Just bought an Asus A7N8X Deluxe motherboard and an AMD 2800+ Barton processor and was wondering whther i can update the bios without an OS?. If someone knows how to do this plz post step by step instructions as im still learning about computers.

Yes you can. You will need to get a copy of the bios and a flash program.

.. you also need a dos diskette to boot from download the mobo's ".bin" file from asus. That's the bios code to be flashed. Also download "awdflash.exe" from asus. That's the program doing the flashing. Put them both on a dos bootable diskette. Then boot the diskette. Fom the a: prompt type awdflash.exe a7n8x.bin where "a7n8x.bin" is whatever asus named the bin file you downloaded. Then follow the prompts. Don't touch anything while the flash is in progress.

Never, ever update a bios under windows. Always boot from a floppy to do it.

You can get a dos or win98 bootdisk at ww.bootdisk.com. Use only the barest system to do it. That way you're as safe from a crash than possible. Check the Asus site for instructions on how to do it. They have quite good descriptions on how to do it point by point! www.asus.com Den: I updates my Asus A7V133 Raid and Asus P2B board with the actual Asus Flash tool from the running OS and it worked very good. It found the newest update on the net and updated the bios nearly on automatic. It worked even better and easier than I thought. The only thing I did was booting in the most basic setting so there where no running programs in the background!!!!

The boot disk must be a diskette with plain dos on it only:the 3 system files you need are io.sys, msdos.sys, and command.com.Do not use the Menu diskette as is found on the Windows 9x or ME diskettes unless you remove all the other files.Delete everything but command.com and this should be fine.Updating a new board makes little practical sense even if you can do it.It is a risky proposition and the choice to do so is all yours.Test the diskette to make sure it is in good condition.I would never advise a novice to do this though.Run the flash program recommended with the update .bin file(as explained by Jonhoh) and follow on screen instructions to the letter.Never interrupt the process for any reason.Reboot the computer when it is done and load the bios default values.Good luck.

I agree with post 3. The windows bios flash tools (like winflash) are reliable in and of themselves, and are unlikely to hang on you resulting in a bad flash, but how often does windows hang on you? For many people the answer is dozens of times a year. If windows decides to stop responding while winflash is running you've got a bad flash. But DOS never hangs unless you run out of memory, which is no risk with a bios flash program.