Checkpoints for fixing a bad or corrupt BIOS flash
Before going down this road, then please make sure that the BIOS hasn’t stopped working because of a bad cmos or hardware conflict.
- Contact bad flash and have them send you a new BIOS.
- If your motherboard is supporting dual BIOS, then one have a backup BIOS which one can switch to. This is the case with Gigabyte DualBIOS Aopen DieHard BIOS MSI Safe BIOS. For more information look in your motherboard manual.
- If your motherboard BIOS is supporting boot block, then it will allow you to boot from a floppy disk and reflash. Though in early versions it only supports ISA VGA cards (Meaning no display for PCI/AGP VGA cards).
- How to use boot block on Award BIOS
- Create a standard bootable floppy disk
- Add a good(older) BIOS image file along with flash utility
- If in the “No Display” scenario then create an AUTOEXEC.BAT which executes a command line BIOS flasher to the BIOS, Ex.:
awdflash.exe a7v1005c.awd /py /sn
- Attach only the following devices : CPU, RAM, Keyboard(Not USB), Floppy (No HDD, CD-ROM, Sound, Modem, NIC what so ever)
- Insert the created floppy disk and boot the machine and pray that it starts reading from your floppy drive
- It should then make some beep codes
- 2 short beeps = no bootable diskette in drive A
- continual short beeps = no floppy disk drive
- continual long beeps = programming finishes, reset your system
- How to use boot block on AMI BIOS
- Format a floppy disk
- Copy a good(older) BIOS image file to the floppy disk
- Rename the BIOS image file on the floppy disk so the filename becomes “AMIBOOT.ROM”
- Start the machine with the floppy disk in drive
- Hold down the keyboard keys CTRL+Home to force the update
- After some minutes the system will beep 4 times meaning the flashing is complete
- How to use boot block on Award BIOS
- Use the risky Hot Flash, if you know someone with a similar motherboard as you :
- Let him boot from a floppy with flash utilities and BIOS image like he was going to flash his own motherboard
- Take the BIOS chip out of your motherboard
- Exchange it with the one in his motherboard while his machine is running
- Reflash your BIOS chip in his motherboard using the flash utilities on the floppy
- Shutdown his machine put the BIOS chips back
More Info UniFlash.org