I've been trying to upgrade my bios for the past week with no luck. I have tried using the latest (last one) version of bios from Compaq (now HP). Whenever I try to run the application to create a boot disk, an error message appears along with a DOS window: [bold]The video device failed to intialize for fullscreen made. Choose 'Close' to terminate the application.[/bold] There are 2 buttons I can click, "Close" or "Ignore"... I've read the instructions on the HP site, but I haven't been able to get to the point to create/format a boot disk so I can flash my bios... So, I went and got another version of the bios from eSupport.com and they gave instructions to use FreeDOS to create the boot disk and extract the contents (bios and other components were in a zipped folder) onto the newly formatted disk. Eveything goes fine, up until when the flashing process is running, an error message appears: [bold]Error allocating memory[/bold]. After that, it goes right back to DOS and it displays a message that the bios has been successfully flashed. I know it failed because the bios is still around the time when this computer was made (Oct. 2000). I have tried to reset my bios in hopes that the upgrade would work, but the same thing above occurs... I am at a lost of this... The reason I want to upgrade the bios is that I think my current bios is not recognizing my newly installed athlon processor (I'm trying to upgrade from a Duron to an Athlon)... If anyone has thoughts or advice on this, that would be cool...
Here is a way to create a bootable floppy disk which you will need to be able to boot from... http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/293137 Now follow this instructions... 1- Create your floppy (you should already done that) 2- DECOMPRESS/UNZIP you BIOS files and place them in the floppy 3- Shut down your PC 4- Place floppy into floppy drive A: 5- Make sure your OLD BIOS boot sequence is set to Floopy First 6- Turn ON your PC and let PC boot from floppy 7- You shold see something like a:\ 8- Find the BIOS update file (should be something like ????.exe) 9- type the name and let the file update you BIOS
That worked! Thanks, thehanky and to tEChniiQue for the simple guide... Now I found out that the processor I got is incompatible with my motherboard...go figure! Anyways, thanks for the advice!
