Flashing Bios

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keithallenlaw

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 4, 2008
Messages
238
Greetings.

Should have left well enough alone. Tried flashing my 4870x2 bios
and now I have a complete shutdown on my system. The ATI flash
tool I use wouldn't take the latest version. I went down the list thinking
maybe you have to flash in a progressive manner. I did get it to flash
the older version, and then the next newest one took as well.

I believe where I made the mistake is when it prompted me to reboot
the system, I should have flashed the slave too, before I rebooted.
I believe one must flash both master AND slave before you reboot.
I was doing one at a time.

When I fired up the screen was all pixelated and doing goofy stuff.
The system eventually crashed. Crap. So I pulled the card to boot
with the onboard video and the system won't even post. Now what?

Any advice? I've succesfully flash mobo bios before, just never a dual
GPU. Lesson hard learned I suppose.

Thanks.
 
keithallenlaw said:
Greetings.

Should have left well enough alone.
Click to expand...

keithallenlaw, I know it can be nerve racking when these things happen but what I would recommend is to follow the guide linked above by spazturtle. I have personally never run into a situation where I've bricked a device by flashing. I have run into a situation like your in but I've found that with the right determination and perseverance you can come out of this fine.

The only way I believe you can brick it is by completely giving up. Keep at it and try to stay positive and I think you will be okay.
 
Thanks for the quick reply and the link. In my siuation my video card is a single x2, not two
seperate cards. Even trying to use the on board video it wont work. I'm telling you something
went terribly wrong. Before my system crashed, from what I could make out from the monitor
looked like the BSOD. When I power on my rig there is no more keyboard lights and no display. Nothing...dead. Suppose I really messed something up. Not even the blue LED on my monitor
lights up. No signal. My sig is the rig I'm talking about.

Actually, I've been compiling spec for a new build. This LGA 775 is really out of date.
I was hopping to at least have a way to use the net to help me build this new set-up
at home. I'll have to drive to my work place to use pc there to ask questions. That's
how I build this one. Lot of questions and lots of help from good folks as yourself.

Thanks.
 
Clear CMOS jumper. If that doesn't do it start removing things down to barebones and report back.
 
Yeap, cleared CMOS already and later I pulled the GPU to try onboard video. Nothing.

Got me thinking. Why would a person need to update a bios on such an old system if
everything works fine. Like I said, lessoned well learned. Aint broke don't fix it.
 
uh oh,

get it out of the case with EVERYTHING non essential disconnected and test

PITA I know, sorry, but your best hope is a short somewhere at this point
 
Does the system POST without the video card installed?

Nevermind, LOL

I guess just continue down the line of removing everything, then re-adding components one at a time. You might even want to try turning the system on with no memory installed to see if it registers the error. This might at least give you some idea of how far through the start up process it is getting.
 
Strange, flashing a 4870x2 shouldn't have done anything to his system. I'm not sure what's going on here. I would say make sure primary video is on the setting: onboard in the bios but I suppose pulling the cmos jumper would do that. Double check though. Leave the 4870x2 out of the system and make sure the primary video option is on onboard and let us know if the system posts.

Think back and remove any other recently installed hardware e.g. ram, soundcard. Keep the 4870x2 out of the scenario until you can get the system to post.
 
I'm hoping he jostled something while switching the bios switch and developed a cable short...we can hope
 
Nothing jolted. All I did was flash. Everything was great uptill the flash.
Oh well, time to ditch this old hardware and update. I am looking forward
to a new build anyway. This would be a different story if this was a newer
build. I need/want something with more ram and an SSD anyway.
Thank so much to all of you for suggestions. Really greatful.
 
That is very weird, I would not think the ATI flash tool could touch anything besides the gpu. If you have a spare gpu card you could try loading that in. The on-board might be set to use pci express through the bios, but a cmos clear should fix that to auto detect. Well good luck on a new system anyhow.
 
When was the last time you unplugged it? Some of the capacitors on the motherboard may have gone, and that isn't noticeable until the rig is fully disconnected from the power.
 
Make a blind flash drive with all the stuff inside . you can google a find a autoexec file , open it with notepad and rename the bios.rom thing to the one the card uses or vice versa.
 
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