BIOS update for Vista question please

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dudley Henriques
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Dudley Henriques

Hi;
I have a new system running XP/sp2 which will have to be upgraded to Vista
Ultimate for the work I do. The board is an 680i and EVGA wants me to
upgrade the bios from P24 to P28 for this upgrade. Problem is that the
computer is a gaming machine and doesn't have a floppy drive. EVGA says I
can use an ISO file with a CD drive (which I have) but I don't presently
have any burn software installed. I just use the default XP burn program
when I need the drive.
What I need to know please is how should I go about this upgrade to Vista. I
have the OS in hand now and am ready to make the upgrade. EVGA tells me that
it makes no difference if I install Vista before the BIOS flash or after.
I'm assuming if I install the OS first, I'll just have to change the boot
sequence to reflect the CD drive first in the present BIOS.
What I need to know is whether or not Vista Ultimate has an in house burn
program that will allow me to make the BIOS flash? I'm assuming I'll have to
create a bootable CD which might require additional software if the in house
program won't create one for me.
Am I right on this, and do you folks have any suggestions generally for
handling my update to Vista?
Many thanks
Dudley Henriques
MVP Microsoft Flight Simulator
 
If a bios upgrade is recommended for Vista to be used I would install the
bios upgrade first. If you upgrade the bios after Vista is installed you may
run into reactivation problems.

See if you can borrow an external floppy drive. Create the floppy and update
the bios. Hint! An external USB floppy drive costs only about $30.00 and
they are handy to have around.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Thank you for the reply. I understand the external floppy is an option but
I've been told only an internal will work because of it's place in the boot
sequencing. They say MS recommends only a few external floppys for this
purpose and that they are quite expensive.
I haven't researched this as yet and don't know how accurate the information
might be at this point.
DH
 
I don't know where you heard that "Microsoft recommends only a few ..." but
it's not so. Given any reasonably current PC an external floppy will work
just fine. Whether or not it will depends on what your BIOS supports, not
what "Microsoft recommends". I have flashed the BIOSes of many floppy-less
computers with an external USB drive costing $30 with no problems.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/
* HELP us help YOU ... http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm
 
Hey Dudley,

You will need burning software, that will burn the image ( iso ) to cd, to
do this.

I really like Imageburn, for burning iso's. It is freeware, and you can get
it here - http://www.imgburn.com/

It is very easy to use, just install, launch the application, browse to your
image, load it up, and click on burn to cd. It will burn the iso bin image
you download from EVGA, and it will be bootable. You set your bios to boot
from your cd drive first, insert the burned iso bin cd, reboot the system,
and off ya go... don't forgot to " load defaults " in your bios, when the
machine restarts.


Best of luck,




Don
 
Thanks Don;
I'm getting REALLY conflicting information on using an external floppy. EVGA
has said absolutely not, Microcenter backs that up, and here someone has
said it's no problem at all.
I've already lost an entire system doing a bad Asus update last year and I
sure don't want to trash this new system to the same issue.
I'll try the freeware burn program for the CD ISO file.
Thanks
DH
 
Your very welcome.


I would imagine, an external floppy would be ok, it appears the bios
supports booting from it, but the cd rom method does the same, and I used it
about 5 times with no problem. Did not make sense to me, to purchase an
external floppy just for this... and I sure wasn't going to try the online
windows method.

Unfortunately, things can happen when updating a bios, ie power failure,
computer glitch, etc... I always hold my breath when flashing I think :).

Anyways, based on my flashes, the cd method should work just fine. Just be
careful, and best of luck.
 
I'll tell you how gun shy I am on doing this. I'm about 5 seconds away from
buying an Imac for all my online activities, taking the PC off line
completely, reinstalling XP/SP2 with no updates and using it only for the
simulator.
The last BIOS update cost me $2500 bucks :-))
I'm not all that computer savvy really, and quite frankly, everything
associated with bios flashing is completely new to me. I even had to look up
what an ISO file actually is, and even after reading it, I STILL don't feel
completely comfortable dealing with it.
I know it all sound simple, but the whole deal surrounding bios updating
makes me nervous.
I'm doing my best to research and catch up on all this stuff, but my time to
spend on the learning curve is severely limited.
It seems ridiculous that a small 5 minute procedure should cause so much
anx, but the bottom line on bios updating is absolutely clear to me. If you
make ONE mistake.....ONE wrong thing in sequence.....One wrong click here or
there, and/or misinterpret or not understand ONE thing about the procedure,
you have just burned a motherboard and no amount of resetting, pulling the
cmos jumper, or anything else will solve it save having a new chip installed
on the mobo or buying a whole new board with all the problems and time that
entails.
It all seems so simple, but to someone who has never done it successfully,
not just me, but anyone; say some old lady with a computer who needs a bios
update and doesn't even know it :-), the entire procedure can be daunting.
Well....at least I've learned lesson 1 on bios flashing :-))))
DH
 
Floppy flashing works well, but many manufacturers don't recommend it
because people use dodgy old floppies - few now have recent, new floppy
disks - and read errors cause the flash to fail.

