BIOS Boot CD?

[IT-Guy]

Is it possible to flash the bios using a boot cd?  If so, does anyone have a complete boot cd setup?  I mean.. I can find several places to create a boot cd, but all of them ask  you for the boot image to put in... I need one ready to go.. just add additional files like flash bios updates.

thanks.

[DaveLembke]

If your BIOS flash can run from command prompt, you could take a Windows 98 SE Emergency Repair Disk, pop it in a Floppy drive, grab the contents through Roxio Easy CD Creator, and through the OTHER Tab within Roxio create an emulated bootable floppy disk file. Then take that file and burn it to CD using the Make Bootable CD Feature.

  But before creating your *.BIN file, and burning the *.BIN as an *.ISO image to a CD-R, alter the floppy's Autoexec.bat file to start the BIOS Flash utility. Dump out unnecessary routines and add a command to point to the flash.COM or EXE file, and copy the utility to the floppy in the root, so it will run on start up. If you are lacking room on the 1.44MB Floppy, take out any unnecessary stuff like Format, etc, DOS Tools. Then burn the project to the CD from the floppy through this tool in Roxio.

Now you should be able to place the Bootable CD into your systems requiring flashing, and have it boot in a Win 98 command environment and have the Flash utility start. You then may have to interact with the Flash Utility to verify that you do want to flash the system etc.

I've done this before to convert my Windows Emergency Disks to CD's. Floppies always get chewed up by dirty floppy drives, CD's are much tougher if cared for... BUT This only works for systems with bootable CD support after POST. If the computer is older than 6 years old, you might find it not able to start from CD after POST..... Good Luck.... ((( Also Verify that the BIOS Flash can operate under the Win 98 SE command environment ))) ... It should.... 8-)



Dave

[patio]

I'm just curious...is there a reason you are flashing your BIOS ? ?

Many a machine have been rendered doorstops if this is not done properly.

[IT-Guy]

Thank you for the suggestion, but the largest issue I have is: I have no floppy drive - thus I need a CD with 98 boot image ready to go.  But you ask why I am flashing it?  Because I must have been sleeping and had a foggy head at the time I flashed it the first time.  Scenario: Surfing game sites = nasty unstoppable virus.  My computer would no longer boot.  I reformatted and reinstalled the OS.  In reloading the drivers from the original motherboard config, I came across online update utility for the drivers.  It prompted me to update all the drivers for the mb including the latest bios.. which i insanely agreed to.  Now the system reboots randomly and BSOD's with internet usage or online gameplay.  I can only attribute this to one of two things:  Kernel virus, or incompatible new bios.  I am trying to get my old bios put back on.. but the online version only offers the latest bios.  I have to manually flash it now.. And I don't have a floppy drive for the downloaded bios flash update.  If I can get it to boot on CD... I think it will flash once I have a command prompt.  (at least that was my thinking).

So long story short.. I'm looking for a boot cd with 98SE and cdrom drivers.

thanks.

[patio]

What MBoard is this and where are you getting the flash file from ? ?

[GX1_Man]

Another good reason for every machine to still have that old, archaic floppy drive.

Do you have a friend that would let you borrow theirs just long enough to do the repair?