Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

[kiddznet]

Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive

There seems to be thousands of folks out there would love a solution to this one
Is the anyway to fool the board to boot from floppy?

[digge]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

Need a bit more information to be able to help you. Dont quite follow what you mean.

Do you have a harddrive with a bad bios on it, or is it a motherboard that has a bad bios?

Either way name the specific model and someone might be able to help.

[Scenic]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

^ some motherboards look for a backup BIOS file on the HDD, but not on a floppy.
they (board manufacturers) expect you to use a FAT formatted USB stick (which would be recognized as a HDD by the BIOS)
yet another way to kill off the FDD's..

[japlytic]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

It is highly unlikely that motherboards would support Linux partitions for BIOS recovery.
Also, I've read that later HDDs store a basic BIOS on the logic board, while the main BIOS is stored on a hidden section on the magnetic media.

[kiddznet]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

Ive got this GA-965P-SE board doing this
google "Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive" and you will see what I mean Its affected hundreds of GA boards
I cant take it to a shop theres none in this part of the world
Gotta figure out meself
One POSSIBLE solution might be to get a drive that has been loaded on exactly the same board and try it?

http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte...n-problem.html

[seanc]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

Random, never seen this error, did a quick search and gleaned the following:
Get a HDD with disposable data, format as FAT32. Stick the BIOS file ONLY on the root of the HDD and power up.
If FAT32 doesn't work, try alternate versions of FAT, or NTFS.

[kiddznet]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

Formatted a little 6 gig drive here in FAT 32 and tried putting the bios on that....nada
the board doesnt run very long 30 seconds or so before stopping
PCI analyser sez FF 50

[Philly Cheese Steak]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

Try causing another error like booting with all sticks of ram out to WAKE the BIOS up, to get you by..........See if it helps.

[Per Hansson]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

Maybe it works like Dell's systems where the BIOS needs a specific filename aswell?

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/thr...-BIOS-recovery

[kiddznet]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

If we solve this one we will be famous
I see lots of Gig owners terribly peed of with this fault and nowhere that I have found so far a cure for it from the manufacturer

[kikkoman]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

have you tried with NO drive connected at all?

[kiddznet]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

I have the board GA - 965P-SE sitting on a phone book
Ive tried everything,every combination no drive usb stick and Floppy
manages to post the message and an analyser in the PCI slot reports FF 50
It wont run very long but will reboot the same message again

[seanc]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

Gigabyte boards reboot when they're trying to fix themselves using the backup BIOS.
Does your board even look like it's accessing the HDD or not?

Only fix I can suggest is to replace one of the BIOS chips with one which has a known good flash.
Sent a board back to Gigabyte for the 'power up, wait and reboot' issue recently, they re-flashed the BIOS.

[kiddznet]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

Repair by manufacturer impossible, I paid five bucks for the board!

[seanc]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

It's come back from Gigabyte with that note has it?

Are you sure there's not some other issue lurking that is causing it to reboot then? Other posts on the net state that it should hang with this error.

[digge]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

Have you tried booting it while holding HOME or END? At least on some boards that will initiate some kind of clear bios settings, should be the same as removing the battery though but might as well try it.

Other then that all i can think of is flashing the bios with some kind of programmer, not sure if that particular board have an SPI header or similar, or if you have access to some kind of chip programmer.

[brethin]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

Place the bios file on a cd, remove all hard drives, when it boots it should look on the cd for the file and flash the bios. If this doesn't work you have other issues.

[kiddznet]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

Any Linux gurus out there can suggest anything?
This board opens to the monitor but will not seek any drive.

[kikkoman]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

i think it does seek the drives, but (as suggested elsewhere on the net) the image the BIOS is looking for is not a plain binary or hex file but it's written in the HPA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Host_Protected_Area) of a HDD. Some suggest it does so even if the normal BIOS is a-okay.
Perfect example of the "it's not a bug, it's a feature" thing. seriously, they call it "Virtual Dual BIOS" or something like that.
Where and how it's written there - no idea.
it also looks like the BIOS is not socketed (and it's a 8-pin SO case SPI flash chip) so you won't find the usual preflashed chips on ebay.
your best bet is either hotflashing it in another board (you need one with a SPI BIOS chip, obviously) but it's a bit tricky since there's no socket...
...or using an external programmer that does SPI.
guess I'll think twice about buying Gigabyte in the future. not that i've been particularly fond of them in the past.

[Scenic]

Re: Scanning BIOS Image in Hard Drive , but wont seek floppy

well.. if international shipping wasn't so much of a ripoff, i'd say send the board over here and i'll reflash it.

i've got the tools to flash those 8pin serial eeproms..
revived quire a few gigabyte boards so far

@kikkoman: the "virtual dual bios" boards have a single bios chip, divided in two software ones exactly half the size of that eeprom, emulating a real 2-chip dual-bios.
never had a single real dual-bios (with 2 chips) fail yet. even the update procedure on them is pretty much bulletproof.

the updater writes the new bios to the primary bios chip (well.. or the primary virtual bios), but not the second one. you can reboot and check if everything's fine, and if it is, you go into the flash utility integrated into the bios and tell it to clone the primary bios to the 2nd chip. pretty clever.. that way a new bios wont kill both chips at once if its the wrong file or its corrupted or something..