Bios recovery on EP-8KDA3J
Krisa tm
approaches, and in this particular case they don' t work.
A bit of history: My Epox mother board EP-8KDA3J was in perfect
condition, and one day I wanted to install a 1TB HDD. It didn' t
support it, so I flashed the bios to the latest version. I had to use
WinFlash utility, because awdflash.exe didn' t want to flash this
bios, because the bios-lock strings were different (the board
originally had some kind of beta bios). The flashing worked, but HDD
still wasn' t accepted. Then (as the HDD still was under guarantee), I
took the PC and HDD to computer service, so they could check if the
problam was my PC or HDD, and in their foolishess the service guys
badly reflashed bios, and couldn' t fix it themselves, because they
didn' t have any similar bios chip to try hotswapping.
The problem: On boot there is a BIOS checksum error, and it asks for
floppy, which contains AWDFLASH.EXE and bios image. That is of course
good, as I can provide that. When I do - awdflash.exe is automatically
run, and it automatically loads the first bin file on the floppy.
(This makes it impossible to run awdflash.exe with any switches - for
example the one which forces flash even when bios-lock string doesn' t
match - it doesn' t run autoexec.bat if I place a system disk in, only
awdflash.exe)
The bad thing is, that the bios I successfully flashed on this board
before, still doesn't have the right bios-lock string, so awdflash.exe
just exits with that error and nothing happens.
Here I have possible solutions, but unfortunately I cannot make them
work without your help:
* Maybe if I could get hacked awdflash.exe, which by default uses the /
nbl swithc and forces flash without check of lock string
* Maybe I can modify the bin file so it thinks it has the right lock
string - but I have to know where to edit, and what is the required
lock-string
* If I had a bios chip which I could put in the board I could start PC
with it and then use normal boot floppy with the correct parameters or
even winflash (Nobody I know doesn' t have that Motherboard) - maybe I
can use chip from another motherboard, in that case which are usable?
*Alternatively, maybe I can put my chip on another working computer
and reflash it (Which MB's not counting this model would accept it?)
* Any other suggestions?
Will be really grateful for all suggestions and input!
R. C. White
Back in 2001, when I got into a similar bind, I was rescued by a new BIOS
EPROM from a place in New York called BadFlash.com. I checked that website
just now and they apparently are still in business, they still show EPoX in
their list of supported mainboards, and their price is still "$29.99 to
anywhere in the World with FREE SHIPPING!" I only needed that service once,
but it was a life-saver 8 years ago.
The URL is:
http://www.badflash.com/
I believe other companies offer similar service, but this is the only one
I've used.
RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
r...@grandecom.net
Microsoft Windows MVP
(Running Win7 Ultimate x64 on EPoX MF570sli)
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