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Flash failure: replacement BIOS chip?

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pljones

New Member
Joined
Aug 15, 2003
Location
UK
Hi there!

I've just hit a bit of bad luck. My last Flash upgrade seems to have failed. Here's the full story with embedded questions - hopefully someone here can help! :eek:

About a month ago, I purchased a MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR system. There were some problems with it as delivered and the reseller suggested a BIOS or driver upgrade might fix his wiring problem (*cough*). So I used LiveUpdate to get all the latest from MSI. Everything installed without a fault (but the wiring problem didn't go away, oddly enough).

(The wiring problem is caused by my case having a different idea about Mic, Ear and USB2 front panel mobo pinouts than MSI.)

For info, the rest of the system:
AMD Athlon XP 2800+
2x512M PC3200 RAM
2x80G Seagate Barracuda drives RAID/0/1 on onboard Promise controller
ATI Radeon 9600
Sony DVD+-RW drive
Echo MiaMIDI
Floppy
Thermaltake V2000 case

Okay, so I've had a nice, reasonably stable system running for several weeks. A couple of days ago, LiveUpdate popped up again offering BIOS 7.3, so I OK'd thinking nothing of it.

As before, I used the Windows flash utility and cut a recovery diskette.

As before the Flash utility show the progress and finished ok, asking me to reboot.

Unlike the previous time, however, my machine did not restart.

There was no BIOS beep.

There was no VGA output / BIOS splash screen.

There was no floppy drive access.

I stared back at my monitor as blankly as it was staring at me!

I tried booting off the floppy.

There was no floppy drive access.

I referred to the manual's troubleshooting section. It refered back to the BIOS recovery procedure - booting off the floppy. So I tried that again.

There was no floppy drive access.

Step 2 in the troubleshooting is to clear the CMOS. Here's my first question...

The "instructions" in the manual consist of a picture showing a jumper in each of two positions accompanied by a warning not to set the jumper to Clear CMOS with the power on.

What I did was this:
1) Power off, switch off PSU, leave power cord in
2) Move jumper from "Keep CMOS" to "Clear CMOS"
3) Move jumper from "Clear CMOS" to "Keep CMOS"
4) Switch on PSU, power on

Is that correct? No pause between steps 2 and 3? No power on between steps 2 and 3?


That had no effect - still no BIOS beep, no splashscreen, no floppy access.

I did notice that the DVD drive light came on for a while, although I think it did this before I reset the CMOS, too.

The troubleshooting next step is to contact my reseller for a new BIOS chip.


Second question: is there anything else I can try first? I've seen mention of the Safe Mode jumper and the FSB jumper. These aren't covered in the troubleshooting -- are they likely to offer any assistance?


Rather foolishly, I contacted my reseller, who helpfully told me I'd voided my warranty and that I was on my own in getting a new BIOS chip.

The next step in the troubleshooting is to contact MSI but that's not resulted in any response.

I've found www.biosworld.com and www.badflash.com over in the US.

Third question: are there any UK/EU suppliers of MSI BIOS chips (for about EUR25 plus tax and carriage)?
 
Last edited:
Never, Never use windows bios flash as if it messes up like it does most of the time your board is toast use live update and make a bootable floppy to flash with. If your saying you got an error or messed up during windows flash then its RMA time there is nothing you can do but hot flash the bios chip in another board or RMA the board.
Sorry to hear about your luck
 
Problem resolved. The CMOS RAM data had got munged (the flash was fine). I used J10 to put the board in safe mode, went into setup and saved the defaults, J10 back to user mode and all was fine. (Then upped the FSB speed to 166 from 100 and still fine.)
 
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