Sunday 19 July 2009

Updating the BIOS in the Eee Pc 900.

I’d been having some problems with my 900's 16GB drive recently and after much messing about I’ve reached the conclusion that I need a new one.

Now, one of the solutions to my problem I tried was to update the BIOS. It was a long shot at best, but you never know.

I’ve never done this before and I understand that if you make a mistake whilst doing it, you can be left with a very pretty Asus EeePC 900 doorstop.

Please, unless you really are confident of your ability to follow instructions to the letter or you are having problems which you know a BIOS update will solve, leave the BIOS alone.

This is how it’s done.

You will need a USB stick. I used a generic 1GB drive, I wouldn’t recommend using anything over 4GB. Plug it into the machine on the right hand side in the USB slot closest to you. Make sure no other drives are attached.

Go to System > Administration > Partition Editor

Enter your password.

Once it’s finished scanning your drives, go to the drop down list at the top right and click on /dev/sdd.

Then right click the partition box > Unmount.

Right click it again > Format to FAT32

Click Apply.

When it’s done, right click again > Manage Flags and tick the Boot box.

When it’s done, you can close the partition editor and move on.

Let’s get the BIOS file!

Download the BIOS file from asus.com or, for ease of use, from my SkyDrive.

Save it to a convenient place. Right click the zip file and then ‘Extract Here’. A file called 900-ASUS-1006.ROM will appear.

Rename it to 900.ROM You MUST do this. It will not work unless you do.
here (click on the little plus sign next to BIOS and then Download From Global)
That is your BIOS file and you need to copy it to your USB stick. It should be the only file on the stick.

Now, you’re sure you’ve got all of that? Good.

This is the fun part.

Shutdown the Eee.

Make sure your Eee is using mains power.

Make sure you have nothing attached to it (USB sticks, drives, SD cards) and hit the power button.

Now start up and hit F2 at the Asus screen to go into the BIOS. Once in, go to (using the arrow keys) Boot > Boot Device Priority and make sure it looks like this:

1st boot device Removable Dev.

2nd boot device HDD:SM-ASUS-PHISON

3rd boot device ATAPI CD Rom

Then hit ESC.

Now go to Boot Settings Configuration. You need to make it look like this:

Quick Boot Disabled

Quiet Boot Disabled

To do this, use the arrow keys and the enter key.

When you’re done, hit ESC and then F10 and Enter.

Now shutdown.

Put your stick with the BIOS file into the left hand USB slot and start up the Eee.

At the Asus screen, hold down ALT and hit F2.

Some text will appear. You won’t have anything to do now. Just let it get on with what it needs to do. It takes a few minutes.

DO NOT INTERRUPT IT!!

Only when you are prompted to do so, shutdown using the power button.

And when you reboot, if you go into the BIOS you will notice that the version number has changed.

Also, you will probably notice that your fan runs a lot quieter now.

Which is nice.

3 comments:

  1. "Right click it again > Format to FAT32"

    FAT32 didn't work for me...

    FAT16 did.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It really does seem to be a case of "horses for courses" when it comes to formatting the stick!
    Is there anybody out there who knows why this is the case?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Had to run

    sudo mkdosfs -F 16 //dev/sdb1

    on the USB stick before the BIOS would pickup the 900.ROM file.

    I upgraded to internal SSD to SUPER TALENT 64GB. The Linux kernel would hang booting the ASUS 900 until I upgraded the BIOS to 901-ASUS-2103.ROM.

    Thanks.

    ReplyDelete