In article , "Katy"
wrote:


I really had 2 questions: (BIOS bootup alert & Event Viewer alert)

I am getting a message before windows loads (so cannot do a printscreen)
just following choosing WindowsXP as operating system (using dual boot
to W2k) that states this:

BIOS: BIOS update data incorrect. CPUID=3D00000F27, PCI Device
Listing... (then it lists my devices and other info including IRQ, etc.)
and continues to load windows with no obvious problems. However, I am
getting many instances of Error in Event Viewer that reports this:
The device, \Device\Harddisk1\D, has a bad block.

For more information, see Help and Support Center at
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp.

(This link tells me I should replace my hard drive.)

This has been coming up ever since I installed this P4S333 motherboard
almost a yr. ago. I haven't flashed the bios on this motherboard, ACPI
BIOS Revision 1006C, since I bought it.

Could a message like this BIOS: be causing my Event Viewer to report a
bad sector on my Maxtor hard drive? or doesn't this BIOS message have
ANYTHING to do with the Event Viewer message?

I have done a Scan on the hard drive, have used Partition Magic to scan
and fix it, and also have used the Maxtor.exe file that came with the
drive to do 5 surface scans and nothing reports bad sectors to fix, only
Event Viewer is.

Could anyone tell me if Event Viewer is reporting an accurate message
and should the CPUID=3D00000F27 mean anything to me?

TIA for any advice,
katy

Intel has a scheme, where they can repair certain bugs in the processor
with what is called a "microcode update". Some of the bugs will only
be discovered after the processor is shipping and in the field, so
Intel issues new microcode files whenever a bug is found.

The BIOS contains a microcode loader. The BIOS also has a set of
2KB microcode files, to load. The microcode files have ID info,
like the family code 0F27.

When Asus gets updated microcode from Intel, they incorporate the
new 2KB patches into new BIOS releases. Flashing the BIOS is one
way to get microcode for your 0F27 processor.

Another method that works at the BIOS level, is CTMC. This is a
program from CT Heise magazine in Germany. The MC stands for
microcode. The nice thing about the CTMC method, is there is less
risk to the BIOS chip. A volatile region of the flash chip is used,
and no BIOS executable code is touched, so the machine should be
able to boot, no matter how well the CTMC program works. CTMC
uses a hook in the BIOS, so the flashing of the BIOS is being done
by the BIOS itself.

ftp://ftp.heise.de/pub/ct/ctsi/ctmc10.zip

Basically, this is a capsule summary of using CTMC:

1) You have to be able to boot Windows to use the program.
That is because you need to run the CTMC program to do the
actual writing of microcode to the flash chip.
If not, then download the latest BIOS file from Asus, the
latest MSDOS boot floppy based flash program from Asus,
read any warnings on the download page, and flash the BIOS.
2) Find a recent version of BIOS from the download page. If
your processor version was never supported by Asus ever,
you can download a BIOS from another board that uses an
Intel P4 processor, provided it is an Award BIOS, and extract
microcode from that BIOS file.
3) Get the CTMC package. Use splitawd to split the donor BIOS
file into modules. Use LHA to decompress a module called
"cpucode.exe". Use the main CTMC program "ctmc cpucode.exe /store"
This gives a bunch of 2KB files, and the file name will have
the processor family code in it, like 0F270433.bin or the like.
Now, use a MSDOS window or a command prompt window in Windows,
run ctmc again, this time using the option to write the donated
microcode to the BIOS "ctmc 0f270433.bin /write". Reboot.

The BIOS message should disappear after that, and the Intel
FrequencyID utility should change the processor version listed
from 0 to whatever version was in the microcode patch (0x33 in
the example above - the version is part of the file name).

So, that covers two methods. Either flash the whole BIOS chip
using the latest from Asus, or use CTMC to only flash the
needed 2KB of microcode to the flash chip. (The 1008c005.zip
beta BIOS contains 0F270433.BIN microcode, so that BIOS will
certainly fix the problem, or you can use that BIOS file
to extract 0F270433.BIN for a "ctmc 0F270433.BIN /store"
operation.)

In the later Microsoft OSes, there is also a microcode loader in
the OS itself. When say, WinXP boots, it can load a microcode
update to the system, in which case the bugs in the processor
are "removed" after the update.sys runs. But, this method leaves
a gap, that extends from POST, until update.sys runs.

You say your errors exist even after WinXP boots. I would think
the microcode update in Windows would remove the microcode as
an issue, so something else must be wrong.

HTH,
Paul