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zmikelewis

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21 years ago

Z

zmikelewis

2 Posts

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8471

August 25th, 2005 10:00

System Bios Damaged

I have several Dell PowerEdge 5100-2 that I support. One just booted up with the message "System Bios is Damaged. Reloading from diskette in Drive A". I have a floppy from a previous bios upgrade, but that does not seem to be in the format it wants. How do I create the floppy to restore the bios? 
  • N

    nickkearnsuk

    4 Posts

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    Posted August 25th, 2005 10:00

    Here are two bios Be carfull they are the same bar the display card 

    You will need to create a ms dos boot disk and copy the files to the boot disk and overwrite config.sys

    Then you should be able to reflash the bios

    for the SP/XE  51__-2 

    http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&releaseid=R19023&SystemID=PWE_PNT_PNT_SP_5___2&os=WNT5&osl=en&deviceid=159&devlib=0&typecnt=1&vercnt=5&formatcnt=1&fileid=18805

    or for the SP/XE  51__-2 (ATI Mach64)

    http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&releaseid=R18593&SystemID=PWE_PNT_PNT_SP_51___2&os=WNT5&osl=en&deviceid=159&devlib=0&typecnt=1&vercnt=1&formatcnt=1&fileid=18370

    Regards

    Nick

     

    Message Edited by nickkearnsuk on 08-25-2005 12:51 PM

  • L

    Luke3816

    14 Posts

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    Posted August 31st, 2005 15:00

    This is not a message that comes from the Dell system BIOS or the dos update utility. You've probably got a crisis recovery diskette from a competitor's product in your floppy drive. You should check your floppy drive and CD drive to make sure they are empty.
  • Z

    zmikelewis

    2 Posts

    363

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    Posted September 1st, 2005 02:00

    There is no floppy in the drive nor any Cd in the cdrom drive.
     
    Again, the system comes up (before ANY other bios message - no possibility of accessing the floppy or the CD-Rom drive) with the banner (black screen, white banner with black writing):
    SYSTEM BIOS IS DAMAGED. RELOADING FROM DISKETTE IN DRIVE A:
     
    It then says (in green on the black background):
    ENABLING THE FLOPPY DRIVE.
     
    Which is promptly overwritten (also in green) by:
    READING THE FLOPPY.
     
    With no floppy in the drive it then comes back with (in purple), below the READING message:
    COULD NOT READ A: TO RAM.
     
    When I use the floppy made in reply #1, the floppy light comes on, it tries to find the correct file on the floppy, and then prints (in purple):
    THE BIOS FILE DOES NOT EXIST ON A:.
     
    I have verified the floppy made by following the instructions in reply #1 by reloading the bios on another machine to make sure the floppy works. I am guessing that the Backup Bios is looking for something like a .bin file to reload from. Any ideas? Again, this is coming from ROM somewhere. There are NO bios
    messages that come up before this, not even the PHOENIX ROM BIOS PLUS VERSION... message.
    HELP?

    Message Edited by zmikelewis on 08-31-2005 10:46 PM

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