BIOS Flash Fail....Recovery Possible?

S

sendintheclowns

n00b
Joined
Dec 7, 2006
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Motherboard - Abit IP35-e

Yes, I'm one of those idiots that trusted ABIT's Windows Flash utility program, and now my BIOS seems to be bricked. I've reset the CMOS jumpers, removed the CMOS backup battery, but to no avail.

Is there any way out of this sticky situation? I've been doing my research this morning, and it seems as though my best hope would be to boot from a USB drive and somehow flash the BIOS from there. The problem is that I cannot enter the BIOS to make the changes necessary to boot from the USB drive. Does this mean that I need to order a new BIOS chip from BIOSMAN? It seems as though it would be cheaper to just go out and buy a floppy, but would that actually work?

My apologies if this is in the wrong forum, and thanks a million (in advance) for any help!
 
the bios is before the floppy, the bios is before USB, the bios is the basic input operating system. Without it you dont have a computer.

What exactly happens when you turn on your machine? If your truly bricked, the fans will spin and nothing past that. If your not, you'll hear a beep and something important just wont happen.

But yeah, if your computers bios is really (really) facked, you need to get a new chip, and replace the old one with it.
 
Thanks for the fast reply.

When I turn on the machine, get a constant stream of short beeps, followed by this message:

"BIOS ROM Checksum Error.

Detecting Floppy Drive A Media
Drive A error. System halt."

This is what led me to believe that there is, at least, some hope. Fingers crossed!
 
your mobos clutching at straws. Sounds like whatever version it is it has some kind of built in anti-bios-corruption mechanism thats looking for something on A drive. It may or may not work, but yeah, your going to need a floppy drive.
 
First off, thanks for the help, MrWizard...gave me the encouragement to keep trying! Here's the solution, to anyone that comes across this same problem. It's deceptively simple, although it took me hours to figure out (in my defense, a good chunk of this time was spent driving to my brother's to borrow his floppy drive and ps/2 keyboard!)

1. If you don't have a floppy disk drive or a PS/2 Keyboard, get these first. You WILL need both of these.

2. Go to http://www.bootdisk.com/ and click on one of the links for the 3rd option - "Driver Free Disk For BIOS Flashing." This is important...don't use the Boot CD Formatting built into Windows, as it may not leave enough room on the disk for your motherboard's BIOS.

3. On the remaining space on the Boot disk, put the following:
  • awdflash.exe (I recommend that you use the version that came on the CD that came with your motherboard. If you don't have this CD, it may also come packaged with the BIOS that you download (see below). If not, just google it.)
  • The version of the BIOS that you'd like to flash to. I went with the newest version, because it would not allow me to flash to an "older" version of the BIOS. (Find the newest BIOS at your motherboard manufacturer's Website.)

4. When you boot up, it should ask you to insert a disc into your floppy drive. Insert the book disk with awdflash and the bios (usually a .bin file), and wait for the A:/> prompt.

5. Type awdflash, then press enter

6. When the screen asks you for the file name, please type it EXACTLY as it exists on the floppy, including the extension (.bin).

7. Go grab a cup of coffee. Rewriting the BIOS from a floppy may take awhile. I'd guess 10 minutes, but maybe it just felt that long because I was sweating bullets.

8. Enjoy the fact that your computer is no longer an expensive paperweight.
 
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