At 19:23 04/28/01, JAMES SUDELA wrote:
>What I thought would be a snap has me at full stop!  I'm trying to
>upgrade my BIOS settings and one of the setup requirements is that I
>execute the .EXE file to be a . BIN file!
>
>Can anyone provide me with the method to acheive this?


Hi Jim

The BIN file is not an executable. It contains only the data for
the BIOS....the stuff that gets written to the BIOS memory chip.

You have to run a separate flash program (an EXE file) that will
accept the BIN file as input and flash it to the BIOS chip.

The actual flash executable will depend on what make BIOS
your motherboard has (for example, Phoenix, AMI, or Award BIOS
and what version) and what brand and model motherboard you have.
For example, some Asus motherboards need different Award flash
programs depending on what Asus motherboard you have...and sometimes
depending on what revision of a particular motherboard you have.
This even though most of Asus motherboards use Award BIOSs.
I'd suspect this is so for lots of motherboard manufacturers.
The flash program might depend on what size your BIOS chip is
(1 MB, 2 MB, 8 MB, etc.), it's form factor (x by y bytes), or
even the identifying code reported to the flash program by your
BIOS.

When you go to a manufacturer's webpage to get a new BIOS file,
you'll usually see a link for the correct flash program. If your
motherboard came with a utilities and driver CDROM, the flash
program should be on this CDROM. (You shouldn't go wrong using
the flash program on the CDROM.) If your computer didn't come
with such a CDROM, the computer manufacturer should have flash
programs on its website.

Motherboard manufactures often come out with "updated" flash
programs and sometimes these programs don't work correctly with
certain boards. That's the time to use the version from the board's
CDROM...or (if possible) download an older flash program.

If you see a flash program that's supposed to work from within
Windows, please don't use it. (These don't always work correctly.)
Use an older program that works only from DOS. (I mean a clean
boot to DOS...not a DOS window.) You should create a bootable DOS
diskette, put the flash program and BIOS image file (BIN file)
on the diskette, boot from the diskette, and run the flash program.
There must not be any memory management programs on the diskette.
(Don't use a Win98 startup diskette...simply format a diskette with
the three system files.) There shouldn't be any autoexec.bat or
config.sys files on the diskette.

When you run the flash program, it's a good idea to save the old
BIOS to diskette before actually flashing the new BIOS. (Most BIOS
flash programs give you this option.) If you have any doubt that the
BIOS flash "took", don't (!!!!) reboot but instead run the flash
again. Do it until the flash program reports success.

The first time you boot after flashing the BIOS, it's important
to enter the BIOS setup and set everything to default settings.
Your old settings may have been lost, or the new BIOS may interpret
your old settings differently. (Your settings are stored as binary
data in a very small data file in CMOS memory and the new BIOS may
not take each bit of this data and assign it to the same device or
setting as did the older BIOS.) It's also good to write down all your
BIOS settings (on all the BIOS Setup screens) before flashing the
BIOS. It's easy to forget what hard drive settings you were using,
or what memory timings, or what serial or parallel port settings
you had. (Or what, if anything, you had disabled in BIOS.) Also,
don't be terribly surprised if Windows requires you to reconfigure
some of your hardware. (Sometimes, new BIOSs change the way
devices or expansion slots are ordered.)

Regards,
Bill

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