Wanna flash BIOS but FDD not working, how to boot off CD?

[Goi]

Hi guys, I have an ECS K7S5A and I'd like to flash my BIOS. I have a DrDOS 7.0 boot disk that I've verified to be working in another computer, but mine just doesn't seem to wanna read it, not while booting or in Windows, so I think its a hardware problem. A: drive still shows in Windows though, but isn't able to read. Is there any other way I can boot to normal DOS from Win2K? Could I do that with my DVD-ROM drive? If so, how? Do I just put the same files in my boot disk to a blank CD-R and expect it to work?

Thanks!

 

[Jyoung24]

First off how are you attempting to flash your BIOS? Within Windows or in real DOS mode?

Don't use DrDos if you can help it. Do you have a Windows 98 Boot disk by any chance? Ive found Win98's boot disk to work the best. Anyhow if you want to boot from a bootable CD then you must set your optical drive (Your DVD-ROM drive in this case) in the BIOS to be the first device to be checked for bootable system files.

Go into your BIOS and choose CD-ROM,C,A as your boot sequence then place your bootable cd in your DVD drive and restart your machine and the cd should boot. I have a question though? Why are you wanting to boot from a cd ? I don't know how you will flash your BIOS in this fashion.

Just to make sure your Floppy drive isn't dead put another floppy diskette in it and check if it's working or not. If it's not working then it may be dead.

I'm not sure if it's possible to use the recovery console to flash a BIOS or not but you might try that. Recovery console is not DOS though , it's very limited in the things it can do but you might try it.

 

[Goi]

I've done lotsa flashing before so I'm pretty confident with the process. However it seems that my FDD is dead so what I'm asking is how do I create a bootable CD. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear in the original post. I've booted to DOS with bootdisks all my life, but never on a CD, except when installing OS'es using the OS CD, but that's not pure DOS.

 

[WarCon]

If your using Nero go to the help section and search for bootable CD's. (Fairly in-depth description) Without a floppy disk you will have to use hard drive emulation or advanced (never used either, always used floppy emulation). I don't know if Adaptec has anything similar or not.

Hope this helps.

 

[Goi]

OK, I have Nero 5.5, and I have 3 computers, the one that has the CD-RW drive also has a FDD so I'm all set. I created a disk image of the boot disk in img and ima format , but how to I burn that in Nero, which only accepts ISO format? Apparently the new version of Nero has a lot less settings and options I can choose than the older versions, I can't seem to find anything at all, and sadly I don't have Help for some reason. Could someone give me step by step detailed instructions on how to do this? I've searched the web on this topic and didn't find anything that helped much. Thanks.

 

[pdo]

click on boot cdrom in nero. image file just browse to where you have your IMA files. Kind of emulation use 1.44 floppy emulation and you're all set.

 

[Goi]

Somehow I can only use Nero Express, even though I installed Nero Burning Rom too. I click on both Nero Express and Nero Burning Rom and both brings up Nero Express...weird...looks like I have to do a reinstall or something.

 

[Dolemite76]

ok... if your computer supports a bootable cdrom (your computer needs to support this... not your cdrom... can be done froma dvd rom drive)... get a bootdisk (for win98 preferably) or download one from www.bootdisk.com (since your FDD isn't working)... now use some burning software like nero and make a bootable cd with the boot disk files on that cd... if all works... restart your computer with the boot disk CD in the cd drive and all should go as if booting from A: drive... now... if you only want dos... then instead of choosing from the win98 boot menu... (you know... start computer with cdrom support, no cdrom support, etc...)... just hit SHIFT + F5 and you'll be taken directly to a dos prompt... all you need before hand is to copy the bios flashing utility and the bios you want to program onto your hard drive to a folder called BIOS or whatever so you can access it easily (C:/BIOS/...) make sure your hard drive is Fat32 at least (dos won't read ntfs hard drive format used with WinXP/2000)... that should work... BTW... this is how I flash my bios... I no like using floppy disks... why when you got a bootable cdrom... GOOD LUCK...

