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Sunday 6 February 2005

How to flashfuck your BIOS [Beej]

As if the naming of nVidia and ATI graphics cards wasn't enough craziness, the mainboard manufacturers are also joining-in on the la-la merry-go-round conspiracy of hardware names.
I have an ABit NF7-S 2.0 you see. Best Socket A mobo there is. Only today I thought I'd address the fact that my nForce drivers weren't working by patching things from the BIOS upwards.
Oh such an assfuckingly stupid idea.
You see, not only do ABit have a NF7-S 2.0, they also have an NF7-S2. And that's a slightly different nForce2 board. With a different BIOS. And, oooh, even if you were to somehow overlook the similarity in names, the ABit Flashmenu tool certainly won't warn you about putting diesel in your petrol tank and then the deed is done.
You can't correct your error and flash the correct BIOS, oh no. It's too late for that Joe User. They won't let you. A one-way street. You have to buy a new BIOS chip or a new motherboard. After all, it was YOUR FAULT NOT THEIRS!
And what do you do in hardware emergencies, even when you know its as bad as catching yourself humming along to Steps? You drive to PC World, because its the only place you can get kit quickly without involving Parcel Force.
Better pass the vaseline, eh?

5 comments:

  1. Get an Asus, if the BIOS is b0rked it'll auto load an image off a cd or floppy.

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  2. So does the ABit Spiny... only it won't let you because it's the wrong (ie. right) image!

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  3. One of my PCs has a neat dual BIOS feature - it's a Gigabyte board, and allows you to flash one, and if it b0rks, you can revert to the other BIOS. Very handy.
    On the NF7-S 2.0 - I have this board too. What was the new BIOS going to do for it? Any need to upgrade, or was your mission one 'because it was there'? ;)

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  4. I think we all know the answers to that, don't you? :-)

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  5. You naysayers! If you must know, I found out why I couldn't update my nForce drivers... because I'd flashed the BIOS with the wrong image when I bought the board, only I'd never noticed.
    And now I have noticed. And I have paid the price.
    Grrrrrr!

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