If your motherboard supports USB boot, you can use a pen drive. See
http://www.bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm
 
Thank you for this information.
DH


Dominic Payer said:
Floppy flashing works well, but many manufacturers don't recommend it
because people use dodgy old floppies - few now have recent, new floppy
disks - and read errors cause the flash to fail.

If your motherboard supports USB boot, you can use a pen drive. See
http://www.bootdisk.com/pendrive.htm
Click to expand...
 
Well, I'll tell ya, back when I was having stability problems I was flashing
like a mad man, I had gotten to the point I almost didn't care, threw the cd
in there, and it do it's thing, and it still flashed succesfully.

Don't sweat it too bad, yes, a bad flash can render the system unbootable
( but heck, so can a lightning strike) but thankfully in today's world, they
are becoming the exception...

Just watch the flash progress bar, do not reboot until told to do so, you
will see the little blocks update as the flash progressess.

Or alternatively, I think you would probably be safe with that P24 bios with
Vista, even though EVGA encourages you to update to P28. I am pretty sure I
read, Vista support started with P23.
Try Vista with it, if you have no issues great, if you do, well then you
could flash at that time...


Best of luck in whatever you do...
 
Thank you for your time in answering.
The "issue" on using external floppies and USB Flash drives to update a bios
is quite an open ended issue I can assure you :-) I appreciate that you have
done it successfully and I'm sure you are highly versed on the subject
generally, however, this issue seems hardly an open and shut case on using
these drives to update a bios.
Apparently, at least in my case anyway, two of the top motherboard
manufactures have stated flatly that they don't recommend doing it this way.
Other sources in the business seem to agree with this position.
The story I get is that the reason for this is that people like myself
(fairly untrained on computers) have tried this and ended up with a fried
chip.
On the other hand, as you have correctly stated, there is a cadre of
computer savvy people out here who have done this and had no issues.
The real problem with bios updates is that the major bios manufactures are
gun shy of putting a step by step walk through for their updates (they do
offer general advice of course) because of the many things that can go wrong
when attempting these updates.
My read on BIOS flashing is that for a beginner or someone not very savvy
around hardware and software, attempting a bios update is a crap shoot. If
it goes well, fine, but if it fails, a newbie can easily....and I mean
easily, end up with several thousand dollars of junk instead of a computer.
I've seen it happen. It happened to me. I know others who have had this
happen to them.
The answer is of course education, and perhaps the bios folks bypassing all
the high end technical jargon they use when explaining how to doa flash on
their chips and instead consider an extremely simple step by step walk
through instruction sheet that takes the newbie through the process with a
"push this" "do that" instead of "Download the ISO file and burn to a CD"
(most newbies have no idea how to make a bootable CD and the instructions
don't mention it.)
Anyway, thanks very much for your time. I appreciate it very much.
Dudley Henriques
(Learning about BIOS Flashing :-)


Richard G. Harper said:
I don't know where you heard that "Microsoft recommends only a few ..." but
it's not so. Given any reasonably current PC an external floppy will work
just fine. Whether or not it will depends on what your BIOS supports, not
what "Microsoft recommends". I have flashed the BIOSes of many
floppy-less computers with an external USB drive costing $30 with no
problems.

--
Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
* NEW! Catch my blog ... http://msmvps.com/blogs/rgharper/
* PLEASE post all messages and replies in the newsgroups
* The Website - http://rgharper.mvps.org/
* HELP us help YOU ... http://www.dts-l.org/goodpost.htm


Dudley Henriques said:
Thank you for the reply. I understand the external floppy is an option
but I've been told only an internal will work because of it's place in
the boot sequencing. They say MS recommends only a few external floppys
for this purpose and that they are quite expensive.
I haven't researched this as yet and don't know how accurate the
information might be at this point.
DH
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Two great minds with the same thought on P24 :-) I don't use wireless which
was one of the updates, and I understand the CPU temps are showing higher
with the P28. (Think they fixed the reader)
Anyway, I think you're right about P24. I think I'll leave it alone for now.
I wonder if after installing Vista, if I THEN update the BIOS, will I then
have to deal with MS for a reactivation???? Isn't messing with computers
wonderful??? :-))
DH
 
Fyi, my temp readings did not change, from P24 through P25, and 28...

I can't say about Vista, but I can say, I flashed mine 5 times with XP Pro,
and was not prompted for re-activation.

