Flashed BIOS - now not bootin', just a-beepin'

[chim_knee]

Hello,

Right - I (stupidly) decided to try flashing my motherboards BIOS with one I found off t'internet that looked approximately right.

OK... so assuming you've all finished slapping-your-chin-going-der!...

The motherboard now just beeps at me (one long beep - pause - repeat).

I presume this is a "I can't do nuffin as you've ruined my brain" code. Is there anyway I can restore my 'boards BIOS - i.e. I'm unable to get a DOS session so can't boot from anything.

The motherboard is a VIA P4B400 motherboard (this one)

Any help greatly appreciated!

Cheers,
Phil.

[docevi1]

A mate did exactly the same and no matter what I tried it just sits there doing nothing. The only time we got anything to beep was when we took the RAM out.

[robbieduncan]

If you have flashed the BIOS with one for another board then you are basically hosed. Unless your board has dual-BIOS (Gigabyte boards normally do) then you will not be able to get the board to boot far enough to flash it with the correct BIOS.

Probably new motherboard time.

[d-man]

BIOS flash programs are normally pretty careful about only letting you flash a compatible BIOS onto your board, so hopefully the BIOS you flashed is the right one Try clearing the CMOS and see if that fixes it, I've had that happen before when flashing a motherboard and thinking I'd broken it. There's a jumper on the motherboard somewhere to the right of the battery, it'll say CMOS clear or something like. Move it to the other position (with the PC turned off) and then move it back again before turning the PC on. Hopefully it'll then boot ok.

If you really have managed to flash it with something incompatible, then you might have a problem. You may be able to get a replacement BIOS chip from the manufacturer and there is another risky solution that involves hotswapping BIOS chips if you've got another PC with the same motherboard, but I've never tried that and it doesn't sound like the best plan ever

[aldi]

Seconded what others have said

Plus, I once managed to get my mobo back after flaching a bad bios by booting another machine up, hot-swapping the bios chip for my knackered one and flashing it in the other board. Make sure all the shadowing options are turned on in the bios first. The downside of trying this of course is that you might end up with two knackered motherboards instead of one

Edit: Just rememmbered another one - different board - where there was an emergency recovery procedure where you hold a certain key down and have a disk with the bios on it in a certain filename, and it flashes it again for you... it worked but it wasnt documented on the mobo maker's site it was more of a generic thing for award bios's or phoenix bios's. Sorry I can't remember more but it was a few years ago, i'm sure a bit of googling will turn something up.

>> Edited by aldi on Sunday 27th November 12:37

[chim_knee]

Thanks guys. I'm not mightilty bothered if I've cooked the 'board as it's fairly old and doesn't appear to be compatible with my new graphics card (nVidia GeForce 6600 - bought as a cheap dual DVI card). I have another motherboard lying around but I don't think IDE2 works (I bought it "used" from eBuyer and never bothered to send it back! Curse my idleness) but I have a PCI controller card I could use.

I will try the suggestiongs but it was a cheap VIA motherboard and I'm pretty sure it doesn't have BIOS ghosting etc. Failing that and the lying-about motherboard, I'll just have to get another Socket 478 board (I'm using a P4 2.4Ghz - I'm totally out of touch with what's current nowadays). I mainly use the PC for Photoshop manipulation so the Dual DVI is my only "want" really.

Thanks again!
Phil.

[pdV6]

I think there are some places that will flash the chip for you if you can get it off the board. See what Google has to say about it.

[LaurenceFrost]

You should check what the beep actually means.

There are different beep codes for different things. If the memory is not installed, if there is no VGA, if the processor failure etc.

Check exactly what the beep means using "<motherboard model> beep code" on Google, and go from there.

[Neil_H]

Find the CMOS jumper and reset the CMOS, you often have to do this after flashing. If this doesn't cure it the board will probably be knackered.

One long beep usually means a memory error, so you could try reseating your RAM modules, but if you haven't been messing with them recently it's probably caused by using the wrong BIOS.

[CommanderJameson]

Long shot, but make sure you've got your video card firmly seated in its slot.

[pentoman]

Yes definitely try disconnecting the power (and removing the battery for good measure) and clearing the CMOS.

Also, if it beeps it's clearly somewhat alive. I think some motherboards let you flash a new BIOS from a floppy in this situation; often you hold down some key combination when you power up and you'll see the floppy drive going trying to read the BIOS file to flash with.

I've had odd behaviour like this before for no particular reason.. thought my BIOS was dead, just got beeping.. after ages messing around trying to flash from a floppy as said above, it just miraculously came back to life.

Bloody computers

Russell