Problem Asus M5a97 bios update has killed it... I think??

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When I built my new PC, I purchased an Asus M5A97 motherboard... really good reviews of this board, and comes with Asus software that allows you to download and install the bios flash update from within Windows.

I have never done a bios flash update before, as always felt that risk of killing the system is not really worth it... so as the software allowed update whilst in Windows (downloads the latest packages from the asus website automatically, then installs), rebooted the PC as prompted and now the PC does not boot, I can get in to BIOS which shows the updated package reference, but upon exiting BIOS it just gets stuck on a blank page with a cursor flashing... cannot enter anything at this point.

Any ideas?

- - - Updated - - -

for further information... the bios update that has been applied was "1208"

 

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Has it changed the boot device order?

NB

 

just tested it now, looked at boot order and for god knows what reason it set the external hard drive as the default boot device...

thanks for the suggestion, I guess my panic earlier when it wasn't booting made me think I had bricked my motherboard, rather than trying to troubleshoot... I presume this has happened to yourself before?

Thanks again

 

Yep

I always use ASUS motherboards, as they are well built, reliable and have plenty of spec, but some have a tendency to change the boot order if a new storage device is plugged in somewhere. Although it has hapenned to me so many times now, that I know to watch out for it.

NB

 

The BIOS stores settings in Non-volatile memory (battery backed CMOS RAM, EEPROM or flash memory).

A new BIOS will most likely have a totally different memory layout than the last BIOS, meaning the memory locations of all the settings can change.

So after flashing the BIOS one of two things will typically happen :-

1. Settings will be automatically reset to factory defaults by the flash process which may include disk auto detect boot order.

2. Settings will be in an indeterminate and potentially corrupt state, some settings which are at the same location maybe fine, others could contain random spurious values. This is why many people recommend a manual reset to factory defaults after flashing the BIOS just to be safe.

Very minor BIOS updates may leave the memory layout unchanged, so you may get lucky, but it is luck, and IT technicians shouldn't rely on luck...

Either way you will then need to manually reconfigure the BIOS for your system, so its best to know all the BIOS settings before flashing.

Also see BDA, EBDA and ESCD.

Also BIOS really now means EFI in a lot of modern PCs.

Don't they cover this in the A+ ?