I decided to update the BIOS… it was the original 1001 BIOS that first came with the mobo.
So, I downloaded the newest and AFLASH utility, and flashed the sucker. AFLASH says the flash was sucessful, so I powered down and went to finish setting up the PC. Well, no when it reboots there is NOTHING. No video signal to the monitor at all, and from what I can tell no boot activity from the PC… IE - The A drive isn’t lighting at all. I get power, CD powers up and cycles, fans etc, but no video signal and it appears to do nothing for boot process.
Ideas? Is it screwed? I’m a little pissed since AFLASH said the update was sucessful.
It is possible to flash the BIOS with the wrong file and get messed up this way as many flash files are similarly named, but will lock a board if applied to a board for which they were not intended. Most of the time however a flash utility will read out the BIOS file and tell you if it is the correct file for the mobo BIOS update.
Sometimes re-flashing the BIOS resets it to the default state and all the IRQs and other stuff you have changed over time to make all the cards work together can get munged up. Remove all cards and attachments from the PC except for the video card and the keyboard mouse and see if it starts up. Then re-install the cards one by one and let they find appropriate spaces for their IRQs and memory addresses.
This might sound a bit strange, but try removing the battery from the motherboard, and leave it unplugged for a good hour to clear out the cmos nvram. You’ll have to re-configure the bios again if it comes back.
I don’t know if this is a feature of your mainboard, but many boards these days have a feature whereby you can load a BIOS off a floppy disk. This is used to recover from a failed BIOS update.
As I said, I don’t know if this applies to your mainboard, but worth finding out about. Good luck!
Also, sweepkick’s suggestion is valid - you may find there is a jumper on your mainboard to clear the CMOS… this will achieve the same thing sweep suggested.
Use the Clear CMOS jumper to clear the CMOS. This has to be done after a BIOS flash before the system will be bootable. Or you could use sweepkick’s method of removing the battery for a few hours.
Thanks folks! Before I went to be I took out the battery (I don’t have a manual for the mobo so I don’t know which jumper to reset). I put it in this AM and it worked like a charm. I re-deteced the drives and all is good once again.
And now, bernse, you can try to shake off that awful, sinking feeling that we all know all too well, when you think, “Oh, I’ve really screwed up this time!”
