Update not taking

[shark_megabyte]

What are some things to try when an attempt to flash BIOS fails?

I'm using a Gigabyte 8SRX board and tried to the newest version, 8srx_f8. I used the flash utility that came on the manufacturer-provided cd with the board. When I restarted, I got lights on my power and drives, but my monitor light went orange like it would for powersave or no signal, and the screen stayed black.

I recovered back to previous status by pulling the battery, but I really want to get that BIOS updated. Without the update I am unable to unlock some of the RAM settings, which I may need when I begin overclocking.

[Bovon]

Could you explain exactly what you did the first time and it failed? Like what kind of boot disk did you use, how did you do the flash ect. Did you do any resetting of your working bios first?

Just give me a run down on the process that you used, and maybe we can see what went wrong, and have some suggestions on what to do next.

[shark_megabyte]

I have changed my working bios from the default settings, but I didnt do it right before the flash, or specifically for the flash.

There was a utility included in the ZIP download from the Gigabyte site - Flash853.exe . I extracted the files, ran the utility, and gave it the path to the 8srx.f8 file. Sorry, I don't remember the last time I've flashed a bios.. I have at least once (and it worked), but it was ages ago.

Is it always necessary to boot clean from a disk? What all do I need on there if so? I just assumed since the exe ran from windows and there were no help/readme/instruction files in the zip, that all i needed to do was jump to it.

... From the sound of it, I was probably wrong :o

[Bovon]

Having a pure DOS boot disk is probably the one most important things to do when doing a flash. When we make our own boot disk from Win9x, its easy to meke a system boot disk. This type of disk generally has drivers and memory managers included. This will interfere with a flash.

Its important to ready your working bios for a flash. Disabling any shadowing, turn off power management...set the bios to its defaults before a flash ect. These things should be done prior to any flash attempt.

Try this, go and read a thread where we helped one guy do a flash recently, and we went thru all of the do's and don'ts so there is no need to go thru that again. After reading this thread, come back to this one if you have further questions...

Remember, only a Windows 9x boot disk will work properly, and for that reason, I am suggesting you download and use the DrDos7 boot disk...it is a pure dos disk, and will boot any version of Windows to a clean A: prompt.


http://www.sysopt.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=98927

[uncle_jimbo]

If you cant solve it, youre very lucky you bought a 8SRX, it has a second BIOS (the tech is called DualBIOS), so all you need to do is switch to the seconary BIOS.

[shark_megabyte]

I read the other thread and I have now successfully flashed. Thanks.

One thing I wasn't prepared for was the new BIOS setting my FSB and Dram clock speeds to totally different values... Windows wouldn't boot at first, so I went in and investigated the new bios settings... when I took Linear Frequency Control off auto, I blinked to see them both default to 170... after a few minutes of fiddling I got it back to 100 fsb and 151 dram like it was before.