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Flashing bios - no floppy.

Windows is fine, i use DOS or the BIOS EZ-Flash when i can though as i have had a MSI Neo freeze in XP during a BIOS flash back in the old s478 days, took me finding a floppy drive and cursing at it for an hour, possibly selling the soul of my first born to beelzebub for the recovery to work. Lots of times i can't escape windows flashing especially with quite a few laptops.
 
gareth170 said:
just my point is if the OP flashed it within windows and if it freezes/ccrashs would you pay to get him a new motherboard? :D
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Where's your sense of adventure? It isn't your hardware :D

Actually I deliberately corrupted my BIOS a few weeks ago, let the windows updater get halfway through flashing the BIOS and cut the power.

I was trying to force the automatic BIOS recovery my ASUS board has to accept the original BIOS again. Didn't work.

The board got back up again but only if I used a newer-than-original BIOS. Even when half dead it insisted it wouldn't let me put the original BIOS back on -_-

Uppity mobos think they can tell their users what to do these days :rolleyes:

Back OT, USB stick is very easy to use, I've got different options but USB stick is just as easy once you've got a stick set up.
 
eddiew said:
My point is that people who haven't taken a CPU to the brink before tend to panic about 0.1v above stock :D
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:D

tbh theres a bigger chance killing the motherboard by updating the bios in windows than killing the phenom II cpu with 1.5-1.55v...
 
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Lol, depends... I once accidentally let mine hit 80 degrees at 1.35v :P Fortunately not for long and it still runs ^^;
 
Ha, my i7 told me it was a little chilly still when it hit 80c :p

surely the AMDs have some sort of thermal cutout/throttle though?
 
gareth170 said:
mines 75c..
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Mine... is not. I don't want to find out what it is. I'm too frightened.

Hold me.

...it is also possible that what Windows says is my temperature is in fact way over what the chip internally believes. Might explain why everyone thinks my temps are too high :P

Ironically, I had my C2D at 80 degrees under full load and wasn't arsed. Sure it was warm, but... meh, whatever. Cheapo E4300 chip, so what if it died :P
 
Senture said:
If the application screws up or crashes, it leaves the board with an incomplete BIOS flash and kills the board. Chances are you will not be covered by warranty and will have to resort to blind flashing or hot flashing, or just get a new board :(
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Buy a cheap floppy or usb stick windows bios update is not worth the risk it kills bios's all the time.
 
"All the time" is probably an exaggeration; if it was a consistent, high probability failure then the utilities just wouldn't exist. They aren't expected to fail, it's the rare occurrence rather than the norm. Remember that you only see bad news on the internet; nobody posts and says "I just did a windows BIOS update and it was ok!" because that's not blog-worthy :)

Yes I'm sure there's a chance of failure; there's also a chance that someone will choose that moment in time to blow a fuse and black out your house. Both are very small if your system is known stable. Of course, flash a BIOS while having an experimental overclock or dicking around with intensive software at the time... then you're just asking for it :D
 
eddiew. IF you had a £150+ motherboard and you needed to update the bios, would u rather take a by flashing it in windows which has a higher chance of failing or flash it in dos which as far less chance of failing?
 
If I did? I'd use windows, frankly. Never had a crash, and don't trust myself to find the right download unaided :D

Admittedly I usually pick up motherboards more in the £80 region...
 
eddiew said:
If I did? I'd use windows, frankly. Never had a crash, and don't trust myself to find the right download unaided :D
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what IF that time it did freeze. u would have lost a £150+ motherboard...

just because u never had a crash, doesn't mean it won't happen...

i didn't have crashs but still that one time it failed.
 
gareth170 said:
what IF that time it did freeze. u would have lost a £150+ motherboard...

just because u never had a crash, doesn't mean it won't happen...

i didn't have crashs but still that one time it failed.
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Hmm?

I bought a £160+ motherboard and I've updated the BIOS on it several times now in windows using the ASUS program for doing so.

Also, because it's a more expensive board, it has BIOS protection so even if you DO corrupt the BIOS while flashing it still won't die. It gets up again and lets you fix the BIOS and keep going :)
 
I'd imagine everyone does until the windows update utility freezes on you and you bork a board.Then again some may go through their entire computer lives using them and never have a single lock up but why take the chance.
It's happened to me twice and it's completely random, hasn't ever happened once on a floppy drive.
Just one of those things where it's universally agreed not to use manufacturers windows software to update a bios.
 
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Ill never use a windows flash utility again, i killed an asus a8n sli board using windows update. Just use ez flash from a usb stick now on asus boards. One exception was an evga 680i board that wouldnt overclock a q6600, updated it through windows, went fine, 3 months later i sent it of to evga germany for an upgrade to 780i, upgrade got turned down, board came back a few days later, reinstalled it, board died a few hours later, went online and bought a good board, (asus p5q deluxe), q6600 @3.8ghz with ease, never buy evga again.
 
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