Official F8SN Owners Lounge

[EXcaliberPC]

anyone succesful with bios 303 update?

Hello F8snnn,

You have posted a comment asking about BIOS update.

Winflash should work in most instances to upgrade the BIOS from within Windows. Hopefully you extracted the file correctly. Please provide more details on what you tried and how it failed for you to troubleshoot. In general there are 4 ways to upgrade Asus notebook... First of all, ALWAYS HAVE THE AC ADAPTER plugged in during BIOS update. Some phases of it may drain battery very fast and BIOS update is no time to run out of battery.... METHODS of Asus BIOS upgrade are 1) Winflash 2) aflash program from clean boot (not command prompt in windows) 3) using afudos 4) BIOS that has EZ flash OR pressing F4 before Asus splash screen comes up as system is booting up from cold or soft boot... Winflash you know already, it should be installed in windows and you can just click on it from the program menu under Asus utility. Aflash and afudos requires you to make a boot disc and it's hard to do it under Vista.. AFUDOS BIOS update procedure can be found here -> http://support.asus.com/technicaldoc...Language=en-us

Many Asus computers have EZflash as an option in the BIOS itself, you can launch that to start to upgrade BIOS, else try the F4 key method above to launch flash program. You can try to put the BIOS ROM file onto an USB but that sometimes the program won't recognize the USB drive in which case you might just put the ROM file in the root directory of your hard drive, usually c: (C Drive). and then tell the Flash program to read it and update with it.

[Oldman]

Thank you for reply.
I'm at the very first step only. I believe in superiority of this Express Card slot. I think it is much easer to run 2 OS when they have same interface
(I mean HDs with OS)
I used to have old models with PCMCIA interface - actually the same stuff with different form factor and I never had problems. Now I have one. This new interface (ExpressCard) has 2 different sizes (form factors) -34 and 52. I wish I new more about this issue but information is so hard to find.
So I have to do my search and this it will take a while.

BR from old man

OOPS, I have trouble with posting... (10 chars)

[Oldman]

From the picture it seems that connector is 34 mm so it should work regardless of the form factor in your F8 (a 34mm connector will work in a 54 mm one (as well as of course in a 34mm one), and not the other way around, As far as I know). But by all means do your own research.

Thank you Sir
I did not know this is simple reflection of physical dimension in 'mm
The rest is easy.

[red616]

.....

I used to have old models with PCMCIA interface - actually the same stuff with different form factor and I never had problems. Now I have one. This new interface (ExpressCard) has 2 different sizes (form factors) -34 and 52. I wish I new more about this issue but information is so hard to find.
So I have to do my search and this it will take a while.

Probably the best thing to do re Form Factor is to look for an item's specifications link. NewEgg is usually pretty good at giving an item's spec. That particular item's form factor info:

Fully compliant with ExpressCard Specification 1.0
ExpressCard/34 Form Factor Module

[boypogi]

its a nice enough notebook

[F8snnn]

Hello F8snnn,

You have posted a comment asking about BIOS update.

Winflash should work in most instances to upgrade the BIOS from within Windows. Hopefully you extracted the file correctly. Please provide more details on what you tried and how it failed for you to troubleshoot. In general there are 4 ways to upgrade Asus notebook... First of all, ALWAYS HAVE THE AC ADAPTER plugged in during BIOS update. Some phases of it may drain battery very fast and BIOS update is no time to run out of battery.... METHODS of Asus BIOS upgrade are 1) Winflash 2) aflash program from clean boot (not command prompt in windows) 3) using afudos 4) BIOS that has EZ flash OR pressing F4 before Asus splash screen comes up as system is booting up from cold or soft boot... Winflash you know already, it should be installed in windows and you can just click on it from the program menu under Asus utility. Aflash and afudos requires you to make a boot disc and it's hard to do it under Vista.. AFUDOS BIOS update procedure can be found here -> http://support.asus.com/technicaldoc...Language=en-us

Many Asus computers have EZflash as an option in the BIOS itself, you can launch that to start to upgrade BIOS, else try the F4 key method above to launch flash program. You can try to put the BIOS ROM file onto an USB but that sometimes the program won't recognize the USB drive in which case you might just put the ROM file in the root directory of your hard drive, usually c: (C Drive). and then tell the Flash program to read it and update with it.

Hello,

I used Winflash on my first try. I selected the file I've downloaded from Asus site, the program checked it and said the file is correct and I hit the flash button. Notebook rebooted with a blank screen and kept constantly rebooting every 8-10 seconds without any progress (hdd was constantly working though) like 50 times and then I shut it down.

After that, I tried the flash program found in the BIOS. I selected the new BIOS file located in C but it said something like "Couldn't load image file from external ROM."

I need to do this update and hope it makes the fan noise more bearable. It is really disturbing right now.
The fan integrated into f8sn is a piece of crap.

Any suggestions?

[Oldman]

I understand your frustration.
I believe Excaliber professionals would like to know EXACTLY filename (not just rev. #) of BIOS you have downloaded from ASUS. May be they can give you better solution.

Hope springs eternal...

[F8snnn]

There is just one bios version in Asus page for f8sn & Vista 32 bit (I'm using 32 bit ultimate version with a clean install).

Version 303 2008/03/24 update
Description BIOS 303
Support T2390 CPU and Fn+V function
File Size 512.71 (KBytes)

Filename is F8SNGAS.303

[Oldman]

There is just one bios version in Asus page for f8sn & Vista 32 bit (I'm using 32 bit ultimate version with a clean install).

Version 303 2008/03/24 update
Description BIOS 303
Support T2390 CPU and Fn+V function
File Size 512.71 (KBytes)

Filename is F8SNGAS.303

There are 3 different BIOS downloads:
First ver. 303 for vista with T2390 support
Second for all OS with T2390 support
Third ver.302 for all OS with Penryn support.

I'd try last one with Penryn support ( I assume you have Penryn)

[E.B.E.]

Oldman:

ExpressCard supports two form factors, ExpressCard/34 (34 mm wide) and ExpressCard/54 (54 mm wide, in an L-shape) — the connector is the same on both (width 34 mm). Standard cards are 75 mm long (10.6 mm shorter than CardBus) and 5 mm thick, but may be thicker on sections that extend outside the standard form factor — for antennas, sockets, etc. The 34 mm form factor cards fit into both 34 mm and 54 mm card slots via a diagonal guide in the rear of the 54 mm slot that guides the card to the connector. The 54 mm card will only fit in a 54 mm slot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExpressCard

So that card should work in your F8.

F8snnn: That's a weird error. I presume you unarchived the BIOS file prior to trying to write it, right?

I would try again using the EasyFlash in BIOS, this time putting the (unarchived) BIOS file in the root folder of a USB memory stick.

If that fails as well, you can try the DOS way (AFLASH). I do not understand why ExcaliberPC says it's difficult to do a DOS-bootable CD in Windows Vista, it's as easy as downloading a FreeDOS ISO image and writing it to a CD. Check my BIOS Update guide (see my signature) for detailed instructions, both with DOS, Windows, and EasyFlash.

Finally: The BIOS should not be operating-system dependent. That Vista thing probably only means that the BIOS fixes a bug that for some reason only shows in Vista.