StarDestroyer.Net BBS

My computer is about 2,5 years old and some problems have arisen. When I boot the computer, the Award Bootblock kicks in and displays a "BIOS ROM Checksum error" message and attempts to access the floppy drive (I don't have one installed, but more on that later). It has become virtually impossible to boot the computer. It takes about 15 attempts to get the computer to boot properly.

What could be the source of this problem? I don't believe it's the CMOS battery as the clock is correct, I have not installed any new hardware and I haven't flashed the BIOS.

Now, there are some oddities. As I mentioned above, I have no floppy drive installed in the computer, but BIOS and Windows XP still maintains that I have one installed. When I try to change the BIOS setting, the BIOS displays an error after reboot and retrieves the erroneous setting. This started a couple of months ago.

I have a broken DVD-player still installed in the computer, could that be a factor?

I would really appreciate any help!

It's trying to load a floppy drive because it's trying to do an autoflash. You can try setting the clear CMOS jumper (it can take up to thirty seconds, remember), but you may need to actually get a floppy drive and create an autoboot diskette for your machine. It would be a normal DOS boot disk, with

awdflash.exe
yourbios.bin

And the following in autoexec.bat:

awdflash.exe yourbios.bin /py /sn /cc /cp /cd /sb /r

Where awdflash.exe and yourbios.bin are the versions supplied by your manufacturer (in the former case, too late/early of a version may cause problems).

See here for an explanation of what the parameters are doing.

Xeriar wrote:It's trying to load a floppy drive because it's trying to do an autoflash. You can try setting the clear CMOS jumper (it can take up to thirty seconds, remember), but you may need to actually get a floppy drive and create an autoboot diskette for your machine. It would be a normal DOS boot disk, with

awdflash.exe
yourbios.bin

And the following in autoexec.bat:

awdflash.exe yourbios.bin /py /sn /cc /cp /cd /sb /r

Where awdflash.exe and yourbios.bin are the versions supplied by your manufacturer (in the former case, too late/early of a version may cause problems).

See here for an explanation of what the parameters are doing.

Thanks! I'll try to clear the CMOS first and see what happens. I've checked the site of the manufacturer of my computer and they have Winflash for my BIOS, but I sure won't try that the first thing I do (the manufacturer also claims that the DOS utilities aren't supported ).

Nope, clearing the CMOS didn't help.

Does anyone here have any experience with WinFlash?

EDIT: I thought "What the hell" and gave WinFlash a try and it worked! The problems have now gone away. Thank you so very, very much for your help, guys!

Mange wrote:Nope, clearing the CMOS didn't help.

Does anyone here have any experience with WinFlash?

EDIT: I thought "What the hell" and gave WinFlash a try and it worked! The problems have now gone away. Thank you so very, very much for your help, guys!

"DOS utilities aren't supported" WTF

Oh well, glad it worked.

What are the common causes of BIOS corruption? I've had it happen and fixed it to many systems, but I don't really know what causes it. Some kind of irregular current to the BIOS?

Stark wrote:What are the common causes of BIOS corruption? I've had it happen and fixed it to many systems, but I don't really know what causes it. Some kind of irregular current to the BIOS?

The one time I've had this happen to a machine I was personally responsible for (rather than helping a customer or friend), it was on a machine that was supposed to be physically incapable of flashing the BIOS. That was probably such a case.

You have a write-enable pin (I think EEPROMs use two, one for erasing and another for writing - I've only dealt with EPROMs on a pin level) which allows a portion of the BIOS (not always all - many BIOS suppliers actually utilize a read-only fallback BIOS for when things go bad) to be erased and written to.

So, during situations where a lot of power is flowing through the system - particularly during poweron and poweroff, if the chip isn't properly protected from it, certain voltages may start floating that you don't want to. On occasion, they may actually trigger and then bad things happen and your BIOS is now corrupted.

Proper protection can be very difficult in some situations. Computers are supposed to be able to trust ground. Bad neutral to ground voltages (caused by anything from poor wiring to simply running too many computers in the building) can also cause lots of... fun... problems with electronics.

Xeriar wrote:

Mange wrote:Nope, clearing the CMOS didn't help.

Does anyone here have any experience with WinFlash?

EDIT: I thought "What the hell" and gave WinFlash a try and it worked! The problems have now gone away. Thank you so very, very much for your help, guys!

"DOS utilities aren't supported" WTF

Oh well, glad it worked.

Thanks! I also removed the floppy (which doesn't exist) from the BIOS after I flashed it and there were no problems this time around (and the annoying "Verifying DMI pool data" message naturally also disappeared). The computer boots and behaves like a beauty.