Having trouble flashing my bios...

[ChemMan]

I'm trying to flash the bios of my Soyo Kt400 Dragon Ultra Platinum and am getting an unknown flash error. Here's what I do:

1. Boot off my old win98 start-up disk
2. Replace the start-up disk with another disk with awdflash.exe and the newest bios for the board (kvx42aa3.bin)
3. Type the following at the prompt: awdflash kvx42aa3.bin /f (I have also tried it without /f)
4. awdflash asks if I want to save old bios, I save it as kvx42aa1.bin (that's the current bios installed)
5. awdflash saves that file to the floppy (I check and both the old bios file created by awdflash and the new bios file are exactly the same size)
6. awdflash asks if I want to program the bios, I answer yes and after a brief pause gives me an "unknown flash" error and exits to the command line.

I should add that as soon as awdflash starts up, it states next to the "Flash type" label "Unknown flash". I followed the instructions exactly as Soyo states on their website and can't get it to work. I've flashed many bios before and never had a problem. Anyone have any ideas?

 

[Iron Woode]

Check to see if there is a BIOS setting to enable the BIOS flash. Some boards have a flash BIOS protection.

 

[JustStarting]

i've never had to swap floppies for a bios flash??

 

[DimZiE]

some boards use a jumper to enable/disable BIOS flashing..
check your mobo manual to make sure..

 

[ChemMan]

You just made me think of something, Iron Woode. In the bios of this board there is an option that claims to only allow bios modification by awdflash. Maybe this setting isn't working as it should, so I'll set it to disabled and give it a whrill. JustStarting, if you format a floppy under win2k and place io.sys, msdos.sys and command.com on the disk to make it bootable, it will not work. Apparently formatting the disk under that os prevents it from being bootable. Typical micro$oft. So I boot with the emergency start disk from when I was using win98 and then swap the disks to flash. That's exactly how Soyo's website says to do it, and it seems to work for others.

 

[Iron Woode]

You could also just download a win98 boot disk.

bootdisk

 

[ChemMan]

Yep, disabling the bios protection options worked. It flashed just fine.