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Mobo Bios Flash Question

S

Saku

Senior member
After flashing the bios, I am told I will need to reinstall Windows. So will I lose all my data if I want to flash my bios?

Thanks for you help.
 
Its an Acer system with an Acer bios, I want the mobo manufacturer Foxconn's bios so that the system wont have all that limitations that Acer setup in their bios.

Bueller?
 
Find the current flash that is on your motherboard and store it somewhere. Then, if things do not work, you should be ale to flash back to the current BIOS.
Some flashing programs let you save the current BIOS also, but not all of them do that.

If you end up having to re-install Windows, and you do not have another partition or another hard drive, you will lose the data unless you back it up. You should always backup your data even if you are not flashing your BIOS!
 
No, you won't need to reinstall windows no matter what. The worst thing that could possibly happen with a BIOS flash is that the flashing program will freeze up in the middle of the process, and then your motherboard will be unusable unless you get a new BIOS chip (www.badflash.com has them).
 
I have been getting my info from foxconn site and bootdisk.com, when I run the attempt to run the bios flash through dos it automatically stores my current bios in my floppy. After is saves my curent bios it says attempts to install the new bios but says something about lock-string. I think what I wasnt doing was writing "/f" at the end.

Thanks for your help!
 
no XP reinstall necessary
always clear cmos, set bios to failsafe defaults, boot to flash, reboot, immediately reset bios to failsafe defaults, reboot, config bios entries you want

and the lockstring error message means the bios is not for your mobo - which you already know, so you have to add switch to ignore that, which I used to use as /nr
(don't check ROM ID)

however, here they use /NBL (which apparently means no boot lock)
http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/archive/index.php?t-424.html
http://www.wimsbios.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=14
http://www.motherboardpoint.com/t11186-bios-update-9cjs.html


here are old switches
http://www.cpu-central.com/wwwboard/msg64.asp?id=64074

and some mobo bios config have flash protection - disable

Edit:
anyways, heres /f which I have never used actually,
/F - stands for reprogramming by means of the system BIOS. Most contemporary BIOS's feature the procedure of FlashROM reprogramming. The key /F enables AwardFlash to reprogram FlashROM with the algorithms of the current BIOS version. If a mainboard peculiarities do not allow applying AwardFlash Writer algorithms, you should use the key /F.

 
Yea, Im still gettng lock string error even after /f. Im going to /nbl or /nr. I am positive this is the right bios for my mobo b/c ppl that have this same exact mobo are telling me that this bios installed on their system using /f.

Thanks for your help, Ill report back w/ my results.
 
Wow that was a pain in my neck. Well, I got it to update the bios by the command "flash xxxx.bin /tiny /f". After is upadted the bios it restarted and a continuous annoying beep came from my mobo then screen turned off... ugh. I turned it off freaked out for a few mins, reseated my ram 1 by 1 and try booting but still aggonizing beep and screen would not turn on. I was at a lost of what to do and thought I messed up my board by somehow not applying the new bios all the way because of a bad floppy.

I unplug my comp and take out the mobo battery and leave it out overnight to reset cmos. I wake up and nervously hit the power button on my comp and WALLAH postage! Everything is good to go, I just had to manually reset the cmos.
 
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