A7N8X-E Deluxe Bios 1009

[Mark]

Hi. My new A7N8X-E Deluxe motherboard came with bios 1009. When I used the
ASUS update I found 1007,1008,1010, and 1011 out there. I figured something
was wrong with 1009, so I decided to flash to 1011 and ran into some issues.
I am running WIN2K and boot from SCSI (SATA WD 80G drive):

1) BSOD on boot. I forgot the exact message, but know it has to do
with something changing in the raid controller (ID perhaps?).
I ran into the same thing when I first swapped out my old
motherboard/cpu since the old one did not have SATA.
I did find a m$soft artical on it, but decided against
trying the work around. I ended up doing a clean re-install of
WIN2K. It was really a PITA because WIN2K hung during hardware
detection on re-install, so I had to re-install into a fresh
directory. I don't want to go there again since I had to also
re-install all my programs etc.

2) I tried flashing back to 1009 from the bios flash utility and
got a checksum error! I had WINME on the same box (luckily)
so I booted that up (it recognized a raid/scsi change during
start up), installed asus update, and flashed back to 1009
under win-doze ME.

My questions (I appologize for the long list):

1) What's wrong with 1009 that it was pulled from the asus support
site? Does anyone know? (I saw some other posts about it but
did not see an answer).

2) Why couldn't I flash back to 1009 (it was saved to disk using the
windoze version of asus update - "save current bios")? I didn't
check for nor install the flash utility update to the bios yet,
so could that be the problem?

3) If I try to flash to 1011 again is there an easy workaround to my boot
problem witn WIN2K without re-install? Since re-install over win2K
hung last time, I don't think it will work without a clean
re-install (yuck!).

4) Should I even bother to flash the bios. I normally wouldn't consider
it unless I was having a known problem, but since the board was new
anyway and I didn't see 1009 out there I decided that 1009 must
have something really wrong and decided to do it.

I am getting ready to upgrade from win2k pro to winxp pro. I assume
winxp would have the same boot issue, but if I decide to flash I am
planning on doing this:

1) Upgrade win2k to winxp
2) Flash to 1011 (or even more current depending on when I decide
to do this).
3) If boot fails, re-install winxp (not into clean dir... re-install that
will reset registry and renumerate drives etc.).

 

[_P_e_ar_lALegend]

1) What's wrong with 1009 that it was pulled from the asus support

site? Does anyone know? (I saw some other posts about it but
did not see an answer).

Guess? It do have some problems with SATA bios, it is prolly broken. So it
give problem with any other SATA bios built into different versions.

2) Why couldn't I flash back to 1009 (it was saved to disk using the
windoze version of asus update - "save current bios")? I didn't
check for nor install the flash utility update to the bios yet, so
could that be the problem?

That is strange. U can force it with a switch in the command line version
of the bios, if memory serve me weel.

3) If I try to flash to 1011 again is there an easy workaround to my
boot
problem witn WIN2K without re-install? Since re-install over win2K
hung last time, I don't think it will work without a clean re-install
(yuck!).

U just can do a recovery: it is prolly only a broken SATA bios.

4) Should I even bother to flash the bios. I normally wouldn't consider
it unless I was having a known problem, but since the board was new
anyway and I didn't see 1009 out there I decided that 1009 must have
something really wrong and decided to do it.

The picture is now more clear for me: the only real problem in 1009 is the
integrated SATA bios. It's like if u build a strip with it, u can't use it
with other bios versions.

I am getting ready to upgrade from win2k pro to winxp pro. I assume
winxp would have the same boot issue, but if I decide to flash I am
planning on doing this:

1) Upgrade win2k to winxp

U can make a WinXP upgrade starting the setup from the WinXP cd and
loading the latest SATA drivers starting from BIOS 1011.

 

[Mark]

The picture is now more clear for me: the only real problem in 1009 is the
integrated SATA bios. It's like if u build a strip with it, u can't use it
with other bios versions.

I did get this response from asus email support:

"...if you update bios to 1011 from 1009, you have to re-install a
clean windows because the built-in sata controller (Si3112R) ID
is changed in bios 1011..."

Of course I asked the same question to asus helpdesk after reading
in this NG that it gets a quicker response (which it did), but the
response was that I only needed to boot in safe mode because of
DMI information changing, then re-boot normally. I don't think
that would have fixed the "Inaccessible Boot Device " error
I get (I think that is the one) when I flash to Bios 1011.

U can make a WinXP upgrade starting the setup from the WinXP cd and
loading the latest SATA drivers starting from BIOS 1011.

I did boot from the WinXP CD and did not see an "upgrade" option
(only install over existing installation, or pick new directory).

I thought to "upgrade", you had to start the install from Win2K
(or Win98/ME etc.).

 

[Natéag]

I did boot from the WinXP CD and did not see an "upgrade" option
(only install over existing installation, or pick new directory).

Choose one of or the other. You will then be asked if youy
want to repair/upgrade or install.

 

[_P_e_ar_lALegend]

Il Thu, 24 Jun 2004 15:16:31 -0700, Mark ha scritto:

I did get this response from asus email support:

"...if you update bios to 1011 from 1009, you have to re-install a
clean windows because the built-in sata controller (Si3112R) ID
is changed in bios 1011..."

They lie They did some mistakes with merging SATA bios into 1009 bios
and now they wont tell, so they tell it's an ID problem!

I've upgraded from 1008 to 1011 without any problem and I just manually
merged myself the .47 Silicon Image bios into 1011 with no problem.

It's just unbelievable Asus did an error like that in 1009, it's a shame.

I did boot from the WinXP CD and did not see an "upgrade" option
(only install over existing installation, or pick new directory).

I thought to "upgrade", you had to start the install from Win2K
(or Win98/ME etc.).

No, u can just choose a repair from the cd and u are ok. Or u can
reinstall over the old install and it upgrade over the existing
configuration, just tell XP to install in the same directory.

Good luck.