On Tue, 28 Aug 2007 19:52:58 -0400, Doug Robinson wrote:

> I just rebuilt my system after several parts failed. Now when I boot
> the system stops & waits for and F1 key press.
> It claims that I need to update my bios.

Sounds like the cmos checksum doesn't match. If you really needed to
replace the bios, you wouldn't even get that far.

Try pressing del, or f1, or whatever the message on the screen says to
press, to run the bios setup utility.

Set the date, check that the hard drives are found, or are set to
autoscan, and to use lba mode, etc, then save the changes.

If the next cold boot has the same problem, then I'd check to see if
the battery for maintaining the cmos needs to be replaced, of if the
jumper used to clear the cmos has been left set.

Regards, Dave Hodgins

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Doug Robinson wrote:
> Hello one and all
>
> I just rebuilt my system after several parts failed. Now when I boot
> the system stops & waits for and F1 key press.
>
> It claims that I need to update my bios.
>
> OK how do you do it!
>
> Thanks for your time!
>
> dkr

Go to the website of the manufacturer that made your machine/MB
and look for instructions.

Cheers!

jim b.

--
UNIX is not user-unfriendly; it merely
expects users to be computer-friendly.

On Tue, 28 Aug 2007 23:52:58 +0000, Doug Robinson wrote:

Thanks for both your responses!

It appears that the cpu I installed is unknown to the BIOS software.
If I press the magic F1 key things proceed as normal and everything works.

It appears to me that if I was to download a new version of the BIOS, I
could not load it because that requires a windows OS. I do not have
one of those and will not be getting one any time soon! I guess I will
have to live with the extra step in the boot process.

Thanks again.

dkr

On Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:01:54 +0000, Doug Robinson wrote:

> On Tue, 28 Aug 2007 23:52:58 +0000, Doug Robinson wrote:
>
> Thanks for both your responses!
>
> It appears that the cpu I installed is unknown to the BIOS software.
> If I press the magic F1 key things proceed as normal and everything works.
>
> It appears to me that if I was to download a new version of the BIOS, I
> could not load it because that requires a windows OS. I do not have
> one of those and will not be getting one any time soon! I guess I will
> have to live with the extra step in the boot process.
>
> Thanks again.
>
> dkr

You can download a free copy of dr dos from the internet. Usually, it
takes a DOS boot.

On Wed, 29 Aug 2007 09:00:54 -0600, ray wrote:

> On Wed, 29 Aug 2007 14:01:54 +0000, Doug Robinson wrote:
>
>> It appears to me that if I was to download a new version of the BIOS, I
>> could not load it because that requires a windows OS. I do not have
>> one of those and will not be getting one any time soon!
>
> You can download a free copy of dr dos from the internet. Usually, it
> takes a DOS boot.

Also, FreeDOS is free (hence the name) and works well for this purpose. I
have performed several successful BIOS updates using it.

A tip: many BIOS updates are quite small .EXE files (a few 100k's) and a
basis FreeDOS floppy (you only need the sys files and command.com) has
about 1MB free. So you can make a BIOS update floppy that is
self-contained.