Yep, right now for me at least messing with computers is fun, if you asked
me that about a month ago I probably would have had a very different
opinon... :)

Have fun,
 
Knowing your system specs would have helped a little since nowadays, the
flash utility is actually built into the BIOS and it can usually read from a
USB drive plugged in during the process.

Disadvantage to CD: You can't make a backup of the old BIOS during the
flash.

If you have a recent AWARD or PHOENIX BIOS, then...
No DOS needed. No floppies needed.
Just copy the file to a USB stick, boot into BIOS Configuration, and run the
utility from the BIOS.
 
The system is new and fairly high end. The mobo is an EVGA 680i SLI Type
122CK-NF68-TR. The BIOS is a Phoenix Award and the installed version is P24.
The Chipset is an Nvidia NForce. I have the latest chipset driver installed
which is 9.53.
The EVGA update BIOS is now P28 which they suggest flashing before
formatting out XP from the HDD and installing Vista to replace it.
The rub on these USB Flash Drives for doing the flash on the bios is that
I've asked EVGA about five times now about using one and they are absolutely
adamant in their answer that I should NOT do it that way. They won't give me
a reason. They told me to do it either with an internal floppy, with the ISO
on the CD ROM, or (and they don't highly recommend doing this either,
through Windows) They have told me if I tried it any other way it would void
my warranty.
Like you have said, their IS a key press on the spalsh screen for something
called AWFLASH which I believe is F2. EVGA has not mentioned this to me
during our conversations on the phone and up until you mentioned it, I
haven't remembered it was even there.
I'm sure what you and others here are telling me about using a flash drive
is accurate but I'm powerless to even try it unless EVGA tells me to do it.
If I trash the system, I'll have no guarantee on the board and 2 grand goes
down the drain.
At this point I'm thinking that I'll just leave the P24 in there and forget
about upgrading to Vista. Either that, or buying a MAC might be a viable
option rather than try and deal with this the way it is. :-))
Thanks for your reply. I appreciate you people very much trying to be of
assistance, but there's no way I'm going to try to flash the bios with EVGA
telling me not to do it that way.
Unbelieveable isn't it ???? :-)) No wonder newbiew have so much trouble
getting things straight about computers
DudleyHenriques
 
The system is new and fairly high end. The mobo is an EVGA 680i SLI Type
122CK-NF68-TR. The BIOS is a Phoenix Award and the installed version is P24.
The Chipset is an Nvidia NForce. I have the latest chipset driver installed
which is 9.53.
The EVGA update BIOS is now P28 which they suggest flashing before
formatting out XP from the HDD and installing Vista to replace it.
The rub on these USB Flash Drives for doing the flash on the bios is that
I've asked EVGA about five times now about using one and they are absolutely
adamant in their answer that I should NOT do it that way. They won't give me
a reason. They told me to do it either with an internal floppy, with the ISO
on the CD ROM, or (and they don't highly recommend doing this either,
through Windows) They have told me if I tried it any other way it would void
my warranty.
Click to expand...

They won't know how you did it unless you tell them.
Like you have said, their IS a key press on the spalsh screen for something
called AWFLASH which I believe is F2. EVGA has not mentioned this to me
during our conversations on the phone and up until you mentioned it, I
haven't remembered it was even there.
I'm sure what you and others here are telling me about using a flash drive
is accurate but I'm powerless to even try it unless EVGA tells me to do it.
If I trash the system, I'll have no guarantee on the board and 2 grand goes
down the drain.
Click to expand...

Hyperbole. The worst case senario is to replace the motherboard, which
costs $258.00.
<http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813188013&ATT=13-188-013&CMP=OTC-d3alt1me>
However, it's very likely that the BIOS chip is socketed, which means
it can be replaced with a new one for $15.00.
 
Hey Dudley,

Have been out of town a few days with no computer access, don't know if you
will see this or not.

I think you will be fine with Vista, with that P24 bios. P28, fixed a bug in
Hpet, if running that from the bios, but I don't think that is a big deal.

As far as flashing from the CD , please note, that is not flashing from
windows. You actually boot from the CD and flash from there. You can do this
two ways - download the IS0 image, and burn it as an image file, as
previously discussed.
Alternatively, you can download the .bin file, you will see a stick thread
where they are available, and burn it simply as a standard data file to a cd
( don't have to burn as an image ), then when booting , you press alt-F2 to
enter the flash utility - it will pull up the .bin file on the cd rom, you
select it and press enter to flash.

While nerveracking, flashing is really not that big a deal - but again, if
concerned, I would just go ahead with Vista on P24, keeping in mind you can
always flash later if necessary...


Have fun!

Btw, I will be very interested to hear, your thoughts on Vista.
 
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