Clean Bootable CD-Rom (for BIOS upgrade) [new! dec 16, 2002]
Some people ask me if it is possible to create a bootable CD-Rom to update/flash their BIOS, on a system that has no floppy disk drive. I realize that some new PC's nowadays also don't have a floppy drive so this problem may affect more people in future... This is probably is easiest bootable CD-Rom I've ever built.
This Clean Bootable CD-Rom can be used for flashing your BIOS or other programs that need to be run from a "clean-booted" Dos operating system.
The steps to create are:
1. If you haven't already installed BCD, please do so now.
BCD installation instructions:
Download BCD full package v1.1.1 (523KB).
Or update from previous version: BCD update package (v1.1.0-v1.1.1) (5KB).
When updating from previous versions, just extract the package over the previous version, overwrite any existing files. The bcd.cfg file will not get overwritten!
Unpack the BCD package to some folder for example d:\bcd. If you want to be able to run it from a server you should unpack it to a share from where your workstations can run it. You will need to map a drive letter to that share and run bcd using that drive letter.
Make sure you also unpack the subdirectories!
Download Nero Aspi Library (wnaspi32.dll) and copy it into BCD's d:\bcd\bin directory.
I have asked Ahead Software AG if I could distribute their aspi manager with my BCD package but they said: "...due to our licence agreement you could only let your users download it freely from our web site...".
2. If you haven't already installed BFD, please do so now.
BFD installation instructions:
Please download: BFD full package v1.0.7 (1.45MB).
Or update from previous versions: BFD update package (v1.0.x-v1.0.7) (410KB).
When updating from previous versions, just extract the package over the previous version, overwrite any existing files. The bfd.cfg file will not get overwritten!
Unpack BFD in the same directory as BCD, for example d:\bcd.
If you have already unpacked BCD, then some files from BFD will overlap with files from BCD, like the nu2lic.txt and the bchoice.exe. This is no problem, just skip or overwrite them.
Make sure you also unpack the subdirectories!
3. Download Clean v1.0 package (clean.zip) (2KB) and unpack it into the same folder as where you have installed BCD/BFD.
4. Add the files needed to upgrade your BIOS to cds\clean\bootdisk\ folder. You have about 2.5MB available space on the bootimage (2.88MB floppy emulation). Do not add your files to cds\clean\files\ folder!
Optionally you can edit the file cds\clean\bootdisk\autorun.bat and append a line to run your flash program.
5. When you're done customizing, you open a command prompt, change to the BCD folder and run "bcd clean" to build your ISO image and burn it to your CD writer (if you have one).
Warning! Use this Clean Bootable CD-Rom at your own risk. I only tried Asus aflash.exe flash program and that works OK!
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