help bios flash noob getting in a muddle :)

[raindogg]

Hi I am new to the terrifing world of flashing bios so please bear with me.

As the title suggests I am about to flash my bios, I have downloaded the right bios update for my board (Sl-K8TPro-939) from driverscollection.com and created a backup floppy with my old bios saved to it and created a ms-dos floppy with AWDFLASH.EXE and sk893916.bin and then went into bios to reset it to defaults, the only option I could find in bios was "load optimized defaults" so this is what I selected.

My problem is after resetting my bios to "optimized defaults" my old onboard stuff such as audio, ethenet and raid have been switched back on and are showing as question marked items in my device manager so my questions are;

should I remove my sound card and ethernet card and install drivers for my onboard ones before I proceed? will conflicts that could trip up the flash process happen if I don't?

Do I need to do anything about my raid controller needing drivers as I only have 1 HD and I understood you only need raid for multiple HDs

I am stuck as I need to update my bios as I have a dual core chip I want to install but my present bios doesn't support dual core so if anyone could please help I would be very grateful

thank you for your time

Rain :s

 

[MindoverMaster]

Did you sucessfuly flash it? Your board's manufacturer should give instructions on how to do it.

If you are not using onboard devices, you can disable them in BIOS.

a raid controller does not need drivers.

 

[raindogg]

thank you for responding

no I haven't tried yet I'm being very very cautious about the whole thing, I was trying to make sure that my bios settings where back to default before I flashed, as I have read that if any are incorrect I could blow my board, and when my onboard features switched back on I was worried that if I tried to flash my bios with hardware conflicts present in my device manager it would cause problems, as I said i am being very cautious about this as I am a bit scared by it all lol

but in short your saying that I shouldn't worry about that and just flash my bios? or should I switch off my onboard devices first?

as I said I am very new to this and just a little terrified as I cant afford to replace my board if this goes wrong so if I am being slow on the uptake please forgive me, and thank you

 

[MindoverMaster]

Just read over the guide on how to flash the BIOS 10 times and do it. The only thing you need to strip is any overclocks you have.

If it is under warranty, you can RMA it, only pay for shipping. Really, when the flash goes bad, only your CMOS chip goes bad.

 

[raindogg]

done it lol had a bit of a bad moment when my pc wouldn't boot just sat there beeping, cleared cmos with jumpers and pc rebooted, the bios version is the write (new) version, the only worry i have is that just after the usual boot screens a message about raid promise flashes up saying device not found and bios not installed which it was doing before I flashed it but on the whole it seems to be a success thank you for your encouragement and if you have any thoughts about this lingering issue i have i would apprciate it

thank you for your time

 

[Slaymate]

Are you flashing from a floppy disk in DOS mode or from within Windows??

If you are flashing from the floppy disk in DOS mode then your Windows settings will have no affect on the procedure. If you are overclocking then all you have to do is set the cpu to it's default speeds, you don't have to change the voltages or any of the other settings (or that's how I do it).

If your flashing from within Windows then your Windows settings will matter. Once again , in the bios, set your cpu to its default speeds and leave all your other settings alone. Boot back into Windows and I would disable your Anti-Virus, Windows Update, Steam, MSN Chat, Outlook or any other program that can perform tasks independently. Then I would perform the Flash.

Never Flash your Bios when there's a chance of Losing Power, as in, Storms or in periods of High Electrical use if brown-outs are possible.

Edit: I started typing this and then a friend came over and by the time I finished you were done.

 

[raindogg]

thanks all all up and running now, I appreciate the imput from both you guys