System won't boot after flashing bios

I have an AMD64 3200 cpu on MSI K8N Neo Platinum mainboard, NVidia
NForce 3
drivers, 2 250GB SATA Drives & 1 180GB ATA drive. WinXP and Fedora Core
3 installed on the ATA drive with grub boot loader, boot partition is
FAT32.

I flashed the bios with the latest from MSI, with the flash update
successful.
Now the sytem won't boot at all, the bios screen won't even come up, I
just
get a flashing cursor. I don't have a floppy drive. I assume the
mainboard
bios is corrupt, how can I boot the system and reflash the bios?
Thanks,

--
Jeff

On 31 Aug 2005 10:20:02 -0700, dynamorph@hotmail.com wrote:

>I have an AMD64 3200 cpu on MSI K8N Neo Platinum mainboard, NVidia
>NForce 3
>drivers, 2 250GB SATA Drives & 1 180GB ATA drive. WinXP and Fedora Core
>3 installed on the ATA drive with grub boot loader, boot partition is
>FAT32.
>
>I flashed the bios with the latest from MSI, with the flash update
>successful.
>Now the sytem won't boot at all, the bios screen won't even come up, I
>just
>get a flashing cursor.

Try clearing CMOS.

> I don't have a floppy drive.

How did you flash it? Surely you didn't use a windows based
flasher? WIndows flashers work fine a lot of the time, but
it's the times they _don't_ work, that is reason to avoid
them entirely.

>I assume the
>mainboard
>bios is corrupt, how can I boot the system and reflash the bios?
>Thanks,

Sometimes an old PCI video card will allow seeing output to
the display, depending on what's wrong. You should try to
get ahold of a floppy and then note whether the system is
trying to access the floppy. Hopefully you didn't
completely disable the floppy in the bios, BUT if the
default was "auto" instead of disabled, clearing the CMOS
should rectify that. If the floppy attempts to read when
system is turned on, you have a chance to put a bios on a
floppy and have it automatically reflash it.

I suggest trying to get it working with the prior, known
good bios version, not this new one. Presuming it uses
award bios, you'd create a bootable dos floppy with an
autoexec.bat file containing the flash command, for example
"awdflash.exe bios.bin"
but of course changing it to the filename of the
awardflasher and the bios file. More detail here,
http://www.msicomputer.com/support/B...d_Recovery.asp

If that doesn't work you're left buying a new bios chip
pre-programmed, or doing it yourself if you're able to flash
EEPROMs out of the board.

Sorry, but it's time for a new motherboard. Flashing BIOS's is a risky
business; when they fail you often lose the board.

--
DaveW
<dynamorph@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1125508802.437104.162930@g14g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...
>I have an AMD64 3200 cpu on MSI K8N Neo Platinum mainboard, NVidia
> NForce 3
> drivers, 2 250GB SATA Drives & 1 180GB ATA drive. WinXP and Fedora Core
> 3 installed on the ATA drive with grub boot loader, boot partition is
> FAT32.
>
> I flashed the bios with the latest from MSI, with the flash update
> successful.
> Now the sytem won't boot at all, the bios screen won't even come up, I
> just
> get a flashing cursor. I don't have a floppy drive. I assume the
> mainboard
> bios is corrupt, how can I boot the system and reflash the bios?
> Thanks,
>
> --
> Jeff
>

Certain manufacturers and certain motherboards have a bios rescue
option. Check with the manufacturer.

Did you do a cold boot. When I flashed my Intel board, I thought it was
broken, but a cold boot brought it back.

Clark

DaveW wrote:
> Sorry, but it's time for a new motherboard. Flashing BIOS's is a risky
> business; when they fail you often lose the board.
>

On Wed, 31 Aug 2005 15:48:20 -0700, "DaveW"
<nowhere@dot.org> wrote:

>Sorry, but it's time for a new motherboard. Flashing BIOS's is a risky
>business; when they fail you often lose the board.

It appears that his board has a socketed EEPROM. Therefore,
worst case is he can buy a pre-programmed EEPROM for about
$15.

On 31 Aug 2005 10:20:02 -0700, dynamorph@hotmail.com wrote:

>I have an AMD64 3200 cpu on MSI K8N Neo Platinum mainboard, NVidia
>NForce 3
>drivers, 2 250GB SATA Drives & 1 180GB ATA drive. WinXP and Fedora Core
>3 installed on the ATA drive with grub boot loader, boot partition is
>FAT32.
>
>I flashed the bios with the latest from MSI, with the flash update
>successful.
>Now the sytem won't boot at all, the bios screen won't even come up, I
>just
>get a flashing cursor. I don't have a floppy drive. I assume the
>mainboard
>bios is corrupt, how can I boot the system and reflash the bios?
>Thanks,

Your motherboard does have a clear CMOS jumper at position JBAT1.
Unplug it the computer, move the jumper to pins 2 and 3, power it on,
unplug it again, move the jumper back to pins 1 and 2.

On Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:29:29 -0700, Ian East
<ian.east@gmail> wrote:

>On 31 Aug 2005 10:20:02 -0700, dynamorph@hotmail.com wrote:
>
>>I have an AMD64 3200 cpu on MSI K8N Neo Platinum mainboard, NVidia
>>NForce 3
>>drivers, 2 250GB SATA Drives & 1 180GB ATA drive. WinXP and Fedora Core
>>3 installed on the ATA drive with grub boot loader, boot partition is
>>FAT32.
>>
>>I flashed the bios with the latest from MSI, with the flash update
>>successful.
>>Now the sytem won't boot at all, the bios screen won't even come up, I
>>just
>>get a flashing cursor. I don't have a floppy drive. I assume the
>>mainboard
>>bios is corrupt, how can I boot the system and reflash the bios?
>>Thanks,
>
>Your motherboard does have a clear CMOS jumper at position JBAT1.
>Unplug it the computer, move the jumper to pins 2 and 3, power it on,
>unplug it again, move the jumper back to pins 1 and 2.

Are you certain he should be powering on the system with the
jumper moved? Usually that is not necessary.