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Floppy Disk Drives and Computer Upgrade Hell

 
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pkang0202



Joined: 09 Mar 2007

PostPosted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 5:09 pm    Post subject: Floppy Disk Drives and Computer Upgrade Hell Reply with quote

I wanted to upgrade my computer(CPU, RAM, VGA), so that required updating the BIOS. I used a USB flashdrive to upgrade my BIOS. Well, before the flashing of the bios is complete, my PC suddenly turns off. Never happened before.

I turn the PC back on and the BIOS is in BootRecovery mode. It wants me to insert a Floppy Disk.

I'm thinking, "Why in God's name does it want a floppy. Who the hell has a Floppy drive now? Why, in 2009, would the programmers of a motherboard CMOS/BIOS require a freaking floppy disk to repair the BIOS? Why?



I go everywhere, from the local PC shop to Hi-Mart. No one has Floppy Drives. I go to 5 different PC bangs, no floppies.

Every single place I go the people tell me, "Why are you using floppy, get a USB."

I tell them, "THE FREAKING MOTHERBOARD MANUFACTURER (ASUS you stupid #@%$@#%) NEEDS A FLOPPY DISK FOR THE BIOS!!!!"

They say, "Oh yeah, I guess you would need a floppy for the BIOS."

I wanted to strangle them. Did they think I was going to use floppies to backup data?

I go all the way to Technomart and buy a floppy drive for 10,000w, and get a disk. The guy I bought it from let me them and load the bios file + awdflash.exe on it. Obviously if my computer's BIOS was bad, I wouldn't be able to boot into windows to format and copy the files myself. Come home and install the floppy drive and insert the disks. Finally, the motherboard recognizes the disks, but recovery hangs and the disk drive is making those bad sounds like it can't read a sector.

Oh great. The floppies are bad. I go to Linkos, buy NEW floppies, and then go around for another hour looking for a place with a floppy disk drive so I can format and copy the necessary files to it.

Again, no one has floppy drives. Everywhere form PC bangs to Printing shops, to PC A/S stores. And every time they have to tell me "Why are you using floppies, just get a USB"


Mad Mad


So, its been 5 hours since I first stepped out to find a floppy drive, I finally make 5 disks, some with MS-DOS BOOT, others not, and all with different versions of the BIOS and AWDFLASH. I get home, pop the disk in and it works. The Botherboard is repairing the BIOS.

For those wondering, unplugging it, taking the battery out, changing the jumper to "Clear CMOS" and waiting 30 minutes did absolutely nothing.

So, The bios is up and running. I put in the RAM, CPU, and new Vid card. Fire the computer up and the screen is blank.

I put the old CPU back in and blank. I put the old Video Card back in, and blank.

I take out the new sticks of RAM and it boots.Ok, the RAM is bad.

I put the new CPU and the new Video card in and turn it on. The PC immediately turns off after a few seconds. By now I'm thinking "What else is freaking going wrong!"

I'm thinking the computer doesn't like my new Vid card and that my Power supply can't handle it.

I take out the new vid card and put the old one it. Same problem.

I'm thinking it might be the CPU, so I take out the new CPU and put one old one back in. Turns on, and then turns off after 5 seconds again.

I start unplugging components and seeing what the hell is wrong.

After 1 more hour of frustrating plugging, unplugging I see that one of the 4 pin power plugs is "loose" on the motherboard. It must've come out while I was swapping in and out the VGA, CPU's dodging cables each time.

So, finally, after 7 hours the computer works with my new processor and new video card.
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bassexpander



Joined: 13 Sep 2007
Location: Someplace you'd rather be.

PostPosted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 5:53 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

What brand is the computer/mother board?
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eamo



Joined: 08 Mar 2003
Location: Shepherd's Bush, 1964.

PostPosted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 7:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

bassexpander wrote:
What brand is the computer/mother board?


He told us. Asus.

The only time a motherboard has gone bad on me it was an Asus. I don't use them anymore. Gigabyte all the way.

As for having to update with a floppy.......crikey! Is this the 90's!!?

I think it's possible that the BIOS didn't actually need a floppy, but it still says that as an option. I think it's possible that you could have persisted with the USB BIOS flash.

I hate flashing the BIOS. It goes wrong a lot, I've heard. I was lucky. The only time I needed to do it was with a Gigabyte board and it went without a hitch. But you do need to follow instructions carefully. Not for the fainthearted.

Another plus for Gigabyte is that they use a Dual-BIOS system. It can detect if the first BIOS doesn't boot and will automatically switch to the other.
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swigs



Joined: 20 Apr 2008

PostPosted: Tue Jun 16, 2009 7:48 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bummer. Live and learn.


Asus... Rolling Eyes


Smile
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