Not able to flash bios

[athlon64X2]

All,

I got my Chaintech VNF4 Ultra MB yesterday, and I am trying to put together my first system.

I have Athlon64 X2 4200+ plugged into it, and when the system boots, in the Task Manager it shows only one CPU. It should show 2.

http://www.chaintech.com.tw/tw/eng/Download/dl_desc.asp?DCSNo=4&PISNo=318
So I went to the Chaintech and got the latest bios, VN210603.BIN and created a boot disk using DrDFlash. When I was flashing the bios (fortunately I backed up the one that came with the board), the process seemed to get stuck.

After the backup was done, the screen showed me the following:
Input file: VN210603.BIN
Checksum: F91BH

And it seemed to go nowhere. So I forced a shutdown, cleared the CMOS, and restarted the system. While booting it showed me the message "Checksum Error" and "F1 to continure DEL to enter setup". After hittting F1, it booted fine.

I continued, the system booted although it showed 2.137 GHz instead of 2.2 GHz (when booting with previous BIOS).

What should be my next step? My taskmanager still shows only one CPU.

Any help would be appreciated.

Mahesh.

 

[athlon64X2]

So I was searching for what I may have done wrong while flshing hte bios - came across following guide:
http://www.ecsusa.com/downloads/flashAward.html

In the guide, I remember getting to the step 3 and completing it half way. Where it says do you want to save the existing bios, I said yes - it took the backup, and gave me a checksum.

Then it never asked me "Do you want to flash the bios"?

It kind of got stuck. I waited for at least 5 mins. I know it should not take that long. And then force shut it down. It did not give me any message such as:
"Write Ok"
"Write Fail"
"No Update"

This stuff is killing me.
🙁

 

[GadgetBuilder]

For help with the Chaintech BIOS you might try here: http://forums.pcper.com/forumdisplay.php?f=46

 

[athlon64X2]

I guess it was my ignorance that was causing the problems.

Apparently Award strongly recommends using the following switched with their flash utility:

/py /sn /cd /cp /cc /cks /R

After some reading on this, it was a breeze. The correct version of bios shows up at the boot-up, and the OS identifies my dual core processor.
http://www.cybertechhelp.com/tutorial/article/flash-award-bios

One last question:
Most of the websites suggest doing the following after bios flash:
"Reboot and go into bios select "Load Optimized Defaults" and set your floppy as first boot device.. "save and exit" bios.."

I tried turning on the Load Optimized option, but after booting my OS did not recognize my kepboard or mouse via USB or the PS2 connectors. When I returned to the regular setting, (turned off the load optimized defaults setting) everthing was fine again.

Why so?

 

[Budman]

dont even bother with dos flashing,just use Winflash.

It works great and i allready flashed my chaintech NF4 board 3 times with it allready.