Flashing Your Motherboard's Bios - How to flash a BIOS

Hello Everyone,

Let me start with reintroducing myself into this forum. My name is Michael Odo. A Nigerian and one of the previous most active members of this great online community.

Well, I know that I have been off from here for quite a very long time due to some hard times but, I am back now and in full force.

Back to the topic of my discussion.

BIOS means Basic Input/Output System. It is a software embedded into your motherboard and which controls everything on your system.

Flashing the BIOS is quite a risky affair and you are better adviced not to try that if nothing is wrong with your computer (though there might still be some people out there like myself who will still go ahead to flash a BIOS irrespective of the fact that nothing is wrong with the computer. I actually flashed the BIOS of a motherboard I just bought newly - Gigabyte P4 Titan - 8S661FXMP-RZ Series .) Yea, I know that it sounds damn crazy bought I went ahead to flash the BIOS of my motherboard because I wanted to incorporate my name (picture should be better) into the system BIOS and I also went ahead to upgrade my BIOS from the previous F2 model to the latest F3 model.

Well, I succeeded and nothing went wrong and right now, whenever I power my system, it displays my name and picture on the monitor's screen during the post screen, before booting the operating system.

Ok, to make the BIOS flashing easier for you, I would recommend you download a free BIOS flashing utility from any of the search engines (Googles or Yahoo is recommended). Make sure that your utility supports the flashing of your particular kind of BIOS (Award BIOS or AMI BIOS). Using the wrong utility can permanently damage your BIOS and that means that your motherboard is gone and gone forever (depending on if the BIOS is fixed or detachable, you have the option of changing the BIOS with another good one of the same model as that you have on your motherboard.

Ok, follow these steps CAREFULLY to flash your BIOS.

FOR AMI BIOS

Step 1

(1) If your mainboard has a BIOS protection jumper, change the setting to allow BIOS flashing.
(2) Make a DOS boot diskette. (See example: Windows 98 O.S.)
Beware: Windows 2000/Me are not allowed to make a DOS boot diskette.
a. With an available floppy disk in the floppy drive. Please leave the diskette "UN-write protected" type. Double click the "My Computer" icon from Desktop, then click "3.5 diskette
(A)" and right click to select "Format (M)".

(. Select the "Quick (erase)" for Format Type, and pick both "Display summary when finished" and "Copy system files", after that press "Start". That will format the floppy and transfer the needed system files to it.
In Win XP simply select the option to make a DOS bootable disc and the OS will automatically make the bootable diskette for you.

©. After the floppy has been formatted completely, please press "Close".

STEP 2

Download BIOS and BIOS utility program from Award or American Megatrends.
Please make sure that you download the particular utility for your kind of BIOS as this can permanently dame your motherboard.

Choose an appropriate model name in accordance with user's manual or based on the motherboard revision that can be found on your motherboard. Unzip or extract the downloaded bios update from *.exe or *.zip to *.rom file (you can download Winzip for free at www.winzip.com).

From the CMOS stup, configure your computer to boot from Floppy (A:\). After the system boot from floppy disk, type "A:\> dir" and press "Enter" to check the entire files in floppy A. Then type the "BIOS flash utility" and "BIOS file" after A:\>. In this case you have to type A:\> aminf330 020429.rom (Assuming that aminf330 020429.rom is your new BIOS rom) and then press Enter.

It will then display the BIOS flashing utility on screen. Please check whether new BIOS tag is correct. Right after that, press Enter to start BIOS flash procedure or press Esc to abort.
Beware: Please do not turn off the system while you are upgrading (flashing BIOS. It will render your BIOS corrupted and system totally inoperative.

When the BIOS flash completed. It will auto restart the system. Immediately go into your CMOS setup (depending on your motherboard manufacturer's configuration, press DEL or F2 as these are the two most popular configuration to enter CMOS setup.)

Normally the system redetects all devices after BIOS has been upgraded. Therefore, I will highly recommend reloading the BIOS optimized defaults after BIOS has been flashed. This important step resets everything after the flash.

Press F10 and ENTER to SAVE AND EXIT from the CMOS. (depending, for older Pentiums, you will be required to also press Y to confirm that you really want to accept the configuration.)

You are done.

FOR AWARD BIOS

The whole procedure is almost the same thing. Follow the procedure till after formatting the diskette, making a bootable diskette, rebooting and booting from your floppy drive.

