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Don't EZ Flash from CD!

Thu, 03/10/2005 - 11:06 — Aldo

I thought it may be a good idea for future reference to use my favourable Google status to tell the world about my experiences flashing the BIOS on my Asus A8V Deluxe motherboard.

Note: this post is a bit long and windy, but there's an hilarious tech support reply in the end...

A couple of weeks back I bought a new computer. Nice and fast, nice and cheap. In an effort to make the computer as up to date as possible, I decided to upgrade the BIOS. Using Asus (ugly-as-sin) Windows based flash utility, I upgraded to the latest non-beta BIOS. Unfortunately that resulted in a problem with my CPU fan, so I wanted to use the same utility to get me back to my original BIOS version. Turns out that it can't downgrade your bios. So instead I decided to try to see if the fan-problem was fixed in the available beta BIOS. Not only didn't that bios fix the problem, it also made my floppy drive inaccessible. 'A floppy drive?' you would say, 'what do you need that for?'. Well, for flashing your bios outside of windows...

Asus has a unique feature on their boards that will let you flash directly from floppy or cd, without booting into dos first. It's called EZ flash. Having no access to my floppy drive because of the buggy beta bios, I decided to use the CD that came with the motherboard and flash the BIOS version that's on it. That would be the safest, surest working option, right? Wrong!. Flashing went as planned (I'ld even say it went surprisingly well), but unfortunately the machine would not boot, not beep, not do anything... I thought something must have gone wrong with the flashing, but some googling learned me the BIOS on the CD must have been too old for my processor, and instead of running the processor at a low speed, Asus decided it was best to just shut down to prevent damage. Leaving me with a dead computer that would not boot, let alone let me update to a proper BIOS again.

Here's what Asus tech support had to say about it, when I explained what happened and requested a new bios chip: (this would be soo funny if it weren't sad)

Sir, Very sorry, we can't send you a alone bios chip.because the mb's an mac address, 1394 address are writen in the bios chip .if we send you a bios chip with program, the addresswill be error.

in the most , the chip is ok still, you could reflash the bios by hot-replug :, you could try with another ( with the same pcb version), please do as below:

  • get the 'bad' mb' s BIOS chip
  • relax the 'good' mb's BIOS chip.
  • power on
  • run the afudos under DOS , or the update bios in windows.
  • remove the bios (don't short with the mb)
  • insert the 'bad' bios in the socket, please note the direction of chip.
  • flash it.

Because there have danger in this way,so I suggest you contact your dealer and let he do it fou you,I think he has the enough condition to do it.

 

if can'tdetect the bios chip or can't ! flash , maybe the chip is bad, please contact with your reseller for RMA.

Best regards !

A visit to a friendly computer shop was more helpful, and three days later I had a working setup once more.

Update: If you're affected by the same issue, be sure to read jmarelle's comment below for a possible (but unconfirmed) solution

Topics: 
Computers

Comments

Tue, 02/07/2006 - 09:31 — jmarelle (not verified)

Hi,

*exactly* the same thing happened to me last night.

Let's see how I can resurrect my A8V Deluxe.

An unhappy German Asus customer.

Tue, 02/07/2006 - 15:02 — Aldo

Another one bites the dust... I hope you can find someone who will hot-flash your BIOS for you.

Wed, 02/08/2006 - 17:35 — jmarelle (not verified)

While googling around, I came across the posting of another fellow with the same problem. Just for the record: try to remove one of the DIMMs (the one closer to the CPU, forgot which slot number it is), turn on power, the BIOS will POST now. Install a working BIOS via EZ Flash or AFUDOS and then put the 2nd DIMM back in (after switching off). No idea *why* this works but it did for me. Wish ASUS had posted this on their website.

Thu, 02/09/2006 - 10:02 — Aldo

Edited my post to point people to your comment...

Since this post is first if you google 'ez flash cd', it might help someone sometime.

Mon, 02/13/2006 - 09:33 — jmarelle (not verified)

Hmm, there actually is a comment on the ASUS website: 'Earlier BIOS may boot up with single channel memory only'

http://support.asus.com/cpusupport/cpusupport.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=A8V%20Deluxe

Apparently the problem is that the BIOS on the support CD is too old to run certain newer CPUs in dual-channel mode, that's why removing one of the DIMMs helps (sometimes).

Fri, 08/04/2006 - 17:43 — alowicious (not verified)

I just had the same problem. I will try taking out one DIMM and see if it does the trick. I will update when it works or fails.

Wed, 08/23/2006 - 22:59 — kingkong (not verified)

How do you flash the bios when the floppy drive wont work because I cannot get into the Bios menus could I use a cdrom to flash the bios.

Where do you get the Ez-Flash Tool from.

I have all the updates from the Asus Website ready to update the bios for my AMD 3700+ SAN DIEGO 939 socket Cpu.

The update i download as 1017 Cannot find EZ-Flash only
AWDFLASF116

I've tried taking out the bios battery - No Luck

Clearing the Cmos - No Luck

Taking out the one stick of Ram - No Luck

Could I use a USB PEN as a floppy disk with the updates..?

Guest (not verified) – Wed, 08/23/2006 – 21:47

Fri, 12/01/2006 - 21:53 — Morgen (not verified)

I would not recommend using the EZ flash program at all.

I had this same no post on boot issue, rebooted with a single stick of memory in and bingo, it works again! Apparently it effects the BIOS ability to recognize dual channel. Worked for me and I have seen several other positive posts.

