Okay so here's the story. I upgraded my processor from an AMD Athlon XP 1900+ to a new AMD Athlon XP 2500+ Barton, but my factory installed BIOS didn't recognize this new chip, which didn't keep it from working, but I wasn't sure if it was going to use the nice 512KB L2 cache if I didn't update my BIOS. I had updated BIOSes before (not on this board, though) without incident. At this point I have a number of theories, but first I'll lay down the facts.
I downloaded the most recent version of AWDFLASH.EXE I could find on the net. I downloaded the newest BIOS .bin for my motherboard, Asus A7N8X (not deluxe) PCB revision 1.04. I went through the proscribed steps of creating a dos bootable disk, copying the awdflash.exe and the .bin to the disk, restarting and letting the system boot from it. Once in the Dos prompt, I did the old A:\awdflash like usual. It asked me if I wanted to save the BIOS, and I said yes I do. So to my knowledge it saved it..? Then it says "Are you sure to program?" which I was pretty sure I wanted to do, despite the poor English, so I said yes. Well it does a bunch of stuff with the floppy, and then it appears to hang. I say appears to because, well... after about ten minutes I just reset my computer after it being unresponsive even to ctrl-alt-del. I tried a USB and a PS/2 keyboard. So anyway when I reboot the computer, it loads straight into awdflash... And I'm like oh sh*t. WHAT HAVE I DONE!? When I try to load the backup.bin it tells me I cannot update to this image. When I try to load a newer BIOS it tells me the file size does not match. I though, well gee, maybe they misprinted the PCB revision on the board. I tried a couple other PCB revisions to flash with (mind you I was doing all this on another computer using a floppy) but they said I cannot update to this image? All of the available A7N8X BIOS are around 2Mb, although many of them vary slightly in size. Go figure. In my working computer I look up the size of the backup.bin and it is 256kb. The BIOS I am trying to load is the same size, so go figure on that..? At any rate, my system is running awdflash regardless of the presence of a disk. If there isn't a disk it says "no source file found," makes a repeated annoying system noise and locks up.
So some of my guesses involve the fact that it's running an old version of AWDflash off the motherboard somewhere? Don't know that much about the whole thing because I simply haven't had to until now! I am willing to learn so spare no detail. My other hypotheses involve a faulty disk that originally copied the BIOS and onto which I saved the backup, though it reads other files fine, so I am skeptical. There is a minute chance (like winning the lottery) I flashed with the wrong .bin, but hey if it's starting awdflash automatically, why can't I just load the backup.bin? What's this file size does not match crap for the new BIOS? And why can't I update to the image of the backup? Short of RMAing my mobo or requesting a new chip from ASUS, I don't know what to do. EIther way I can't contact ASUS until Monday morning anyway, which leaves me in a pinch this weekend. GRR. If you need any more info, please ask and don't run away, because I will be monitoring this very frequently for responses and will supply the information fricken immediately. SO dependant on computer. Thanks in advance for your potential solutions!
Sean
