BIOS ROM hasn't been a true ROM chip for many years. They have been largely EEPROM chips for ages.
the problem here is as Fed notes. It is from the BIOS flash; for some reason the flash failed in some degree and the checksum (also part of the flash) no longer matches the checksum of the actual BIOS code.
Some BIOS's allow for "emergency" flash procedures with a floppy; but this is a weird case.
Most BIOS failures do not get far enough into the POST to show video. They generally emit a beep code. Then you would (if the bios supports it) perform the "emergency" reflash (my old K6-2 had a teensy piece of true ROM data that was entirely unchangable that would be able to reflash the BIOS from a floppy using rudimentary IO functions).
One might determine that the error might mean the failure of that teensy piece of true ROM data. However, that is checked long before the post even begins, so that would undoubtedly result in a Beep code. Additionally, the message shown indicates that what is executing
is this emergency fallback BIOS "Award Bootblock BIOS" runs before the actual BIOS ROM is initiated, checks the BIOS checksum and then runs the BIOS code; however, in this case the BIOS code is not valid. the procedure differs based on the actual motherboard and BIOS configuration, but generally requires simply a bootable floppy (containing the award Flash utility and the correct BIOS BIN file). Note that as the system is now it does not recognize anything but the core basics.
Another possibility is bad RAM, which could have interfered either during boot or when the BIOS code was loaded to perform the checksum. Seems odd that bad memory would only manifest after a BIOS Flash.
pre-emptive snark: Yes. I know what a ROM BIOS is. I also know that you don't flash the CMOS so I have no idea why
some people think everybody else thinks so.
If ROM is read only memory how did she break it with a bios update?
Only a small piece of ROM is read-only; the Award Boot Block that is being used by the OP's machine is that tiny piece of rudimentary code that understands only the very basics necessary to reflash; basic floppy drive support, basic text mode display, etc. It's only purpose is to allow the user to reflash the BIOS.
PS: this "Bootblock" BIOS is generally not on the BIOS Chip at all but rather on a separate chip soldered onto the motherboard; if it was bad however, there would be no display at all, and instead they would have gotten the incorrect BIOS checksum beep code (or something equivalent). The Bootblock BIOS checks it's own checksum before it executes itself. If it fails, it emits a beep code. It cannot display any video at that point, because it hasn't done any actual hardware probes to know what video adapter is available and therefore how to engage any text mode display, nor are any BIOS routines available for it to write text to the screen anyway, being that it suspected them of being corrupt. In this case the bootblock BIOS is telling them that their main (flashable, EEPROM) BIOS is probably corrupted. It can display this message because the Bootblock code has a very rudimentary understanding of basic text mode display and Floppy drives.
You'll note I said some things twice. This was important to prevent being labelled as somebody who "clearly is confusing the CMOS checksum error with a BIOS Checksum error".
