MJW

I'm helping a friend of mine fit a new CPU to his machine but want to flash the BIOS to the latest version so the motherboard is compatible with the chip.
Now he doesn't have a floppy drive so I can't make a boot disk - is there a Windows program for doing this ?
The board is an Abit Fatality AN-8 SLI and the BIOS manufacturer is Award. I've checked Abit's website and it only describes the DOS method of flashing the BIOS. Would it be ok to use a 3rd party Windows based flashing utility ?

BlkKnight

Abit has a tool called "flashmenu" or something like that.

It allows you to flash the MOBO from within any NT based OS (IE Not Win98/me)

It's freely available on their website.

http://www.abit.com.tw/page/uk/downl...E=Socket%20939

stevem2k

or you could boot it off a usb stick...

D16GER

For the love of God, don't flash from within Windows!!! I have seen far too many systems turned into bricks because of that. As above, flash from a USB stick or other boot device if you don't have a floppy.

In fact, bios flashing is the sole reason I will NOT be removing the floppy drive from my list of system essentials.

hux309

Not sure about abit, im sure they're the budget brand of asus.

Anyway i left the rom file on my desktop, fired up the flashing util from the boot screen and lo and behold it picked it up from the hd.

And as said, never ever flash from windows, goes wrong too many times and then your buggered.

Either that or flash from a usb stick.

D16GER

Abit are one of the top Motherboard manufacturer's worldwide and are a competitor of Asus, by no means a budget brand.

BlkKnight

I've always bought a-bit boards, and since the flash guru have always flashed from desktop.

As long as you follow the instructions. . .

Shark Man

Ifs a good enough board it should have a crash free BIOS anyway; i.e it can be restored back to the factory BIOS by popping in the support CD and booting it up from that.

MJW

No, that's Asrock (the makers of my own board funnily enough). I used to use Abit boards a while back when I was overclocking those Thunderbird chips to death !!
Anyway, thanks for the replies, I'll try the utility Blkknight suggested, cheers.

BlkKnight

just remember to disable your AV and any other running apps.

Don't forget to do the "clear cmos" switch on your motherboard after you flash.

hux309

Could be asrock i was thinking of, anyhoo asus are still better

Edit: mjw pointed that out above i believe.

MJW

Yeh I'll use task manager to kill all the background apps before I flash it. Cheers for the tips