Ever have a BIOS flash on a device fail on you?

Schwartz · Post by **Schwartz** » Sat Nov 24, 2001 1:59 am

Well I saw Adaptec released a new BIOS for my 29160N and figured I would flash it to the latest. I have flashed it once before so I know what the deal is. Well it did it's thing and exited with an error code 8 and said something about couldn't verify. I figured well I'll reboot and try it again.

WRONG, there is no rebooting now. It hangs when the SCSI card would normaly kick in and detect the drives. I don't think there is anything I can do to get it to work. The BIOS is directly attached to the card so it's not as easy as popping the chip out of the socket and putting a new one in. I guess I'll have to see if Adaptec will RMA the card but I think I will be paying for it because somehow I doubt a failed flash attempt is covered by warranty.

This sucks because my system is dead now. I have 2 IDE drives but they are a XP Raid volume and I really don't want to wipe it to use the IDE drives. There is no place around here that I know of to get a SCSI card so I ended up ordering a Tekram DC-390U3D with the Dual Ultra 160 Channels. Now I have to wait until the card arrives.

I'm posting from my friends PC and he has dial-up where as I have cable. Reminds me just how much dial-up sucks.

Any of you have anything similar happen or know of a way to maybe kick this card in the ass and get it running? I highly doubt there is anything I can do but I figured I'd toss this post up and see if anyone might have any ideas or would like to share a similar experience with BIOS flashing. I have flashed many different devices and never had a problem until now.

Rooster · Post by **Rooster** » Sat Nov 24, 2001 2:47 am

Schwartz, I ripped this from Adaptec
You can try retrieving the controller by re-flashing the controller BIOS on another computer. Make sure there are "NO" SCSI device/s attached on the controller during the flash upgrade. The easiest way to do this is to disconnect any and all interface cables attached to the controller while the system is in a turned off.

If you don't have another computer, then try disconnecting all devices attached on the controller and attempt to restore the first previous BIOS that was on the controller.

If this also fails to bring the controller back from the dead.

Disconnect all controllers inside your computer. Leave the video card and the SCSI card as the only cards in your system (this will avoid a possible conflict during the upgrade process.)

- Attempt to re-flash the controller and see if it is successful.

If you power up the system and the SCSI BIOS still does not post on your screen, then reboot the system again and press "Ctrl-A" continuously after the memory count. Press in both buttons in increments of 2 seconds apart and despite what may be showing on the screen, keep on pressing it until boot process completes.

- If the SCSI Select BIOS message appears and you're able to access the utility:

· Go to "Configure View Host Adapter Settings"
· Go to "Advanced Configuration Options"

Make sure "Host Adapter BIOS" and "Display Ctrl-A Message" is enabled.

- If the BIOS or SCSI Select message does not appear at all, then it may be that the controller is either defective or has failed.

Direct Link

Schwartz · Post by **Schwartz** » Sat Nov 24, 2001 3:12 am

Kick ass, thanks a lot. I guess I should have dug into their website a bit deeper. Too bad I'm not home now to try it, I'm over an hour away. I'll give it a shot tomorrow night and let ya know what happens. I did try to flash it with no devices attached the first time. I have access to other PCs (obviously) so I'll stick it in one of those and see if I can get the PC to boot so I can try to reflash it. Times like this make me wonder why I thought one PC was enough and give my other system to my dad.

Sean · Post by **Sean** » Sat Nov 24, 2001 9:02 am

Would this same thing happen if you tryed falshing your mobo BIOS and it failed? Or could you get it back? Cause I am thinking about flashing my BIOS soon...

Hipnotic_Tranz · Post by **Hipnotic_Tranz** » Sat Nov 24, 2001 9:25 am

As far as I know, if you flash the BIOS and it fails, you're SOL.

Schwartz · Post by **Schwartz** » Sun Nov 25, 2001 8:07 pm

Well, I guess the card is dead. I tried everything in that they suggested. Good find though, thanks. I got an old 5GB Maxtor drive running and pulled out the old Kenwood 72x CD-ROM. I should be good to go until I get the new SCSI card.

Post by **FlyingPenguin** » Sun Nov 25, 2001 10:50 pm

Some of the newer mobos can recover from a bad flash. A message pops up at post saying the BIOS is corrupt and offers you to re-install it. I've never seen it myself but I've heard about it.

FuNPoLiCe001 · Post by **FuNPoLiCe001** » Sun Nov 25, 2001 11:51 pm

u mean the ...

award bios lock thing, and then it asks for a boot disk?

that's pretty cool

DocSilly · Post by **DocSilly** » Mon Nov 26, 2001 3:13 am

This page might come in handy when your mobo-BIOS flash went wrong: http://www.badflash.com/

Darkheart · Post by **Darkheart** » Mon Nov 26, 2001 6:43 am

The newer Asus boards have a BIOS recovery feature, where if you erase the bios (by shorting a jumper) it loads the default shipping bios on the next boot.

I don't know how many other boards support this feature but I found it useful when my board refused to boot after a bad flash (flash program said everything was fine but it wouldn't come back on afterwards).

Just FYI if you do get a bad flash (and get an error message) DON'T power off and you can still try to reflash the BIOS, using the original version (which of course you backed up).

Darkheart

Stanley Tweedle · Post by **Stanley Tweedle** » Mon Nov 26, 2001 12:21 pm

or you look for a board of same build, start it into DOS, pop out the bios-chip, flip in the
damaged one and flash it - works with most award-based boards with bios-chip on socket.

Schwartz · Post by **Schwartz** » Mon Nov 26, 2001 5:46 pm

DON'T power off and you can still try to reflash the BIOS

Good call, one that I should have made but didn't.