How hard is it to flash a motherboard BIOS?

[Bloodbone]

I have an obsolete computer that has only been used a little,and I'd like to upgrade it as much as it can be.
It has a Soyo motherboard and an AMD Duron 1.3 gig CPU.
You can download a thing from Soyo that will let you flash the BIOS and run an AMD XP 2100+.
That's enough better to where I'd like to do it.
How hard is this,and what kind of risk is there?

[Rocketmech]

Theres always a risk in flashing firmware , yet its fairly simple to do. Make sure you have the correct bios file and flash utility program for your board . Don't loose power to the pc during the procedure . Follow Soyo's instructions in how to flash your make of bios , ex. Award or AMI . More FAQ's :
http://www.soyousa.com/support/article.php?type=Bios+Related+Issues

[Bloodbone]

Thanks for the reply.
I've been investigating and reading,but I'm a bit stumped.
I'm no DOS whiz,as I came late into the computer world-1999.Never really used it.
From what I'm reading,it says to never flash a BIOS while you are in Windows.
Okay,so you need to be in DOS,and use an A: prompt.

I've made a boot disk,and I've made a disk with the 2 utilities needed to flash the BIOS.
The computer will not boot up with the boot disk,period.I've made a 98 and an ME,still no dice.
ME won't allow you to reboot into DOS,from what I can see.It will only run a DOS shell,after you get Win ME up and running.

It gives me a C prompt,and I'm just too ignorant of it to know how to get rid of that and get to an A prompt.
If I can ever get to an A,while running ME with the DOS shell-is it going to be safe to proceed with the BIOS flash,or am I just screwed?

[MJCfromCT]

This might be able to help you out, it is a list of basic DOS commands:

http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/tips/doshelp.html

Once you get to the prompt, all you need to do is type "A:", without the quotes, and it will change the directory to the A drive.

[Bloodbone]

Thanks for the link.
I tried your suggestion with the A-still no joy.It won't go to it.

[MJCfromCT]

Have you checked the boot order in your BIOS to make sure the floppy drive is set higher in the boot order than the hard drive? Try this for a boot order:

1. Floppy
2. CDROM
3. HDD-0

This way, the floppy drive will be checked before the hard drive to see if it can be booted.