corrupt BIOS recovery

26th January 2004, 11:47

I got warranty for my dead A7N8X-Deluxe, I'm pretty sure it was the BIOS. OK, i've got a new one but this board sux and I lost a lot of time/money to get warranty for the board

I've tried to recover it with a BIOS on a floppy, but it didn't work. guess what I found today:

"Now, go back to your dead system, and REMOVE the video card. This will trigger what's left of the bios to scan the floppy drive. Insert the floppy, and turn on the system. Your mobo will then scan the floppy disk for the autoexec.bat and restore to the bios that was copied to the floppy. The transfer will probably take a few minutes, after which the motherboard will make several high pitched beeps, prompting you to power off the system. Replace the videocard, and if your system powers up with video, you were successful!!! "

did you know that you have to remove the videocard? :/

http://www3.telus.net/agentsmith/articles/article1.html

jmke · 26th January 2004, 11:56

did it work for you?

nice find!
not documented feature by Asus?

jmke · 26th January 2004, 12:00

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=8250

Quote:

A SHORT WHILE AGO WE REPORTED that there could be a serious problem with Nforce 2 chipset motherboards. No sooner had the article gone up than Nvidia got in contact wanting to know all of the details.
Users of a new Shuttle Nforce 2 based machine had reported problems with the BIOS. They had been trying to overclock their machines only to find that, once they went past a certain point, the machine would stop working.

At first it looked like a problem with the Shuttle but then Asus motherboard owners reported the same problem. Then Abit and Epox. Not only would they stop working, it was proving difficult to get them working again.

Nvidia stepped into the breach and admitted that there was a fault with the Shuttle and Abit boards. The fault lay in the manufacturers missing off a jumper that Nvidia had specified on the Nforce 2 reference design.

Hard Tecs 4U, a German site, unwittingly uncovered the missing jumper. They had reviewed six Nforce 2 motherboards from different manufacturers and managed to kill all of them. The only one that was easy to recover was an MSI K7N2-L board which has the jumper. Using the jumper sets the BIOS back to a 100MHz FSB safe mode.

Other people had discovered that you could use a 100MHz FSB processor, for example a Duron, in a motherboard that had stopped working to get it going again.

And there lies the problem. Setting the FSB too high can stop Nforce 2 motherboards from POSTing. Once the motherboard has stopped POSTing, the only way to get it going again is to reset the FSB back down to 100MHz. Only most motherboards don't have the jumper so you can't do that.

Nvidia obviously knew about this problem because they built the reference Nforce 2 motherboard with that jumper. The fact that many manufacturers didn't put the jumper onto their motherboards means that someone deserves a slapped wrist at the very least. Whether that's Nvidia for not emphasising the need for the jumper or the manufacturers for not including it is something we may never know.

However, what we do know is that a fix will soon be at hand for everyone. Nvidia has managed to create a fix for the BIOS on Nforce 2 motherboards that will solve the issue. That fix has already gone to several manufacturers who should be able to supply an updated version of the BIOS for their specific motherboards soon.

Nvidia has said that it managed to get that BIOS fix to Shuttle the next working day after our initial article. Hats off to Nvidia for getting the problem sorted so quickly. µ

26th January 2004, 12:32

Quote:

Originally posted by jmke
did it work for you?
not documented feature by Asus?

not documented indeed. it didn't work for me, I didn't know I had to remove the video card

26th January 2004, 11:47	#1
TeuS Posts: n/a	corrupt BIOS recovery I got warranty for my dead A7N8X-Deluxe, I'm pretty sure it was the BIOS. OK, i've got a new one but this board sux and I lost a lot of time/money to get warranty for the board I've tried to recover it with a BIOS on a floppy, but it didn't work. guess what I found today: "Now, go back to your dead system, and REMOVE the video card. This will trigger what's left of the bios to scan the floppy drive. Insert the floppy, and turn on the system. Your mobo will then scan the floppy disk for the autoexec.bat and restore to the bios that was copied to the floppy. The transfer will probably take a few minutes, after which the motherboard will make several high pitched beeps, prompting you to power off the system. Replace the videocard, and if your system powers up with video, you were successful!!! " did you know that you have to remove the videocard? :/ http://www3.telus.net/agentsmith/articles/article1.html

26th January 2004, 11:56	#2
jmke Madshrimp Join Date: May 2002 Location: 7090/Belgium Posts: 79,021	did it work for you? nice find! not documented feature by Asus? __________________

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