BTW, When I flash with afudos.exe from DOS it works just fine.

Wed, 04/11/2007 - 11:53 — Guest (not verified)

its your own fault, you should have listened to windows version.
and don't 'repair' if it works in first place.

Sat, 04/28/2007 - 11:19 — Guest (not verified)

This subject may be stale but to those who googled to here I will explain.
1. Download the BIOS you need from the ASUS website.

2. If you have the support CD Rom that came with the motherboard look in the root of the disk using explorer or whatever. You will find a file called "A8V.ROM" or similar, one of my boards was "P4C800.ROM". This is the EZ flash recovery BIOS.
What you do is rename your downloaded BIOS to the EXACT SAME NAME as the EZ flash BIOS, complete with the .ROM extension!

3. Burn a CD with this renamed BIOS file

4. Boot up the computer with the CD in, Press Alt + F2 during the Bios POST. BIOS file will load automatically, and tell you to reboot when it's completed.
The screen will show "User recovery requested. Starting BIOS recovery... (other status messages will follow until completion)

5. Reboot and hopefully you will be back in business.

Do not use the win based flash utility, BIOS should not be flashed from a windows enviroment. The most reliable flash procedure for the majority of ASUS boards is "AFUDOS" via a bootable floppy. If you do not have a floppy then the BIOS file you want renamed to "originalEZflashname.ROM" works well via CD. If you do not have the recovery disk for the board you should ask others via the ASUS usenet group to check their CD for the correct BIOS file name. It will end in .ROM whatever else it is called!

Mon, 04/30/2007 - 13:02 — scruffy1 (not verified)

i want to have your babies !

i only stuffed up my flash this very evening, and miraculously google led me to your words of wisdom written merely days earlier

let me add that if you possess the original a8v cd that comes with the mobo, you can boot with it in the cd whilst pressing alt+f2 and the miracle of rebirth is yours by just sitting back and marvelling..... but not documented ANYWHERE in the relevant section of the manual

i also took out some of the ram (single stick left in dimm b1 (third slot from the processor), but i have no idea if that helped

i had originally "upgraded" (ha! killed) the bios in the hope of improving my stability with 2x1gig low latency sticks, but meh! either back to 4x512 at 2T and 2.8 prime stable, or settle for 2.75ghz with the opty 148 and 2-3-2-5 1T at 250fsb (with dividers cpu/14)

i vote guest for deity status !!! thanks again very sincerely :-)

Mon, 09/03/2007 - 00:28 — Guest (not verified)

I want to thank you all for this information , I bought an A8V deluxe off Ebay as I do not want to move to PCi , etc atm.
Guy i bought off said was working .. was not .. so as it sat here collecting dust I was going to try to order new bios chip from ASUS , I decided to check first and happen to come across this site.

I followed instructions to a "T" of burning bios to CD and the alt+f2 and now i have an updated A8V working and running very well with Opteron 185 .. so Thank you all very much.. saved me hair and money.

Wed, 10/24/2007 - 12:49 — Brennan C. (not verified)

I recently had this problem with my P5W DH Deluxe and tried many solutions (including most of those listed above), but to no avail. I gave up and removed the BIOS chip in order to write down the info printed on it and order a new one, and then just for the hell of it I put the chip back in its socket and gave restoring the BIOS via CD one more shot. For some reason it worked like a charm.

So, before you give up, try taking the chip out of the mobo for a few minutes and then placing it back in. I'm not exactly sure why it worked, but it's a relatively simple solution and well worth a shot.

BTW, this is completely inexcusable on the part of Asus. The least they could do is provide an easily accessible alternative to what is quite obviously a faulty utility (a utility that is included in their basic software suite, no less).

Thu, 12/13/2007 - 01:47 — Guest (not verified)

Thank you, it worked.

Wed, 10/29/2008 - 06:45 — Guest (not verified)

Thought I would document my BIOS flashing story in the hopes that it could help someone who's having a panic attack because their system won't POST.

My system is:
MB: ASUS P5N32-E SLI
Memory: 1G X 2 OCZ DII800 OCZ2P800R22GK (not on the ASUS QVL list)
CPU: Intel Core2Duo E6600
BIOs upgrade from version 08xx (I think) to version 1503

I used the ASUS EZ Flash 2 as my poison. I downloaded the BIOs from the ASUS website. The uncompressed file was placed directly on a floppy. I restarted, entered BIOs, and launched EZ Flash 2. The BIOs update completed successful. The prompt said the system will restart in 5 seconds (I think). The screen then went blank and nothing happened.... (ENTER the PROBLEM).

I waited 20 minutes before restarting the computer by holding down the power button. Upon restart, no beeps, no post, just fans turning and lights on. I unplugged the computer for well over 2 minutes. Nothing. I tried booting from a floppy formatted as an MS-DOS start-up disk. Nothing. I removed 1 RAM stick. Nothing. The other. Nothing. I then tried booting from the DVD that came with the MB. Nothing. The next step solved the problem.

I then erased the CMOS RTC RAM data using a jumper on the mother board. I switched the jumper, rebooted and it started up. I shut it down, reset the jumper and booted up again with no problem. I checked the BIOs version in EZ Flash 2 and the version I upgraded to was indeed installed.

Erasing the CMOS as part of a BIOs flash is not documented in the manual. Hope this helps someone.

~Kaludix

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