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I knew there was a reason I hate NTFS...

BGod

BGod

Golden Member
I was going to update the BIOS on my MSI K7T266 Pro2 / Athlon XP 1800+ system tonight when I realized that I couldn't install the dang thing the way they recommend, from the hard drive. All my drives are NTFS which are not recognized by a Windows 98 boot floppy. So I did the dumb thing and tried to flash the BIOS from a floppy disk. :|

Wouldn't you know the darn AMI flash program bombed out trashing the BIOS chip. I even tried the BIOS recovery trick listed on MSI's site. The board is toast! :| :| :|

Time to see if I can get an RMA from United Micro or just an AMI BIOS chip.

The only bright spot is I ordered up a MSI K7T266 Pro2 RU tonight from MultiWave UPS Red Label, just in case the RMA doesn't go smoothly being it was a BIOS flash problem. Should have it back up and cracking by Friday night. 😀
 
Well if you are looking into getting a new Bios Chip check out Bios World. I used them when last year when I got my Tyan Dualie Bios fried. They even sent me a personal email asking how the new chip worked!! 😀
 
arggg, that explains my problem! At least I think it does. I have an k7t pro2 RU and everytime I try to flash the BIOS when I'm at the dos promt from the boot floppy and I try to change to my c drive it isn't recognized. It makes so much since now.
 
NTFS isnt the problem. The problem appears to be the companies that are not providing a good solution for BIOS flashing. I havent flashed the BIOS on my new board, and when I flashed my K7M's bios I just did it off the floppy. No problems.
 
If you were really desparate to fix the board, (this works if your BIOS chip is removable) you could obtain a second board.. boot it with a floppy, and a different harddrive (fat16 or whatever) then pull that active BIOS's chip, put the pooched chip in then run the BIOS update again..

Of course this is risky business as im sure your aware of, and it wont work with all systems.. but if you have the resources, it might be worth a shot..

BTW, I use only NTFS if im running 2000 or XP.. For me, it just seems faster, plus I like the built in compression support, which I use all the time. Then theres the support for larger drives.. what is FAT32's max size..?
 
Flashing BIOS from the HDD is recommended? Wow, that's for sure something most people don't recommend.

Windows XP can format a "bootable" floppy and NTFS volumes can be read through that command prompt.
 
NTFS rulez...

fat is the one that sucks...

For the last 4 years I am on NTFS and ext2 and is fine .... everytime I am using a fat partition I have problems...

In the flash update instructions says clearly that you should boot with a floppy to dos,
and then change the floppy to the bios and run the flash utility..

I have done it with my old motherboard 3 - 4 types. ... it worked fine... (abit be6-2)
 
Sorry to hear about your woes. 🙁

Every time I go to flash a BIOS, I do a full format of a floppy from the drive in that PC. Then, from that same PC, I copy the flash utility and the new BIOS update file from the harddrive to the floppy (after having previously downloaded the files to that PC's harddrive from the web). Then, I boot with a 98 floppy, swap to the BIOS flash floppy and run the update.

I just don't trust floppies very much. I've seen, too many times, that a floppy written by another machine will suddenly stop being able from being read in another. That's why I format and write from the PC being updated.

<shrug>

BTW, the poll should have the following option:

FAT32 boot partition with NTFS data partitions.
 
Dr. Dos is a great program to update your bios when using NTFS... I use it all the time for my Win2k install.

Boot Disk.com. Dr Dos is even listed on Abits site for bios flashing...
 
I've flashed all sorts of boards, bootable win98 floppy, flash and bios files, and write up an autoexec.bat file to run the flash. Never have to touch the machine until it's done.

I've also experienced conjur's intermachine floppy compatibility problem, especially when mixing CLV and CRV drives 😉
 
Although this is a waste, why not burn the stuff to a CD? You can use MSCDEX to access the CD-ROM drive under DOS, at which point you shouldn't have a problem runing the flasher.
 
The poll didn't really let me give a very good accounting.

