Hi guys, I attempted updating the BIOS for my new P4M800PRO-M motherboard. I now want to replace the BIOS with an older version that hopefully works better. Problem is: 1. BIOS recognizes the WD 80Gb hard drive (master with XP on it), but gives me a NTRDL error (I've probably got the letter combination wrong, but in essence it can't find the boot manager). 2. Floppy controller fails with a message, so no floppy (I have checked it, and can't boot up with floppy). 3. If the keyboard is plugged in when booting (PS/2 or USB)j, BIOS locks after the "floppy controller failed" message. 4. If the keyboard isn't plugged in when booting, then I don't have an input device and can't make use of any programs I might boot up from a CD. Boot order seems to be 1. HD 2. CD and that's it. Can't tell if it tries to boot from USB. I've unplugged the hard drive. Otherwise I can't boot from CD, BIOS stops when it can't find a boot record on the HD. I'm assuming the hard drive is intact and that with a working BIOS, all will be well. I plugged in another drive that has XP on it, unfortunately it rebooted early and the prompt with safe mode options defaults to "normal boot", and with no input device I couldn't change that. I'd rather not try another hard drive, since I suspect the same thing will happen, and I don't have the money to buy another drive anyway. Now, if I boot with no keyboard plugged in, I can boot up KNOPPIX (after the floppy controller message, it checks NVRAM and it's OK). I'm thinking maybe I could find a cd-image with a dos environment that supports USB, from which I could then run the flash utility for the mobo. So far no luck. Knoppix has a utility called WINE which can handle some windows programs, and i've been able to burn some MS utilities to CD, but it only works occasionally. Boot disk utilities usually makes a floppy automatically and that won't work in Knoppix. For me, anyway. I'd much appreciate any viewpoints/experience from you good people. Johnoh has a similar problem in a current thread although he can boot up windows. The XP installation CD doesn't pick up the keyboard either. How can Knoppix do it despite the BIOS refusing the keyboard altogether? Knoppix is fantastic, but I have yet to find a way to flash my BIOS through it. How can I flash my BIOS back? Cheers, -Iggy

There are two different versions of the P4M800PRO-M...PCB v1.0 & PCB v2.0. Did you make sure that you downloaded & flashed using the correct BIOS file? http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWeb/Produc... http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWeb/Produc... After you flash, you'll need to enter the BIOS & correct any settings that may have changed. Don't run with defaults...tweak the settings to match your hardware.

Demetri, It's v2.0, I forgot to put that in, my bad. I did flash with the right version, with the *cough*windows-based*cough* utility.

I'm not Demetri, I'm jam. Demetri is a comedian who's website I put as my homepage...lol. Do NOT flash from Windows, flash from DOS!

Jam, sorry sorry :D I just sent a form to the ECS support, and the automatic reply read: "We will reply to you as possible as we can." lol it's too late now to flash from dos! i have another old hard drive, i'll try that tomorrow, and also the new one that won't boot i'll hook it up in an old machine to see if it's alive at all......or if ECS killed it dead. No way is this my fault :D

Try clearing the CMOS and disconnecting ALL drives EXCEPT the floppy and see if you can then boot to it.

All too often one of the symptoms of a bad upgrade is the floppy not working. Using a second hard drive is the way I've fixed it. On another computer format and sys the drive with dos and install the upgrade (downgrade) bios files on it. Then run the flasher program from autoexec.bat.