Asus A7V600 bios update!

[Trypt]

How do I update bios? I downloaded the awdflash134.exe util which is the latest, and it won't work in WinXP, and it won't work in DOS (it says NO SUPPORT WinNT/2000/XP OS), this is from BartPE boot to dos. I have the latest flash file, a7v61008.awd, and cant' seem to flash it onto bios, how ta heck am I to go about this? I am running XP on this system in case it matters.

I just want to enable SATA support on the mobo, it doesn't work using my current bios, even tho there are two sata connectors on the mobo.

Thank you in advance.

 

[Old Thrashbarg]

You need to get/make a real DOS boot disk, either on a floppy disk, or USB flash drive. (XP DOS mode, even from the BartPE "boot to DOS" function, is not actual DOS.)

 

[Trypt]

how in ta heck do I do that? care to elaborate? please!! i only have a cdrom, no usb or floppy drives, I assume that will be fine! please help.

 

[trents]

You need to get/make a real DOS boot disk, either on a floppy disk, or USB flash drive. (XP DOS mode, even from the BartPE "boot to DOS" function, is not actual DOS.)

I would suggest using a USB flash drive memory stick instead of a floppy. The bios files these days tend to exceed the capacity of a floppy. Same principle though. Just make a bootable flash drive. HP makes a nice utility or two that will format one with systems files so it will boot:

http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?swItem=MTX-UNITY-I23839

or

http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197

I've successfully used the one linked by the second URL in Windows 7-32 bit but not the utility referenced in the first link since it won't install on the newer OSs. If necessary, find somebody who will let you do this on their XP machine or their Win 7-32 bit if it won't run on Win 7-64 bit. Note that you also have to download the Windows 98 system files referenced by the second link. The utility requires the old Windows 98 system files to make the flash drive bootable.

So here's an outline for using the utility referenced in the second link:

1. Plug in a USB flash drive of at least 2mb capacity (make sure you copy any important files you want to save into a folder on your hard drive as the formatting of the drive carried out as per the directions below will wipe out any files stored on the flash drive).
2. Download and install the HP USB bootable flash drive maker utility.
3. Download the Windows 98 system files and put them in a place on your computer's hard drive that you can refer to (a folder on the Desktop works nicely).
4. Run the utility which should now show up in Windows Start programs menu. Run it as "Administrator" by right clicking on the program item in Start menu. Select the device you are formatting via the user interface and tell the utility where to find the Win98 system files when it asks you.
5.When the utility is through formating the USB flash drive and installing the system files, copy the DOS-based bios flash file to the USB flash drive.
6. Reboot the computer and make sure in bios you set the boot order to make the computer boot first off the USB flash drive.
7. When the computer has finished booting to the DOS prompt, type, "dir" and you will get a listing of the files on the USB flash drive. Visually locate the bios flash file you copied to the USB flash drive in 4. above. If the file name is longer than 8 characters you will see "~" in the string.
8. Type the part of the file name to the left of the .exe extension exactly as it appears on the screen, including the "~" if there is one. Hit the Enter key.
9. Wait for the flashing to proceed to completion. Don't restart the computer before it's done. It will take a minute or less I'm guessing.
10. Reboot into bios and set bios to default values, often done with the F9 key. If Windows was installed with the bios set to ACHI or RAID (as opposed to SATA or IDE) for the disk storage option you will need to make sure that one setting is not left at default or you won't be able to boot into Windows.
11. Boot into Windows.
12. Reboot and reset your bios options to the non default values you may have been using before flashing the bios.

Hope this helps.

 

[Old Thrashbarg]

The reason I mentioned the floppy first, is that I'm not sure if that motherboard allows booting from USB... It's also old enough that the BIOS image will fit on a floppy disk.

i only have a cdrom, no usb or floppy drives, I assume that will be fine!

It's possible to do from a CDROM (if you're familiar with the process of creating a bootable CD). But, really, you need to get either a floppy drive or a USB stick... you may not need to use it very often, but things like this are exactly why it's essential to keep one around. The fact of the matter is, those are the simplest ways of doing certain tasks. Given that they're so cheap anyhow, there's no reason not to have one.

 

[trents]

The reason I mentioned the floppy first, is that I'm not sure if that motherboard allows booting from USB... It's also old enough that the BIOS image will fit on a floppy disk.

Good point. I didn't actually look at the hardware info Trypt gave and assumed it was more current.

 

[Trypt]

Thank you guys I will try the above... I assume I can get any size stick right? If I'm gonna get one I may as well get a 32GB or bigger. This won't be a problem I assume?

 

[trents]

Using a 32GB stick won't be a problem but it will cost you plenty and will take FOREVER to format with the utilities referred to above. For that reason alone I would just buy a cheap 2GB for the bios flashing. As Thrashbarg indicated, your motherboard may not support booting from USB devices. Better check that out first before you go to a lot of trouble.

 

[trents]

Hey Trypt, how's that bios flash going?

Here's another way to do it:

Download and burn to CD and install Ubuntu linux (10.4 is the latest version) inside windows using the wubi utility that comes with Ubuntu. Using the Ubuntu software updater, install the K3b cd/dvd burner program along with the MP3 files it needs. Follow the directions in this link: http://www.stchman.com/boot_cd.html

 

[coonmanx]

Wow, I heard about this before but I don't recall the solution. I believe there is some Engineering edition or something that works. Just know that I saw it in another forum or something. I will look around.

I also learned that there is a program called Asus Update. Make sure that you have the latest version for your MB. Just can't remember the name of the other tool. I'll keep looking.

 

[coonmanx]

Well, I finally found a link to the thing that I was thinking about. It is actually used if you want to downgrade to an older BIOS. I'm sure that it would work for updates as well.

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx...el=P5K+Premium/WiFi-AP&page=1&SLanguage=en-us

Maybe Asus Update might the easiest method if it works.

 

[Trypt]

I can't believe how ridiculous this is. Why can't I just run the darn bios updater in pebuilder or any command prompt? What kind of idiot thought of only allowing updating of bios on an OS two days older then the gods..

I haven't done it yet, I gave up after finding out it really isn't that easy. It's not that I can't do it, i'm just totally peeved off about it, and am sort of punishing my second computer for it, lol..

Maybe it's not even worth it to run my Raptor on it, who knows, it runs fast enough with a 7200rpm drive, and maybe I should just sell my raptor, I don't think I'll even notice the difference, it's a server computer after all. And there is no guarantee the new bios will even activate the SATA on the board, it says absolutely nothing about SATA on the bios update txt file which tells all the updates..

Argh..

 

[trents]

What OS are you using on that A7V600? If Windows XP you would need to manually install SATA drivers from a floppy near the beginning of the OS install. It asks you, "Do you want to install third party drivers? If so press F8" or something like that. Then it prompts you for a floppy disk with the SATA/RAID drivers on it. If I'm on the right track, your problem with needing to enable SATA function would not have been addressed by a bios update anyway. The point being is that XP was developed before SATA technology came into vogue and has no drivers for the SATA/RAID chip on the motherboard. The other part of that piece is that the SATA drivers cannot be installed after the OS is already in place. Vista and Windows 7 have native SATA support for most older chip sets built in.