Problem updating BIOS on EPOX 8k9a, please help

cheap

Senior member
Sep 30, 2002
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Hi, I'm still stuck using the retail BIOS of EPOX board 8k9a which got all kinds of problems. Recently I noticed from like february of this year EPOX started to put out new bios revisions with alll kinds of fixes in them. There's been three BIOS updates so far but I can't get any fo them to work! I follow everything to the letter, load optimized setting, flash, load optimized settings again. Yet my system freezes on Win2k boot up, right before it's supposed to display a Win2k Professional image at start up. Thank god for the bios back up or I would be stuck with unusable system right now. If anybody has any suggestions on what the hell is going on or has the same system and successfully flashed bios, let me know.

Thanx a lot.
 

Buz2b

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2001
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This might not be related to the BIOS files themselves. Is your system overclocked? Epox doesn't recommend flashing with an overclocked system. Probably just because it might be unstable and randomly reboot, but who knows?
Does the system seem to go through the entire flash process when you do this? When the flash occurs, what do you see on the screen? Did you try clearing the CMOS after a failed boot? Resetting the CMOS can sometimes clear up the problem.
 

cheap

Senior member
Sep 30, 2002
399
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I did exactly what EPOX suggests in their notes. Loaded optimized defaults, flashed, reloaded optimized defaults. So, no, during flashing my system was not overclocked. Win2k froze half way through loading. When flashing, everything goes fine, it gets through all the way and says bios is flashed ect., I should reboot my system. I reboot, it goes through win2k black screen with progress bar and when progress bar gets all the way to the right it just freezes and doesn't do anything else. I didn't reset CMOS though, never occured to me. I fail to see how it might help, it starts to boot, but freezes like 5 seconds into it. Hmm, I still might try it tommorrow though.
 

Buz2b

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2001
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Clearing the CMOS is like a "fresh start" for a system. You should give it a try. If that doesn't work, you might be looking at a bad ROM chip. Probably need to contact Epox support and see if they have any other ideas. If not you could try going to Badflash.com and having them either send you a replacement chip with the BIOS file of your choice or send in yours and have them flash it.
 

cheap

Senior member
Sep 30, 2002
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Problem solved. Obviously it couldn't have been a bad bios chip since I said I sucsessfully restored old bios which got saved to floppy during flashing. Problem turned out to be f@cked up loading of defaults in newer bios revisions.

Anyway, I flash my bios yet again to try to reset CMOS. It doesn't help. I then go into bios, and go into advanced bios section and start messing with bunch of options, enabling and disabling things here and there. System booted. It became obvious that something isn't set right after I flash my bios. I restore my old bios for like the 6th time. Load defaults and write down all the settings in advanced bios setup. Then I flash my bios yet again, it tells me bad CMOS checksum and reloads all the defaults. I immideatly go to advanced bios setup and check all the options there. Sure enough, APIC MODE which is supposed to be enabled is disabled. I enabled it and system booted without any problem. Goddamn stupid EPOX engineers. Can't even get their defaults right.
 

Buz2b

Diamond Member
Jun 2, 2001
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But don't forget to look at the bright side; the problem is solved. That setting is mainly a windows thing if I'm not mistaken. Their argument could be that not all users want or need that enabled. However, they could have at least documented the possible problems the setting could cause.