Undo Award BIOS Flash and Recovery
For motherboard that is using Award BIOS, there is an easy recovery method that can be used to reset, restore or recover the BIOS that no longer works or boot up the system. The corrupt BIOS may be caused by incorrectly flashed BIOS BIN, improper flash handling, power cut off during flash, hacking attempt on BIOS and many other reasons.
The recovery and restoration process of Award BIOS is similar to those of recovery of AMI BIOS. But unlike AMIBIOS, Award BIOS file using the .BIN format extension, while AMI is .ROM format. Award BIOS also does not automatically restore the BIOS information, whereas AMI BIOS ‘boot block’ can automatically trigger recovery process to look for new BIOS content to restore to the ’system block’.
Step by step guide to recover corrupt Award BIOS:
- Make a bootable floopy disk. One easy way to create boot disk is to use Windows Explorer (or Computer window in Vista and ‘Copy system files’ in older version) to format the floppy disk, and select the option ‘Create a MS-DOS startup disk’.
- Copy the Award flash utility & BIOS file to the floppy disk. Both files can be downloaded from motherboard’s manufacturer.
- Create an autoexec.bat file with any text editor such as Notepad, and type in an auto flash command in following syntax: Award_Flash_Utility BIOS_Filename. For example,
awdfl823K w6378vms.130
(awdfl823k been filename of flash utility and w6378vms.130 been the filename of BIOS file.)or
awdflash XXXXXXXX.BIN /py/sn/f/cc/r
flashv73 XXXXXXXX.BIN /py/sn/f/cc/r(awdflash and flashv73 been filename of flash tool, and XXXXXXXX.BIN is file name of BIOS dump. All switches after the flash command are necessary when flashing the BIOS. It has the following meaning:
py = program yes
sn = save no
f = flash
cc = clear CMOS
r = reboot)Replace with the file name of your BIOS flash utility and BIOS file. Remember to save the file as autoexec.bat.
- Boot up system with the floppy.
- The system should auto execute autoexec.bat and flash overwrite the BIOS. If any prompt appears, follow accordingly.
- Reboot the computer.
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Entries (RSS)
December 13th, 2007 19:14
Hi.
You say “restore or recover the BIOS that no longer works or boot up the system” and then “Make a bootable floopy disk.”
Can somebody explain to me how you can use a bootable floopy if the system no longer boots up ??? Is there a way to force this ???
February 11th, 2008 15:38
I am interested in question asked by Adrian Staicu. I created 2 bootable floppy disks (one had autoexec.bat with 1st variant and another one - 2nd, deleted unused files except io.sys, msdos.sys, command.com) but nothing happened when I inserted disk and switched on computer…
February 26th, 2008 04:36
Yeah! What about not being able to boot?
The recovery mode doesn’t allow anything but load a file from a floppy disk.
February 26th, 2008 15:03
Unfortunately, my problem was solved only via service center…
June 23rd, 2008 20:46
1. You create the boot disk on another PC (Doh!)
2. The Award / Pheonix Award bios has a small part that is NOT flashed when a bios upgrade takes place. This bit of code is what starts the boot floppy.
3. If the protected bit of the boot code is also corrupt then you will need to contact a service centre or do a ‘hot-swap’ of the BIOS chip - if you don’t know what ‘hot-swap’ means then you are not in a position to do it.
June 23rd, 2008 20:53
Well… I managed to solve my problem by purchasing another bios chip and copying it to the original one, by hot-swapping.