Odd behavior after a BIOS flash

  • Thread starter Thread starter Serdar Yegulalp
  • Start date Start date
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Serdar Yegulalp

I have a computer that uses a TYAN K8W mainboard --
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tigerk8w.html -- and I recently
flashed it with the 3.03 edition of the BIOS (released on 6/7/06).
After I did this, some peculiar things happened that I'm rather
concerned about.

On powering the system back up after the flash, it would no longer
boot. Or rather, it would begin to boot and then crash with an
INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE BSOD. I had seen something vaguely like this
before: the system uses a Silicon Image SATA RAID controller, which can
be set to "Ultra" or "RAID" modes, and when I flashed the BIOS before
this setting was reset. I had previously reset the system to "RAID"
and booted normally. This time, neither "Ultra" nor "RAID" worked.

I booted to the Recovery Console and made sure the driver for the SI
controller was present; it was. I even tried copying in a fresh
version of it to see if it had been corrupted. No dice. Restoring the
registry from an emergency backup and even doing a repair install had
no effect. I was forced to eventually reinstall Windows completely to
get things running again.

I'm a little puzzled as to why a BIOS flash would cripple the OS in
such a fundamental way. I haven't ruled out the possibility that there
were other changes that took place at the same time that I had not
diagnosed, but this was my main suspicion since the symptoms were so
much like what had happened before.

Theories?
 
Serdar Yegulalp said:
I have a computer that uses a TYAN K8W mainboard --
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tigerk8w.html -- and I recently
flashed it with the 3.03 edition of the BIOS (released on 6/7/06).
After I did this, some peculiar things happened that I'm rather
concerned about.

On powering the system back up after the flash, it would no longer
boot. Or rather, it would begin to boot and then crash with an
INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE BSOD. I had seen something vaguely like this
before: the system uses a Silicon Image SATA RAID controller, which
can be set to "Ultra" or "RAID" modes, and when I flashed the BIOS
before this setting was reset. I had previously reset the system to
"RAID" and booted normally. This time, neither "Ultra" nor "RAID"
worked.

I booted to the Recovery Console and made sure the driver for the SI
controller was present; it was. I even tried copying in a fresh
version of it to see if it had been corrupted. No dice. Restoring the
registry from an emergency backup and even doing a repair install had
no effect. I was forced to eventually reinstall Windows completely to
get things running again.

I'm a little puzzled as to why a BIOS flash would cripple the OS in
such a fundamental way. I haven't ruled out the possibility that
there were other changes that took place at the same time that I had
not diagnosed, but this was my main suspicion since the symptoms were
so much like what had happened before.

Theories?
Click to expand...

You didnt reset the cmos etc after the bios flash. Thats essential.
 
I have a computer that uses a TYAN K8W mainboard --
http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tigerk8w.html -- and I recently
flashed it with the 3.03 edition of the BIOS (released on 6/7/06).
After I did this, some peculiar things happened that I'm rather
concerned about.

On powering the system back up after the flash, it would no longer
boot. Or rather, it would begin to boot and then crash with an
INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE BSOD. I had seen something vaguely like this
before: the system uses a Silicon Image SATA RAID controller, which can
be set to "Ultra" or "RAID" modes, and when I flashed the BIOS before
this setting was reset. I had previously reset the system to "RAID"
and booted normally. This time, neither "Ultra" nor "RAID" worked.

I booted to the Recovery Console and made sure the driver for the SI
controller was present; it was. I even tried copying in a fresh
version of it to see if it had been corrupted. No dice. Restoring the
registry from an emergency backup and even doing a repair install had
no effect. I was forced to eventually reinstall Windows completely to
get things running again.

I'm a little puzzled as to why a BIOS flash would cripple the OS in
such a fundamental way. I haven't ruled out the possibility that there
were other changes that took place at the same time that I had not
diagnosed, but this was my main suspicion since the symptoms were so
much like what had happened before.

Theories?
Click to expand...


Maybe the new RAID bios requires a newer driver too? Either
that or it changed the logical enumeration order of the SATA
channels.
 
You didnt reset the cmos etc after the bios flash. Thats essential.

You are probably right. The machine did claim that the CMOS had been
reset due to an invalid checksum the first time I rebooted, but I'm
pretty sure I never did a hard jumper reset on the CMOS.
 
Maybe the new RAID bios requires a newer driver too? Either
that or it changed the logical enumeration order of the SATA
channels.
Click to expand...

Both are possible, but Rod mentioned that not clearing CMOS might cause
a problem. I in fact forgot to do that, which would explain a few
things.
 
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