Why and How to Flash Your BIOS - Precautions…
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I can't stress enough that flashing the BIOS can be dangerous if the flashing process isn't finished successfully or if the newly flashed file doesn't match your system or is incorrect. First of all, be aware of electricity and the chances of a power outage. Never flash if there is bad weather outside; losing electricity while in the middle of flashing can have disastrous effects. It's always advisable to have a USP too. Flashing the BIOS doesn't takes longer than one minute so it's very important to be "safe" while flashing; if you must, borrow a USP from your next door neighbor, if possible.
Before proceeding to flash don't forget to go into your BIOS and write down (or take a photo if you' have a camera) all of your settings. This is crucial because the "default" settings may not be the best option for your system, especially if you've tweaked BIOS and you do not remember anymore what tweaks you've applied.
Do NOT reboot and/or shut down your system while flashing; the reason for that should be self-explanatory. It's also recommended that you set your BIOS options to "default": reboot, go into BIOS and select the option "Load Fail-safe defaults" or something similar. Now all you need to do is to make backup bootable system disk(s), which can save you in case of a bad flash. Let me explain why.
I'm going to introduce and explain a new term in my article: the "boot-block." A boot-block is a small part of the BIOS that helps in case of a bad flash. Let me explain how and why. When flashing the BIOS usually (if you don't use additional commands) the boot-block remains intact, meaning that the "original" boot-block remains safe. The boot-block only contains the data that lets it know how to boot and flash the BIOS from a floppy disk or CD.
Suppose the data on the BIOS is screwed up; no POST will happen, nothing will appear on your monitor but your FDD and optical drives are going to blink like hell. This means that you have a bad flash. Either the wrong version of BIOS was flashed onto the ROM or there was a power outage and the flashing stopped right in the middle of the process. You can save your computer by inserting a bootable MS-DOS floppy disk (or CD) that is going to have following files on it: your flasher, a new BIOS flash file and "autoexec.bat." Autoexec.bat is executed as soon as your system boots up in MS-DOS. You need to include a command to run the flashing utility. Check out the following two examples; the first one is for AMI and the second one for Award.
amiflash.exe newbios.bin /A+ /-B /-C /-D /E /-G /I /L /N /R /V
awdflash.exe newbios.bin /py /sn
The above examples work only for AMI/AWARD chips, obviously. Replace the example with the correct commands, the name of the new flash file and use the appropriate flasher. After you've put everything on the floppy, insert it and reboot.
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