flashed BIOS on my a7v266e

[emericanchaos]

flashed the BIOS a couple times. it shipped with 1004b. flashed it to 1010 then immediately to 1011 not knowing if you had to go in sequence or not. since i flashed it to 1010 i've had boot problems. it won't boot into windows regular mode unless i have "halt on errors" set to "no errors" AND i have the Load setting under advanced set to OPTIMAL. if i set these back to default it will go into safe mode. if i try to boot it by telling it what files to load manually, ferget what this is called, it will say i'm missing HIMEM.sys. once these settings are set as said it will boot into regular mode fine.

anyone know why it's doing this? anyone know what this Load setting =optimal means? this feature is new in the updated BIOS and i'm unsure of what it does. automagically sets overclocking options?

 

[Oni]

Loading optimal will start your system up w/ the best settings for RAM and whatnot. You could also use manual and tinker w/ the settings yourself.

 

[Pfieffdog]

Ok, I have the same board shipped with 1004b for the bios on it. I am looking to flash the bios to 1011, and this is my first time ever flashing a bios. Any tips or tricks that will help me out are greatly appreciated. I read through the files on asus.com but I know there are always some things that they leave out. THanks in advance for any replies.

-Pfieff

 

[emericanchaos]

flashing the BIOS on this board is pie with whipped cream.

first make sure you have aflash.exe. this comes on the ASUS cd with the probe utility.

once you've located that make a boot floppy in DOS. put a disk in then run COMMAND from the run line in the start menu. once it pops up type in "format A: /s" that will erase everything on the disk and copy the COMMAND.com file. that's all you need. from there copy the aflash utility onto the boot disk then boot with the disk in the floppy drive. once it boots type "aflash" and the utility will run. first thing you do BACK UP THE OLD BIOS. if something goes wrong you have a plan B. after that flash it, if you can. it will show the serial number for the EPROM on the top. if it says anything that doesn't look like a serial number than your EPROM isn't flashable. doubt that's a problem. if it is then go ahead with option #2 and answer yes.

this part is important.
IF IT DOESN'T SUCCESFULLY INSTALL THE NEW BIOS DO NOT REBOOT! you don't want to start the machine with no BIOS. if it doesn't work the first time try again. if it still won't take the new BIOS than goto the backup of the old one. after the BIOS is installed succesfully turn the computer off. i tried just resetting and it wouldn't work. i turned it off for about 10 minutes than came back to it.

once your powering back up immediately go into the BIOS setup and restore the default settings. this will make sure the new BIOS is setup.

after that your in the same boat as me. you may have to turn off the "halt on errors" thing AND have the CPU Load setting set to optimal. that's what i have to do. but it's working and seems more stable as the machine has been running win 98 retail (not SE) for 3 days with no reboot just memory defrags and it's cruisin fine. the new BIOS' also alow for more precise adjustability of the Vcore. it starts at 1.75 and adjust .25 at a time. sweet.

Good Luck

 

[Oni]

Or you could use AsusUpdate (make sure to get the newest version from ftp.asus.com though). AsusUpdate is a Windows flash utility. I prefer it over aflash. You just grab your updated BIOS file, and extract it to a directory of your choice, fire up AsusUpdate, select the file, click the Clear CMOS checkbox, and flash! All done!

 

[Pfieffdog]

Win2KXP_3142.exe

Is that the most recent one? I'm having trouble figuring out if it is. Thanks,

-Pfieff

 

[Docta_Z]

Don't have a power outage?

 

[Pfieffdog]

Flashed her with no problem. Thanks for the help.

-Pfieff