My Win2k PC has 2 drives and 5 partitions. I do boot from an NTFS partition, but the partition that I really store my data on is FAT32. That way, if something does happen to my booting ability, any boot floppy will let me access my FAT32 drive as the C: drive.

I also have a Linux partition, but don't use it much.

serialb, I'll have to check into a boot disk made by XP. That violates all sorts of Microsoft security rules unless you have to login as an administrator during boot up. Is that maybe only on XP systems with only one user defined?

I'd appreciate more details from anybody who knows. I still don't use XP at home and haven't liked it much the few times I've encountered it.
 
Award BIOSs can still be done with a boot floppy, but this is an AMI BIOS and they use a DOS Protect mode to flash the BIOS. Late lastnight while I was stewing over what happened I had a brain fart. Win 98 boot disks make a RAM drive. Do you think there would be enough room in the RAM drive for the flashing program & the BIOS bin file? /me feels like an idiot now!

I get two quick beeps, then a pause and one more beep. I lost the link to beep codes. 🙁 The D-LEDs show three green & one red - Something to do with the RTC, and that's where it sits.

Wellcky - You're a frelling genius! 😀 I'm putting in my order when I go home for lunch.
DaZ - FAT 32s limit is 134 GB, but your cluster size is going to be unbelieveably huge at that size. NTFS is about 2.5 Tera Bites.
NOX - I'll try that proggie next time. 🙂
Hellburner - I've run in to that myself. I've seen it happen with the same make & model drive too. Head allignment is all I can think of.
ViRGE - Because it has to write the old bios back to whatever medium is being used. Just me, but I save the old BIOS just in case.
 
Try this:

Rename the desired AMI BIOS file to AMIBOOT.ROM and save it on a floppy disk. e.g. Rename A569MS23.ROM to AMIBOOT.ROM

Insert this floppy disk in the floppy drive. Turn On the system and press and hold Ctrl-Home to force update. It will read the AMIBOOT.ROM file and recover the BIOS from the A drive.

When 4 beeps are heard you may remove the floppy disk and restart the computer.
 
Crazee - Tried that. System speaker just clicks while I hold those keys down.


<< I even tried the BIOS recovery trick listed on MSI's site. >>

 
Bummer Jeff,

I once fried a bios from a floppy, luckily I bought the mobo local and the store has a one year return policy. All they checked to see if it would post, since no post they replaced the mobo at no cost to me.

Jay
 
I got ahold of a Tech at United Micro. He thinks from the beep codes that it's the video card. Three beeps isn't the video card, but I wasn't going to argue.

He wants me to strip off everything except the CPU and try to boot. Then add stuff one by one until it messes up. I didn't tell him it was a bad BIOS flash over the phone. I should have an RMA by Friday. 😀
 
NTFS rules! (over the FATs anyway) 😉

I can't remember EVER flashing a Bios from the harddrive - I've always done it from floppy - and between all the tech jobs I've worked at and all the stuff I've done for myself and friends, I've quite literally flashed hundreds of systems that way.
rolleye.gif



 
Pulled everything except the CPU and got 3 beeps like it should. Put in a brick of ram and got 8 like it should. Put in the video card, and I got a boot screen. Got it back up and running enough to put the flash util and bin file in the ram drive and got it flashed anyway. 😀 😀 😀

The only thing I can figure out is that the brick of ram I had in the first slot has a bad chip.

I've learned to follow instructions with AMI BIOSs from now on. 😛
 
NTFS is the only thing I use on my windows 2k/XP boxen. Also, I'm trying to figure out how to flash the BIOS from a bootable zip disk, because I find that floppies are too unreliable. The only problem is that I've not been able to make a bootable zip disk under XP. 🙁
 
Actually it is not AMI bios it is MSI motherboards. They are the only manufacturer who says don't do it from the floppy. All the rest say don't do it from the hard drive.
 
I've done many flashes with no problem on the NTFS file system, even MSI mobo's, so ermmmm......., whatcha talkin about?
 
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