BIOS and flashing - Hidden Red Hat7.3 and missing mouse.

Long post, sorry. Very hard questions too...


Is it acceptable and good practice to "roll-back"
a BIOS upgrade?
Install a BIOS flash that is NOT the newest when I
already HAVE the newest installed?
The old BIOS version will support everything I am
currently doing. The new one was in anticipation of an
eventual bigger HD (support for 132-7+ or something similar...)

This is an Award BIOS and when it flashes there is a small
section that it does not overwrite (as shown on a "map"
as it works.)

OR, is this something that can only be answered by
the MB manufacturer?

Reason for above and multiple new questions.
(Skip this part if you want...)

I have two machines that are identical Motherboards.
One has a newer BIOS flash than the other and that ONE
seems to cause problems with a self-booting CD that starts
a hidden version of Linux,  and then runs a Drive Imaging
Program (with an Win-XP looking SKIN) that runs outside
WinXP (on RedHat Linux 7.3)...
That Info is from their tech support.

The CD is made by the "host program" (Acronis True
Drive Image 6.0) on the Win-XP machine...)
The program runs with a mouse inside Windows-XP,
but not when XP is asked to re-boot (during a restore)
to some sort of built it multi-boot Linux temporary boot.
(No CD is present at this point.)
I do not know if it "shells out" to Linux or some sort of
DOS at this point, but the results are exactly the same as
booting from the CD and when actually running the hidden Linux.
No mouse.
This is a critical error since the GUI has trouble with selecting
things with the keyboard and that stops a restore in a catastrophic
system failure situation...

(Lost yet?)  Moral: Always test a backup-recovery solution
from beginning to end before you rely on it... (Like I'm doing.)

In Win-XP (or any other time I know of) I NEVER have
problems with three types of mice I can use. (PS/2. Serial
and USB.)       EXCEPT when booting to this CD,
and the re-boot above.
(Norton NSW2002/Ghost(7?) works with my normal
mouse, PS/2 and maybe others.) My Norton supports
XP but not FULLY the NTFS file system... Nice gotcha...
(ALL I have to do is buy ANOTHER NEW version trying
to use it with XP FULLY...)

I can't modify the boot files on the CD as everything is
embedded really deep.  El Torito boots another Image
that is about 4.9M and even the two E.T. boot files are only
2k each. (I can't find anything big enough to extract to even
start to modify.)

If anybody has any thoughts how to fix that,
or what is wrong  --   good. That is the real question.

But. I'm thinking of moving on, or at least backwards.

Thanks to everyone that read this far, and especially those
with an educated opinion.

                            Rick Glazier

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