During the procedures before the BIOS flashing, when prompted, press Y to save current BIOS. If you don't want to save current BIOS, press N to pass this step. Right after that, press Enter to start BIOS Flash Utility.

Input the name that you want to save current BIOS as. In my own case, I input 8S661FXMP-RZ F2.rom to save it. Then I press Enter to start it.

I was upgrading from the F2 BIOS model to the F3.

After the flashing, restart your computer and don't forget to enter the CMOS setup. Load Optimized defaults to load the manufacturer's settings. Press F10 to save and exit. If you want to do any additional configurations in your CMOS like overclocking your processor and stuffs like that (I am one person who likes to overclock my processor. Right now, my processor is running and 3.60 GHz after I gave it a 50% overclocking rate. That is what I call madness of the highest order but, yea, the system is stable except for occassional overheating. Planning to buy a new heatsink though), you will need to re-enter the CMOS a second time to do that.

Well, you are done.

I would like a feedback concerning my little tutorial.

Have a nice day.

 

 

 

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Hi, I often heared that it's risky, but what could happen if something wents wrong? Hardware damage?
I have never flashed my BIOS, but I want to know what could happen before I do it. But: "Never change a running system" - Maybe I shouldn't

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Of course, there will definitely be a permanent damage to your hardware if something goes wrong during the BIOS flashing process. Before you go into flashing your BIOS, you should make sure that you have a good idea about using MS DOS and the commands associated with it.

Apart from that, a number of precautions should be taken to ensure the safety of your computer during the process.

1. You should make sure that there is a steady power supply in your house to avoid the risk of the computer powering off during the flashing process. Should this happen, you are running the risk of loosing your motherboard imediately.

2. Ensure that you have both a good working diskette drive and floppy disk itself. if the floppy drive detects any bad sectors in the diskette during the process, that will definitely be another bad story of its own. So ensure that both are good to avoid problems.

3. Ensure that you got the correct BIOS model and version to match that on your motherboard. That is quite risky too as can end up permanently damaging the BIOS in there.

There are some other preceautions too but these are the ones I can remember at the moment.

Just make sure that you follow these precuations and you wont have problems with your BIOS flashing.

 

 

 

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

Ok, thanks for your reply. I think I will look out for a new BIOS version in the next time. Just taking a look what should br improved by a newer version...

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Always make sure the floppies you use when flashing a BIOS are fresh. Your system could be messed if there is a floppy I/O error caused by an overused floppy. Also ME can make a boot diskette. NT Series Windows cannot(NT/2000/XP)

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Just to comment on the "hardware corruption" issue:

Your BIOS starts your computer up. If your BIOS is missing or corrupted then your motherboard never reads (or even knows about) your floppy, optical or hard drives. For this reason it is nearly impossible to fix a corruped BIOS! If the BIOS is the base control of the computer, how are you supposed to flash it?

If you (gasp) corrupt your BIOS there's about four options for you:
1) If your BIOS is on a removable chip then contact the manufacturer about getting a new one.
2) Some manufacturers will fix mobo's BIOSes (for a fee). This may not be offered however for certain manufacturers so don't count on it.
3) Get a new motherboard .
4) There is a SMALL chance that the broken BIOS will still allow you to flash your BIOS. You can then simply re-flash your BIOS (correctly this time).

**Your first course of action if you fail a BIOS flashing should be to contact the manufacturer.**

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Windows XP I know makes bootable diskettes. Just use the forat floppy option in windows explorer drop down menu.

You will see the make boot floppy option. Use it.



Of cource I know that the BIOS is the base of your computer but, it is still very flashable and upgradable. You can either flash or shadow your BIOS. Yea I know that those options are there whereby you canhave your MB's BIOS changed by the MD manufacturer and also get it fixed. Those are quite expensive options but they not ruled out though.

Well thanks for your contributions. They are very useful too.

Comment/Reply (w/o sign-up)

I'm not too strong at bios flashing, although had heard of it and kind of knew what it was about before I came to view this topic.

I would definitely not want to risk damaging/messing up the way a personal computer works, as bios flashing is only really used to improve a computer.

If you tried to improve by bios flashing and failed, then you've most likely lost a whole computer. In my opinion, a working computer is better than a non working computer, no matter how well it works.

If it badly needs doing, I recommend going to a professional computer shop or somewhere where there's someone who knows how to do it professionally and has experience at doing it.

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Well, I have flashed people's BIOS severally and it is not a new thing fo me.

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WOW! Best tutorial. I wanted to flash the bois of my computer. I will follow the procedures posted here and try.

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