Upgrading Bios..

Well i'm doing some upgrades to a friends Box, anyhow i'm not to sure on the Bios though.
The current Bios is
Award Modular Bios v4.51PG
The question is can i flash the Bi0s with this..
Award Modular Bios v6.00PG
As it supports winXP
(Os that friend wants installed.)

And if the specs for the Box are needed then here they are..

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Operating System:Windows 98 Version 4.10 build 1034.2222 A
Processor:Pentium III 300 MHz (Serial No.: 0000067300013224F9C6FA
Cache:L1 cache: 16 KB code, 16 KB data L2 cache: 512 KB
Front side bus speed:66 MHz
System Ram:327,120 KB

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Any and all help would be much appreciated..

cheers
F2B:.

I dont think it would be a good move installing XP on that box no matter what BIOS you have.

As you know it quite a taxing O/S and with a 300Mhz P3 and a 66 FSB you wont do him any favours.

It would prob be OK when you first install it but when he adds all the software, virus scanner,firewall, games etc, it would just grind to a halt!

Be better off upgrading the comp or sticking with 98!

Ok thanks for this piece of info Nokia..
I was mainly uncertain about the Bi0s..
And i decided to do some added investigation work, so i pulled a Hard Drive from another box running XP, inserted it into my mate's Box and booted it up, and it ran fine..
But once you went past the log in stage it started throwing up all sorts of errors, it said that a .dll file for Nortan was either Corrupt or missing, and it also complained that Zone Alarm was corrupt..
So i pulled the drive back out inserted it back into my Box and guess what No errors, so i guess you were right about it complaining when more software was installed..
So i'm gonna give XP the miss, and i'll try and educate him in Debian or some other *nix flavour..
with 98 as an added dual boot option..

cheers
F2B:.

where can i flash my current BIOS, i've never done it before...the current one that i got is COMPAQ - 10503
...if i flash it, it may also fix a problem with my hard drive, whenever i reinstall XP, i cant access my slave drive without formatting and it only shows as 35GB instead 80GB, i found a WD boot disk which installes some life tools and it starts right when my computer starts, but when i do that i also have to format my drive and then its all ok til the next install of a new OS...so i just need to flash my COMPAQ - 10503 BIOS, anyone know a site?

Not quite sure how the Compaq site is laid out, but here is a link to the compaq support and drivers page. I'm not sure how the Compaq does the bios either, but usually you just go into DOS, armed with a floppy with the bios on it and execute it.

My Gigabyte board you can flash from windows, which is basically a really easy utility for anyone. Anyhoo hope this helps.

Hi

"By grind to a halt!........ it was not like what you just experienced......It will work but the Computer will become slow..Dead Slow...... it will work you can install XP ....If he is hell bent on XP you can give him XP.........it's like you should not do that but you cound do that.:).....just by just pulling a HarD disk from another Computer and putting it on another computer will not work most of the time.....until they both have the Same Configuration......i am sure that what you are experiencing..

I have worked on worse System than it haveing Windows NT....My first Computer was Pentium 1....with 8 MB RAM and i had NT installed :(

My Personal Advice Stick To windows 98 or maybe windows ME not higher than that....
.....

And maximum Processor and Disk Capacity that can be used on a computer depends on both combination of motherboard and BIOS ..and not only BIOS...so don't get any wrong ideas here.......

Here .:front2back:. you can Check for the upgardes simply click on BIOS Agent will identify the BIOS on your system and provide you with all of the information that you will need to order your new BIOS..Max Upgradable Verson Etc...Etc.

Flash BIOS upgrade

and scriptkiddie18 you will have to know what bois make is(t Aware.....AMI, AST....etc.)...You will have to check when your Computer starts i don't know which BIOS COMPAQ uses in it's computers....

Remember Flashing is a very risky business..there is nothng you can do if it goes wrong but to change the motherboard.......While in process you should make sure thet power is not disconnected because it means new Motherboard .....

-Good Luck--

Hi,

Well, F2B, with those specs, I would say that WIN98 SE would be my OS of choice. WinME should be OK as you have more than 256Mb of RAM, but I am assuming that your friend shuts down after each session? (ME does tend to suffer from memory leaks). Please do not attempt to run WinXP..............it will work, but very badly...........so I might have to bring you before the High Council on a charge of "operating system abuse" :D ................like you would not be giving it a fair chance?

Scriptkiddie~................you need to be careful with stuff from the "big names" as they tend to have custom BIOSES (to cut down on support costs) Look at the installation/analysis software from your HDD supplier...........they usually have a software solution..............something like EZDrive?..........I have a PI/133MHz Digital Venturis, that works quite well with a 60Gb and 14.4Gb HDD configuration. You might like to check what Compaq say that upgrade will support? it is better to have your hardware supported by the BIOS, but there is no point in taking the risk of an upgrade if it does not do anything particularly for you?

Swordfish~..................your problem was 8Mb of RAM...............that is really a Win3x/DOS configuration.............Win95 will work............but expect serious instability................NT4.0 really needs 32Mb absolute minimum, and 64Mb+ out of choice..............processor wise it is not that aggressive...................I have run it quite happily on PI/90-PI/166 machines.

Just a few thoughts

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I would say that WIN98 SE would be my OS of choice. WinME should be OK as you have more than 256Mb of RAM

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System spec's aside, I would use Win 98SE over ME anyday!!

IMHO Millenium has to be the biggest ****-up of an O/S that has ever been produced!

Quote:

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Swordfish~..................your problem was 8Mb of RAM...............that is really a Win3x/DOS configuration.............Win95 will work............but expect serious instability................NT4.0 really needs 32Mb absolute minimum, and 64Mb+ out of choice..............processor wise it is not that aggressive...................I have run it quite happily on PI/90-PI/166 machines.

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I know i needed more RAM But as i said it was my first System..and at that time Hardware... Especially RAM was very very Costly...and i somehow Loved NT as a OS :D....ok ok to tell the truth it wasen't by choice i had to run several Back Office Products that only run on NT(server) at that time....i was very very slow .......i didn't had much of a choice:(

and about "Windows NT processor wise not being that aggressive" very True it worked resanobly good on 64 MB RAM.....

Now RAM and other Hardware are very cheap as compared to those days....and i am very glad about that...

--Good Luck--

Hey, Nokia,

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IMHO Millenium has to be the biggest ****-up of an O/S that has ever been produced!

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I think that the problem was the way in which M$ marketed it, and the industry responded?

I have it running stably on the following:

PII/333MHz, 384MB PC100 RAM
PII/450MHz, 384Mb PC100 RAM
Duron/1.3GHz, 512 Mb PC133RAM

It will not run stably on a PII/266MHz with 128Mb of EDO RAM or on a P4/1.7GHz with 764Mb of RAMBUS PC 800.

It is mostly RAM as far as I have seen, from my experiments, and looking at other peoples' machines.

I think that we both agree that Win98SE is the best of the "home OS" offerings from Microsoft?

Remember folks................look at the WHOLE system..................if you have nasty onboard video.......it will steal your RAM from the OS, now, 64/1024 doesn't matter on my XP Pro box, but on a 128Mb RAM box, that is a BIG overhead?

Cheers