 

[Goi]

Man, this is driving me crazy, I got my Bero Burning Rom working and successfully burnt a bootable CD using the DrDOS 7.0 boot disk from bootdisk.com, but once I booted up, I was stuck in A: drive. I couldn't access my HDD, so I couldn't do the flashing. Proceeded to add the flashing files to my boot disk(2nd CD) and still nothing, they weren't in the CD even though I checked it in Win2K before rebooting to confirm that the flash files were indeed in the CD. Argh...DrDOS is suck, I'm gonna try something else.

 

[Goi]

OK, finally I have a bootable CD-R with the system files AND the flash files. I just put the flash files in my bootdisk and then made an image file out of it, then burnt that image file to a bootable CD-R using Nero.
Now I have the latest ECS K7S5A cheepobios for O/C'ing, and I got the new 143/147MHz FSB speeds that I needed, previously there was just 138MHz, and then 150MHz. Now instead of running 138MHz for a 1.45GHz CPU speed, I'm running 143MHz for a 1.5GHz CPU speed. Memory settings are set to "Ultra", 6-2-2. Whoopdy doo...50MHz more isn't much, but still its an improvement I guess. The 147MHz FSB wasn't stable, system freezed before the Win2K logon screen even when the slowest memory settings were applied, so I guess my Tbird just can't take no more at default voltage.

Anyway, I still wonder why the bootdisks I had didn't allow access to anything except A: drive...I tried both the DrDOS 7.0 and MS-DOS 6.22 bootdisks from bootdisk.com, and made 2 bootdisks(floppies) and tried them on 2 computers, and neither could boot up and access the HDD. Didn't have this problem before when I had my Win98 bootdisk and other bootdisks created under Win98. Anybody have any ideas? It'd suck if I had to burn a new CD every time I wanna boot up clean to DOS.

 

[peter7921]

I'm just wondering if you have three rigs can't you use one of the floppy drives to flash the bios then put it back? It seems like the easiest solution to me. Although it would be good to learn how to do this with a Cd.

 

[Dolemite76]

ok... i mentioned this in my message above... to access your hard drives while in DOS... your drives have to be using FAT file format (dos and windows 95 default file system) or FAT32 file format (windows 98/ME default file format)... i notice all your machines are using windows2000... now... the default file system that windows 2000 and windows XP sets up during installation is NTFS... DOS, Win9x/ME cannot read these files systems... that's why your hard drive wasn't visible when you booted to DOS... I use NTFS to run windows xp on my system hard drive... my second hard drive is formatted to FAT32... where I keep my downloads, backup files, and my music... that's the drive that's visible in DOS when I'm flashing my bios... i suggest you make a small partition on your hard drive and format it using FAT32... that will allow you to access the formatted partition in DOS... but if you got the bios flashed off your bootable CD.. then don't worry about it... just letting ya know what's up... BTW... use a windows 98 boot disk instead of DrDOS... much more reliable for flashing your bios... it's simple... boot it... at the menu of startup options... just hit SHIFT + F5... that will get you into a clean DOS prompt... your bootable cd becomes the a: drive... so the files you copied onto your boot CD are on your A: drive not regular cd drive letter... that's how it works for me...

 

[Goi]

OK, sorry I didn't mention it above, but I'm using FAT32 for all 3 of my systems, not NTFS, so that shouldn't be a problem. I chose FAT32 for compatibility sake. Anyway, the system I am trying to flash is pretty inaccessible, so it would be troublesome for me to even open it up, which is why I didn't want to do the swap. I thought about doing that too but in the end didn't.

So, since I'm using FAT32, why wouldn't the clean boot using either bootdisks be able to access any of my HDDs?
Anyway, I don't have Windows98 no more, so I don't have access to its bootdisk. I used to have a Win98 bootdisk but it got lost somehow. Does bootdisk.com have it? I don't recall seeing any.