E8400 and neo-fr

Question

hey i have a e8400 and a neo-fr with bios 1.1......
xp hangs forever at setup windows (xp install)
i am right by saying bios update if so great the task of making it work is fanily over... yes the disks are fine and also using 250GB ide hard drive but some people have said SATA is a problem wtich i have got but not using becuase people say is bad and cant install with xp need drivers
what i want to no is how to flash bios and how to install xp on a sata hard drive (i have a flopy drive) or is this not the problem?
thanks this will stop loads of steress :D and thanks to the great board you have sold me truly amazing :D

Answer 1

You can still use a a floppy disk to boot and flash the BIOS as long as you don't read directly from the floppy disk during the flash process.
In DOS there is something called ramdrive, it uses a small portion of your memory to create a virtual drive.
You can copy the BIOS files from the disk to the virtual ram drive.
Then run the bios flash program from the ramdrive and this removes the floppy disk flash risk as it will not be used during the flash procedure.
Download this to create the RAMDRIVE boot disk.
http://www.nerdlabs.org/bootdisks/diskimages/wboot98se.exe
Run the file and it will create a floppy boot disk.
Download the MSI BIOS (version 1.8) and extract the files to a folder.
Copy the 2 files (A7345IMS.180 & Afud408.exe) to another disk.
Boot from the floppy RAMDRIVE boot disk.
- Start computer without CD-ROM support
- Once it has finished loading take out the disk.
- Insert the 2nd disk with the 2 files (A7345IMS.180 & Afud408.exe).
# Type (notice the space bars)
copy a:\*.* c:
# Press enter
# Type
c:
# Press enter
# Type
afud408 A7345IMS.180
# Press enter
It should flash the BIOS.
- Once done turn the PC off.
- Remove the PSU mains cable for the back
- Press the front case switch power button (should help to discharge any remaining power)
- And clear the CMOS, press and hold down the CMOS clear switch for at least 30 seconds.
And your done.
Make sure you run memtest for a while before the BIOS flash. (if you have never run memtest, go for 3 hours)
- This will create a memtest boot disk.
http://www.memtest.org/download/2.01/memtest86+-2.01.floppy.zip
- Extract the files to a folder and run the install file. (requires another floppy disk)
Once the disk has been created it cannot be read in windows, so do not try to read it as you will get a message saying "disk not formatted..."