W7 64 Installation
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W7 64 Installation
13-05-2011 12:33 AM
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I'm aware of possible issues with 64 drivers for hardware connected to the PC but I think I have all that covered.
I'm about to install another 2GB RAM taking it to 6GB which will aid video editing.
What concerns me is the motherboard (M4N78). Would it be wise to update the BIOS before installing W7 64bit (I've checked the Asus website and there's nothing specific relating to 64bit use. Current version is 0805 and the latest is 1103
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Re: W7 64 Installation
13-05-2011 4:09 AM
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Re: W7 64 Installation
13-05-2011 8:29 AM
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I understand that it's easier to do with less chances of it going wrong these days, but still a chance...
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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear - Mark Twain
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Re: W7 64 Installation
13-05-2011 8:52 AM
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(And often do anyway as part of regular maintenance)
For example, I did one earlier this week - a Dell laptop - which didn't "restart" properly, e.g. after Windows Updates. An updated BIOS fixed that.
(I later reinstalled Windows anyway for other reasons, but the problem was fixed straight away)
Re: W7 64 Installation
13-05-2011 8:56 AM
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Any advice on how to best go about the update (DOS v Windows) to minimise possibilities of it going wrong?
Perhaps remove (disconnect) all other drives, leaving just the boot drive, first?
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Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear - Mark Twain
He who feared he would not succeed sat still
Re: W7 64 Installation
13-05-2011 9:22 AM
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Just a thought too - some manufacturers have a floppy disk or CD image that you can download and burn which will do exactly the same thing, if yours doesn't then you could always grab one from another manufacturer's site and add your own BIOS file and flashing utility to that before you burn it.
Re: W7 64 Installation
13-05-2011 9:39 AM
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(dunno why but I'm not good at making bootable USB sticks)
Sometimes you just have to wire in a floppy drive and do it that way.
The Dell laptop I did earlier this week was rather unhelpful as it had a collection of problems getting in the way, including a corrupt HD boot sector and unreliable CD drive!
I couldn't run the upgrade from within Windows (the normal way with Dell) due to these problems and didn't have a suitable floppy drive.
In the end I booted from a CD that I'd used to fix the boot sector to re-enable the Dell System Restore. (FreeDOS based - http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/files/dsrfix.zip )
Then I switched to the appropriate drive letter for the CD (R: in this case!) and swapped to a CD containing the DOS upgrade program (downloaded from Dell) and ran it.
Re: W7 64 Installation
13-05-2011 11:58 AM
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Quote from: Mav I've only once before tried to update the BIOS (around 4 years ago) and it went horribly wrong and required the MB to be replaced (no power cut involved).
I had a similar experience about 8 years ago when the floppy disc or the floppy disc drive failed mid-update. With hindsight it was quite a good learning experience. I quite like running BIOS updates from Windows, if the option is available, because the update procedure usually over-compensate for the unreliability of Windows so tries to do things in the most fail-safe manner possible.
Re: W7 64 Installation
13-05-2011 3:49 PM
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Quote from: ReedRichards floppy disc or the floppy disc drive failed mid-update.
I don't think that's very likely with most modern updates as they tend to load everything into RAM first and verify checksums etc. before proceeding.
Obviously on older systems with less RAM that's not a viable process, but it's the way all the ones I've done in quite a while have worked.
Re: W7 64 Installation
14-05-2011 7:29 AM
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Quote from: HPsauce .... most modern updates ... tend to load everything into RAM first and verify checksums etc. before proceeding....
Yes, making it much less important what medium you use for the BIOS data or whether you run the update from Windows or not.
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