text: Once in a while a BIOS flash fails or, for any number of other reasons, your BIOS becomes corrupt, you will find that your system will not boot. With newer BIOS releases you may receive a screen that the AWARD BootBlock BIOS is attempting recovery and that it's searching for a diskette. For example:\n\n\nAward BootBlock BIOS v1.0\nCopyright (c) 2000, Award Software, Inc.\n\n\nBIOS ROM checksum error\n\n\nDetecting floppy drive A media\n\n\nWith older BIOS' (and at other times) your system will appear to be dead, with the exception that it attempts to boot from the diskette drive and then hang.\n\nIn the above scenarios, your BIOS is probably corrupt and the system is attempting to read the floppy. In these cases the BootBlock is attempting to recover your BIOS. The BootBlock is a portion of the BIOS which will sometimes boot when the BIOS itself has been corrupted to enable you to boot to a floppy and reflash. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.\n\nIn order to attempt the reflash, prepare a DOS boot diskette with no CONFIG.SYS (remember: if you prepare a boot diskette in Windows, CONFIG.SYS may be hidden by default, so it will be necessary to change your view settings in order to see it).\n\nDownload the latest BIOS for your board and unpack it into a work directory on another system's hard disk. You'll get as many as five files. The two you are interested in are named xxxxxx.BIN (replace xxxxxx with the name of the BIOS .BIN file that you are attempting to flash) and AWDFLASH.EXE. Copy these two files to your DOS diskette.\n\nCreate a single line AUTOEXEC.BAT on the diskette containing:\n\nAWDFLASH.EXE xxxxxx.BIN /CC /CD /CP /F /R /PY /SN\n\nNote the spaces after .EXE and .BIN and before each "/" in the above command.\n\nPrior to flashing with your recovery diskette, remove the power cord and open up your computer (you're going to need to crack the case after the flash anyway in order to manually clear your CMOS). Disconnect all drives, except your floppy drive.\n\nSeveral users have reported back that they were able to recover from the BootBlock when advised to disconnect everything except the floppy drive.\n\nTo flash with this diskette, place the floppy in drive A:, power up your system and (hopefully) after several minutes your system should reboot itself. When your system reboots, press DEL at the POST screen and shut your system down. Because your BIOS was corrupt, you should clear your CMOS settings manually using the following procedure:\n\nRemove the main power cord.\nRemove the motherboard battery (optional).\nMove the Clear CMOS jumper (CCMOS1 on Abit boards) from pins 1 and 2 to pins 2 and 3.\nPress your power switch several times to discharge any remaining power from the motherboard.\nWait a minute or two.\nReplace the motherboard battery (if you removed it).\nMove the Clear CMOS jumper back to pins 1 and 2.\nReconnect your drives.\nClose up the case.\nRestore the power.\nPower up and press DEL during the POST to get into the BIOS setup screens and reenter everything.\n\nIn order to properly detect your CPU and memory, remember to start your reentry of BIOS settings with the selection of Load Optimized Defaults.\n\nDon't forget to remove the diskette (or you'll likely boot to it and run the flash all over again).\n\nYou should see what's happening on the screen with new motherboards. With many older boards, you will be running "blind" unless you have an ISA Video Card installed in your system.\n\nIf nothing happens and your floppy doesn't start to access after a few minutes, power down and try again - sometimes it takes several attempts to force the BootBlock to start running the flash.\n\nThe AWDFLASH.EXE command modifiers used above are:\n/CC = clear CMOS data after programming.\n/CD = clear DMI data after programming.\n/CP = clear PnP (ESCD) data after programming.\n/F = use flash routines in the BIOS for programming (force flash).\n/R = reset s