Bios upgrade - now no modem

[corystes]

Had to flash award bios upgrade to overcome total system hangs.
esupport.com flash program claimed successful upgrade.
Now PC only starts if power on button pressed several times fast, and it doesn't believe internal soft modem exists any more.

Have removed modem, replaced it after boot/shutdown.
Have cleared CMOS and loaded failsafe defaults.
Can't reinstall original bios - message "checksum error cna't update this image file"

Nothing has helped.

Any suggestions?

Mobo is KinetiZ 7E-A; modem is ELSA microlink 56k PCI HSF
Chipset is VIA 82C305 rev3; CPU is athlon 133 XP (running XP version 5.1.2600

[BipolarBill]

Well - that motherboard is a pain in the ****, isn't it?

Have you tried moving the modem to another slot?

[Peter M]

Sounds a lot like you flashed a BIOS that isn't meant for this particular board. You got the classic symptoms.

[corystes]

Wondered about moving modem, I'll try it.
HOPE bios ain't wrong. Used bios agent that sent all info to esupport. Their response was that they had a good upgrade.
I thought if a bios was wrong all things jammed. Mostly the pc works - and it hasn't hung yet.

[Peter M]

Well if the BIOS is for the right chipset and some other things happen to match halfway too, it'll still boot. But the finer details (such as where on the PCI bus the slots are, how the power circuitry wires up to the chipset, these things) are different for practically every board.

[corystes]

Learning the hard way. Worst of all is the bflash prog is meant to let me reinstall the original bios, butr when I try I get "bios image checksum error. can't update this image file.
Does this mean the original bios had been miscopied?

[BipolarBill]

It usually means that the ROM file you're trying to load is not seen as a valid image - rightfully so if you mis-flashed it. The flasher sees your motherboard as something other than it is. It now won't accept the old image. Most new flashers will check and prevent mis-flashing.

[fishybawb]

You can order a new BIOS chip from BadFlash (http://www.badflash.com/) if needs be.

[Billforce]

You can also hot stab the bios chip if you have another like it available. See www.winsbios.com for details.

It will also explain how to flash the bios chip you have to reinstall the original by using /KEYS that bypass the motherboard recognition and will flash regardless of motherboard recognition.

[corystes]

will check the website - but I remain concerned that the ""bios image checksum error. can't update this image file." message indicates a corrupt copy of the original bios. If I try flashing it I might end up even worse kludged that I am now.