I have really screwed up my BIOS on my desktop - HELP!

You are more than welcome. Thank you for sticking with it through all the disappointments. I brushed up on my DOS and learned something about building a BIOS update ISO compatible with SATA systems. You never know when such knowledge might come in useful.

And I must also add that you did a great job of collecting all the information about your machine. That was extremely helpful. Pat yourself on the back. You deserve much of the credit for the positive result.

 

I'm nothing if not persistent... LOL and I'm cheap, too - I didn't wanna have to go spend another $500+ for a new computer! YOU TOTALLY ROCK! (I just posted that in the Lounge, too... :-o) Hope that doesn't embarrass you... Serioously, tho, I can research, but you are a DOS GOD!! :-D

 

Hello!

I have very much enjoyed reading this post, as it is the closest to fixing my problem that I have been!

HP M8000N desktop running Vista Home Premium on a M2N68-LA Motherboard ...when I checked HP's site they suggested I update the BIOS to before upgrading to Windows 7...so I updated, and even received a successful message and to restart the computer, which I did and now I get:



Award BootBlock BIOS v1.0
Copyright 2000, Award Software, Inc

BIOS ROM Checksum error
Detecting IDE ATAPI Device....

Found CD ROM, try to boot from it....Fail
Detecting floppy drive A media....

INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

So when i enter my Windows Vista or 7 set up discs, i get this error:


"No physical memory is available at the location required for the Windows boot manager. The system can not continue."



Can you all clarify which ISO I should use?

I made a Boot cd with "Clean Boot CD Package 2.0" and copied the 513.rom and awdflash.exe to the correct folder, however after booting to the CD, it says "ROOT FAT KERNEL GO!" and just sits there...I do not have a floppy drive installed either..

So I am ready to fix this and get Windows 7 installed! Which shall I download?!

 

Ok I wanted to give an update....

So I figured I would try the Bootivy.iso ...

I got to A: right away! but when I tried to type in ivy.rom or whatever, it gave me:

"the program file's part number does not match with your system!"

I thought I needed the 513.rom from sp37190.exe....should I mount the bootivy.iso and edit it and change the ivy.rom to 513.rom, and reburn?

Thanks in advanced!

 

Hey I didnt see the reply I just made to my initial post, so I will post another, hopefully not duplicated...

Anyways, so I was able to get the Awdflash.exe pulled up, but then when I type in "ivy.rom" i get the error:

"The Program file's part number does not match with your system!"

I tried to mount the bootivy.iso with MagicISO to swap out the ivy.rom with 513.rom ( sp37190.exe -> the suggested BIOS from HP) but I saw that there were only a couple files and I didnt know what to do with those...

Hopefully I can get my Windows Vista back up so I can install Windows 7!

Please, if you can let me know of a "bootivy.iso" type but with 513.rom for the BIOS for my HP M8000N with the M2N68-LA instead of that Ivy.rom!

thankkksss again

 

I don't recommend updating BIOS unless there is a problem.

Do you have a link to where HP suggested recommending updating the BIOS? I just want to make sure that no more damage can be done. The original poster in this thread had a PC that would not do anything so flashing the BIOS was a last ditch effort to salvage her motherboard.

From your Hp model number ver. 513 is probably the correct Bios for your motherboard and I believe you will get an error message if it is incompatible. All I did was put awardflash.exe and 513.rom into a bootable ISO file. If you are fairly sure that you want to flash the Bios but are just having trouble with building a boot CD then I think you can safely try the following (downloading the ISO in the quote box below):

 

Yayyy I wanted to update and say I got it to work with the BootCD.ISO...

Thanks so much for your help, you did all the work by creating those ISOs!

Thanks again!

 

Thanks for your reply!

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?product=3377257&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&lang=en&tmp_track_link=ot_we/prodlink/en_us/3377257/loc:0&cc=us

That is the page for my model...and I saw "Upgrading to Windows 7" and when I scrolled down to prepare it said for #1 to update the BIOS!

Then after following those instructions, they lead me to download
sp37190.exe, which I was able to extract 513.rom from.

But running that program through Windows Vista was the problem...I thought it was weird to update the BIOS and not with a boot disk but i figured it would work, and it even gave me the success message.

Thanks again for your help!

btw I have posted a couple more replies, but they have not yet appeared.

 

I'm glad it worked!

I had to read through this thread to remember what was going on. It's sad that HP is telling people to update their BIOS as a matter of course and not because it fixes a particular issue with their machine. It is doubly troubling since their BIOS update doesn't work!

Sorry about the bad naming on the ISO files. I was getting lazy as I didn't foresee making so many versions.

 

I have an HP laptop from 2001 that came installed with ME but I could purchase an XP upgrade disk when it was released. I did so and HP wanted me to update my notebook BIOS before I did the upgrade to XP. So it appears things haven't changed in 8 years!
It was the first BIOS update I did. I thought long and hard about it. I read all the instructions at least five times then thought about it for a few weeks before I tackled it.

 

yeahhh I went and talked to another tech guy and told them what I did and told them to update their HP system with a BootCD.iso download lol

The sad part is, I have nnno idea what that BootCD.iso was all about....

I was able to fix my problem but only cuz you did all the work!

Well anyways thanks again, Windows 7 is up and running, and despite a couple random BSODs, I can see 7 is running smoother than vista ever did...

Lots of stupid things with Vista that I hated! Such as Views/Organization of files and folders would change after I closed the explorer windows and opened another one...also missing computers from my network at home thru Network...

Ugh I cannot believe I spent $180 on the Vista Retail Upgrade only like a year ago!
Then another $150 for the triple pack! Oh well....I guess this will be the last one for a while

 

@sach2

Gotta say thanks a million. I have been trying to build this for about 18 hours.

I got close but your download BootIvy.iso did exactly what I needed.

I had a compaq SR5113WM that had been hosed by SP40912.exe.

Pisses me off that not only do OEM's not support previous models (I know why it just makes me mad) but that they put out shoddy service packs and then don't acknowledge or support the issues those cause.

Anyway good work man.