I need some help flashing a BIOS, or maybe something else, I don't know.
Here's my situation:
MB: ASUS A7A266
CPU: AMD Athlon 1GHz/266 SocketA
BIOS: rev.1004
OS: Win2K Pro
RAM: 1 GB PC2100 266MHZ DDR SDRAM
Primary Master: 200 GB Maxtor HDD
Primary Slave: 120 GB Maxtor HDD
RUNNING:
AVAST ANTIVIRUS 4.6
KERIO PERSONAL FIREWALL 4
I recently purchased the 200 GB Maxtor, partitioned it into logical drives all < 70 GB, and started using 2 of the bigger ones for large captured DV files. The other night, the 2 larger drives (also the last of logical drives) that hold my DV files both disappeared. After a little research online, it seems that other people occasionally have similar troubles and blame it on either file size limits in Windows 2000 or drive size limits (127 GB) with older BIOS. However, there are supposedly virtually no file or drive size limits with NTFS and Windows 2000, and if my partitions are all < 70 GB, why would I be having problems with the BIOS?
I didn't have any problems until I had a significant amount of the the larger partitions filled up (I'm guessing about 50% or more, but I can't tell now since the drives are invisible). I was most recently creating files on the next to last drive when they both disappeared, so I suspect it has something to do with the partition tables. Maybe the parameters are out of bounds regarding the size of certain files, I don't know. If the next to last partition had a problem of this sort that kept it from being addressed properly, this might keep the last partition from being seen properly as well since the partitions are linked.
Since my BIOS does not support 48-bit LBA, I figured that the BIOS must be the culprit here. I created a registry value (EnableBigLba = 1) as per instructions on Microsoft's site, but I also have to update my BIOS. There are BIOS updates for large capacity drives on ASUS' website, so I downloaded the one prior to the beta release, but I can find no way to actually flash my BIOS. With Windows 2000 you can't get a true DOS to flash from, and I couldn't figure out a way to do it in the recovery console (it wouldn't let me run the AFLASH utility executable). I don't know of any utilities that work from within Windows that ASUS supports (WinFlash is useless here), and ASUS' EZ-Flash utility is not available for the A7A266. Can I flash from a Windows 98 boot disk?
I'm not even sure flashing the BIOS will help on this problem. There are some other suspicious events occurring now after the mysterious disappearance of the drives, but temporal proximity does not guarantee causal relationships. Apps seem to launch much more slowly, and I had 2 funny cases of major apps re-requiring license verification. I guess there could be some lurking virus (I will run a scan tonight and see what it finds), but I don't think it's a virus.
Any help will be much appreciated.
Here's my situation:
MB: ASUS A7A266
CPU: AMD Athlon 1GHz/266 SocketA
BIOS: rev.1004
OS: Win2K Pro
RAM: 1 GB PC2100 266MHZ DDR SDRAM
Primary Master: 200 GB Maxtor HDD
Primary Slave: 120 GB Maxtor HDD
RUNNING:
AVAST ANTIVIRUS 4.6
KERIO PERSONAL FIREWALL 4
I recently purchased the 200 GB Maxtor, partitioned it into logical drives all < 70 GB, and started using 2 of the bigger ones for large captured DV files. The other night, the 2 larger drives (also the last of logical drives) that hold my DV files both disappeared. After a little research online, it seems that other people occasionally have similar troubles and blame it on either file size limits in Windows 2000 or drive size limits (127 GB) with older BIOS. However, there are supposedly virtually no file or drive size limits with NTFS and Windows 2000, and if my partitions are all < 70 GB, why would I be having problems with the BIOS?
I didn't have any problems until I had a significant amount of the the larger partitions filled up (I'm guessing about 50% or more, but I can't tell now since the drives are invisible). I was most recently creating files on the next to last drive when they both disappeared, so I suspect it has something to do with the partition tables. Maybe the parameters are out of bounds regarding the size of certain files, I don't know. If the next to last partition had a problem of this sort that kept it from being addressed properly, this might keep the last partition from being seen properly as well since the partitions are linked.
Since my BIOS does not support 48-bit LBA, I figured that the BIOS must be the culprit here. I created a registry value (EnableBigLba = 1) as per instructions on Microsoft's site, but I also have to update my BIOS. There are BIOS updates for large capacity drives on ASUS' website, so I downloaded the one prior to the beta release, but I can find no way to actually flash my BIOS. With Windows 2000 you can't get a true DOS to flash from, and I couldn't figure out a way to do it in the recovery console (it wouldn't let me run the AFLASH utility executable). I don't know of any utilities that work from within Windows that ASUS supports (WinFlash is useless here), and ASUS' EZ-Flash utility is not available for the A7A266. Can I flash from a Windows 98 boot disk?
I'm not even sure flashing the BIOS will help on this problem. There are some other suspicious events occurring now after the mysterious disappearance of the drives, but temporal proximity does not guarantee causal relationships. Apps seem to launch much more slowly, and I had 2 funny cases of major apps re-requiring license verification. I guess there could be some lurking virus (I will run a scan tonight and see what it finds), but I don't think it's a virus.
Any help will be much appreciated.