Hi all,

I've just put my new PC together:
AN8 Ultra (the Q-OTES version), AMD X2 3800 and Windows XP x64 Professional.

I've been getting some odd behaviour from my graphics card, a Gigabyte X800XL (the RX80L256V model). It sometimes decides to change the colour palette so that I'm left with a very colourful, trippy, but unusable desktop.

I had a look at the BIOS page for the AN8 on the ABit website and the latest BIOS version is 1.7, where I have 1.5 installed.

The release notes for 1.6 say "Fixed the issue that certain VGA card does not work with DVI output." - so I decided to upgrade in case that was the problem.

First problem: the self-extracting executable doesn't run on Windows x64. It says something about the image being valid but not for this machine type. So I extracted the files on my old 32-bit XP on my laptop.

Real problem

Okay so now I have the upgrade files. In the old days I'd format a floppy as an MS-DOS boot disk, boot with that and then run the files. But my new box doesn't have a floppy drive and I don't really want to fit one just to sort this out. Is it possible to format a USB memory stick as a boot disk instead? If so then how??

Normally I'd just use FlashMenu and do it from Windows - but as you all know FlashMenu doesn't work on XP x64. (Is it me or is it a bit stupid that a motherboard designed for a 64-bit processor doesn't supply software that works on a 64-bit OS??)

Thanks
GrahamS

Hello GrahamS,

and welcome to the PlanetAMD64.

I still like to say, the only right way to Flash BIOS is the nice old Fashion way with the Floppy-Disc. Just get one (buy or borough) and do it. The Floppys today don´t cost much and it´s the best way to flash BIOS.

Aries

Thanks for the welcome Aries.

I thought you might say that. The BIOS definitely supports booting from a memory stick, so I'd rather do that if I can, rather than wasting money on a floppy drive that'll I'll never use (but you're right - it is only a couple of pounds/dollars).

Just can't figure out how to get XP to create a bootable memory stick though.

Copy the awdflash.exe from the software folder of the support CD to the USBkey along with the latest BIOS file.

And then...

Then you should be able to boot from USB me thinks. Select it as first boot device in bios. I think my friend did this before...
... Or was it me

I'm with Aries d/l to floppy boot from a dos/win98 boot disk and run flash utility at A:\ prompt

Solved!

Okay after a bit of trial and error I managed to create a bootable USB memory key, that boots into DOS so that I could flash the BIOS.

I downloaded WinImage 7.0, which lets you write disk images to floppies, memory sticks and CDs.

Then I downloaded the Win98SE boot disk image from bootdisk.com (near the bottom, in the section titled "Non-Windows Based Image Files W/ImageApp").

I extracted the WIN98SEC.IMG file from the zip and then opened it with WinImage. I set WinImage to use the USB memory key and then hit Write disk. (Note: I did this on a WinXP 32-bit laptop. I haven't tested whether WinImage works on x64 but the website shows x64 versions are available).

I stuck the memory stick in the x64 machine, rebooted it, hit Escape at the POST screen to bring up the boot menu and chose to boot from the memory stick. This booted me into a Windows 98 MS-DOS prompt, where I could happily run the RUNME.BAT supplied with the ABit BIOS upgrade.



Notes: I found a couple of guides about creating bootable USb memory sticks (from aaltonen.us and PC Answers). I tried some of the other tools mentioned in these guides first - like the HP USB Disk storage tool and MBRTool but I had limited success with them. Could be worth trying if my method doesn't work for you though.

Lobster: just copying the files to the USB stick didn't work for me. But I did notice that in the POST error codes section in the manual it mentions looking for the awdflash.exe file (POST code 76).

Great that you did it. THX for posting the solution and this nice HOWTO.

Aries

just thought i might add that another way to do this is to just write the files on a cdr or dvdr then boot up ultimate boot cd http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ or similar then flash off the cd .. it works perfectly .. ive done it about 5 times now on various mobos .. but there is one downside in that u cannot save your orignial bios ..

Hello superjobie,

and welcome to the PlanetAMD64.

THX for posting this. It´s always good to have more alternatives.

Aries