P4R800-VM motherboard - keyboard problem
in [Asus]
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From: Paul on 21 Oct 2005 23:23 In article <1129913101.584687.20550(a)z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com>, steve.chambers(a)gmail.com wrote: > Brilliant!!! > Thanks very much Paul, this is exactly the info I was looking for. Will > probably try this tomorrow when I've got a clear head. > Just a couple of points in your email I'm not quite sure about though. > What is the command for running AFUDOS "interactively"? Typing "AFUDOS" when sitting at the MSDOS prompt, should run AFUDOS interactively. You'll have to experiment a bit, to see just how well behaved AFUDOS is. > Do you mean as in to test out whether the flashing would work > without actually performing it?? (I guess it doesn't mean this > but it's the only thing I can think of). Also why did you recommend > using the /pbnc command? I'm a bit scared of > this as as I understand it it will overwrite the boot sectore and > possibly make the whole bios useless Salt as desired :-) You could do a flash upgrade of the main body of the BIOS if you want. I would not expect the boot block to be clever enough, to be checking that the main BIOS code is for the same motherboard as the boot block. That would be too clever. > (especially since I'm in the UK so don't think it would be very > easy to get hold of a BIOS saviour or flash chip. Is this right? Try here: http://www.eksitdata.com/_uk/index.asp You still have to select the correct product, and perhaps they can help you. > I know it's a "crash free bios" but I'm guessing this means crash > free UNLESS you overwrite the boot sector. You are correct. It would not be "crash free" if you go about erasing the boot block. The BIOS Savior would take the risk out of the equation. > Also not sure about what destroying the System CMOS means but am > guessing it would go hand in hand with overwriting the boot sector? "Destroying the CMOS" would be the equivalent of using the "clear CMOS CLRTC" jumper. > Wouldn't it be better to try it without this option first and then if > that works try overwriting the boot sector afterwards? Or is the old > boot sector not likely to be compatible with the rest of the new BIOS? > As you can tell I'm a bit confused!! Sorry, will stop waffling now. > Again, cheers for the help & pointing me in the right direction to > hopefully having a fully working PC soon..... There was one famous experiment on Abxzone, where the overclockers used a boot block from one product, with the main body code from another product. This allowed "PAT" to be enabled on a certain motherboard (a memory performance optimization). They forced the full BIOS first, then programmed the main body code from the original BIOS. I guess your idea, of just flashing the main body code, is not that risky, as both codes are for the same board. So, yes, just doing the main code first should be OK. (I checked the download page, and don't see any warnings listed in the BIOS section.) I don't think you are confused, and you understand the concepts. Without the BIOS Savior, there is always some risk associated with flashing, as even if you tell the flashing tool to only do the main body code, there is always the possibility the entire chip could be erased. Only if the flash chip had a hardware lockout (a jumper that protects the boot block), could I give you a guarantee that there would be zero risk to the boot block. Maybe we could call it, "the same risk as crossing the street" :-) Paul
From: steve.chambers on 23 Oct 2005 16:38
I bit the bullet today. Went the route of only flashing the main part of the BIOS and not adding any of the /p options. Crossed my fingers when rebooting and it worked fairly seamlessly with only one slight hiccup - had to reactivate Windows and the original key didn't work but a fairly quick phone call to Microsoft fixed that. Really pleased to have a computer that now seems to work whenever I reboot it ...so far at least. Many thanks for the detailed replies Paul, couldn't have done this without the advice you gave. It's great that there are people like you out there that not only know your stuff but are willing to help others that don't know quite as much. Hope you get some good karma back from somewhere else... Cheers, Steve |