever the file name is. Follow the rest and flash away. Don't disturb anything during the flash program. Once done, delete those files from the root of the drive.

 

[pitbull]

Thanx a lot for suggestions!

..I tried with 3 different cables and 3 different Floppys.. the system just won't boot from there. It just skips the floppy when it sopose to boot from it and goes to HDD ( I tried without HDD, then it sais ''Boot failure...''
..the irony is theat floppy works normal in windows it just doesn't let me boot from it

I dont know what else to try.

I think Ill do this like compuwiz1 suggested.

Thanx again!

 

[Jeff H]

I don't want to insult anyone's intelligence here, but have you checked the BIOS settings for Boot Up Floppy Seek and Boot Sequence? They're both located in the BIOS Features Setup section of the BIOS, and if they're not enabled your system will simply not look for the floppy at boot time.

 

[Gepost]

Pitbull, I have the exact same problem. What motherboard are using? I have a 503+. Yes, my bios settings are correct.

 

[AMDfreak]

I know this method is not recommended, but I have successfully booted to a Safe-Mode Command Prompt and flashed the bios from the hard drive. Good option if you don't have a CD-R drive.

 

[Modus]

Compuwiz is right. You don't absolutely need a bootable floppy disk to flash your BIOS -- any real mode DOS will work, including &quot;Restart in MS-DOS mode&quot;, F8 on boot, or a blank hard drive formatted with /S.

Modus

 

[pitbull]

Jeff K...

..no problem. But As I said I tried all... cables, floppys, and bios settings.. Nothing!

I am using ABIT BX133 RAID motherboard

 

[Charles]

Award WinFlash. I tried it in Win2k Pro while playing some MP3s using Winamp and it worked.

 

[Windogg]

Do a &quot;Hot Swap&quot; flash as a last resort.

Windogg

 

[pitbull]

Windogg...

What do you mean by &quot;Hot Swap&quot; ?

Thanx!

 

[compuwiz1]

Hot swap is exactly that. Booting up with a known good bios chip from a different, but same motherboard, then pulling out the bios chip with the system running and exchanging in a bad one. Now that the system is up, you can try reflashing the bad chip. This is not for the weak of heart. You can also ruin the good chip too. Only experts, who know exactly what they are doing 110% should ever attempt it, and then that's as a last resort. pitbull, this does not apply to your situation. Now, based on what you have posted, you have one of a few different things going on with your floppy.
1. Bios settings / bootup floppy seek not enabled.
2. Bad or reversed cable
3. Bad Drive
4. Bad Floppy port on motherboard.

IMO, flashing from the hard drive is more reliable than a floppy because floppy disks fail all the time.

 

[pitbull]

compuwiz1.. thank you for the explanation.

And thank you all for yor thoughts!

I'll do bios flash from another (old) hdd with a clean boot ...when Ill need to upgrade.
..It is working for me right now.


Pitbull

 

[BigToque]

the easiest way I know of is this:

copy flash program and .BIN file to c:\bios
restart system
press CTRL+F5 (this loads absolutely nothing - which is good)
go to c:\bios and run flash program
it should ask you for the name of the .BIN file (enter it as EXACTNAME.BIN)
it should then ask if you want to backup the old bios, say yes
when its finished, power the system down and do a cold boot.
when in bios, load the setup defaults
configure bios as needed.