My motherboard was having issues detecting my processor. Every time I would boot the machine, it would say "unrecognized cpu detected." And then i'd have to hit a key to continue. Incredibly frustrating when dealing with system updates. So I saw that I could flash the bios to hopefully fix the problem. Long story short, the damn thing shutdown hard a quarter of the way through deleting the old bios. Now, the thing won't post, complains about the bios being corrupt (no shit), and just screams through the beeper. I'm trying to get through to Asus right now, but am I hosed? I remember the manual mentioning being able to recover with a bootable floppy, but I haven't had a floppy drive in over 5 years.

Wait. If it won't POST, in what way does it "complain about the bios being corrupt"?

Asus motherboards that detect corrupted bios should fall back to a backup BIOS, which will search for a replacement bios on removable media (floppy, USB key, whatever) and reflash with it if it's found. More info in the motherboard manual, I assume. (You know you can download those, right?)

Yes, but right now the only internet capable device I have is my phone, and for some reason the manual won't download.

Ok, whatever I mean, it seems to be looking for a floppy drive. it doesn't seem to care about the usb flash drive that I have plugged in right now. I have a buddy looking for a floppy drive and I'm waiting for a callback from asus.

I hate computers ever so very much.

Although Asus boards tend to be somewhat robust, there should be a jumper to reset bios somewhere.

Do you have the CD-ROM that came with the motherboard? If so, try turning the computer on with that CD in the drive.

If your motherboard doesn't have the dual bios (as mentioned above), you're pretty much screwed.

Otherwise it should fallback by default, or flash from some form of removable media.

Asus CrashFree exist since a while, I would be surprised if you don't have it.

http://support.asus.com/technicaldocuments/technicaldocuments.aspx?no=191&SLanguage=en-us

It would help if you told us your exact motherboard model, and the exact error message appearing. Most of the time, you simply have to change a jumper and put a CD containing the bios binary and voila.

Quote: Original post by Washu
If your motherboard doesn't have the dual bios (as mentioned above), you're pretty much screwed.

Otherwise it should fallback by default, or flash from some form of removable media.

Not necessarily true. Really depends on the motherboard, bios and at what point of the bios flash it rebooted. I've actually recovered several laptops that were totally dead i.e. no screen or beeps even when pushing the power button using the special "floppy recovery" technique.
But in order for it to work you need to have a very specific usb floppy drive since some models will not work for some reason.
Also, it is very hit or miss since you are pretty much working blind i.e. in the dark. On a laptop you basically remove battery connect floppy with special recovery bios on disc, insert power cord and hold down certain key combinations and wait/hope the laptop starts reading the floppy and loading the new bios!
In this case it sounds like there is hope since the pc is looking for the floppy since the bios is corrupt but not beyond repair most likely.
This is the reason the floppy drive light comes on and the drive appears to be in use.

You may not have to work blind if your motherboard has an ISA slot (probably not). If so remove any other video cards and insert an ISA video card, you then should be able to see what you are doing.

Quote: Original post by TurtlesEdge
You may not have to work blind if your motherboard has an ISA slot (probably not). If so remove any other video cards and insert an ISA video card, you then should be able to see what you are doing.

You probably meant PCI card (ISA has been dead for over a decade). Also that's only helpful if it's the video BIOS that's destroyed, not the motherboard BIOS.

In this case, you either need to find a floppy drive (ugh) or format a USB stick to FAT16. Copy the BIOS image to the floppy/stick, boot and pray it works.

I don't know if you need to use a specific name for the image in order to be detected.