Recovering from a Bad Flash

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2006-12-15 07:40pm

Yeah, so I really screwed the pooch this time. I flashed my BIOS, and something obviously went horrendously wrong and now it refuses to boot at all. I get a long, repeating beep, and looking at my mobo's beep error codes (Gigabyte K8-NS), it doesn't really make any sense (Keeps on insisting it's a RAM error, which is doubtful). If it helps at all, the error is after the BIOS checks for the video card, a quick removal of my AGP video card confirmed this. I've read that many modern BIOSes will attempt to read from the floppy drive if they can't boot, and I've been trying to reflash the BIOS from there, with no success. I'm not sure if it's not able to access the floppy drive at all (Since nothing is displayed on the screen at all - I even bought a new floppy drive today to see if that would work), or if it just doesn't try to do it. Replacing the chip itself is out of the question, since it is soldered onto the mobo. I've also cleared my CMOS data, with no effect. Is there anything else I can do at this point, besides buy a new mobo?

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-12-15 08:20pm

You may well have pooched it but good. I remember hearing about some wacky procedure on older motherboards where if you screwed up flashing the BIOS, you would remove the BIOS chip, put it in an identical motherboard that was on, then re-flash it from the already-booted computer (or something equally crazy), but that doesn't likely apply here.

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2006-12-15 08:22pm

Yeah, that's hot flashing, not only do you need another compatible mobo, you also need a BIOS chip you can remove... Which isn't an option for me, since mine is soldered onto it. In fact, I'm wondering if my BIOS' boot block is even intact.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2006-12-15 08:26pm

why do you even need to flash the bios?

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-12-15 08:31pm

Depends. One of my motherboards had to be flashed before it'd properly recognize my RAM. Some motherboards will need to be flashed before they support dual-core processors. My current motherboard needed to be flashed so that I could get rid of the annoying splash screen.

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2006-12-15 08:58pm

MKSheppard wrote:why do you even need to flash the bios?

As I mentioned in another thread, Windows failed to recognize free space on my HD. I was hoping a new BIOS version would fix that, but it ended up causing more problems.

Pu-239 · Post by **Pu-239** » 2006-12-15 09:49pm

What model is it? Some mobos have a flash-recovery function (if it's soldered in, probably)

Exonerate · Post by **Exonerate** » 2006-12-15 10:50pm

It's a Gigabyte K8-NS, and unfortunately, since I can't even reach the BIOS screen, any recovery utilities they have are useless. I have a sneaking suspicion that my boot block sector on the BIOS chip is also damaged, meaning short of removing the BIOS chip, reprogramming/replacing it, and soldering it back on, the mobo is busted.