Gary
Wed Feb 18 11:32:50 CST 2004
Flashing a bios is not as dangerous as it sounds...the warnings are true,
but problems are not all that common. It's a case of 'if they didn't warn
you and you flashed the bios for no particular reason other than to have a
newer bios, and it failed, then you messed up the system for no good
reason'....so they tell you the worst case You have a good reason, and
since Noel P has pointed out that the size limit is only for partition size,
you have an easy fix for that part.
If you want to be extra safe, make sure you get the new bios and flash
program from the motherboard or system mfr., read all of the flashing
instructions, full-format and run a thorough scandisk on the floppy, copy
the files to it, run a normal scandisk on the floppy afterward, follow the
recommendation of saving your old bios to the floppy, and do it...most
likely all will go fine. I've had one bios flash fail in many years of
doing them, and was able to recover the board by using a basic ISA video
card and floppy. Most bios's have a 'safe' area that will allow recovery in
the event of a failure.
As for XP, I don't think it's any comparison to Win2000 for user
friendliness...but that doesn't mean your scanner would work, especially if
it's an old parallel port scanner. You could always use a dual boot of ME
and XP; for whatever doesn't work with XP, just reboot to ME.
Gary
"ng_reader" <wilgrow_co@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ddmdnYgldqpoV6_dRVn-uQ@comcast.com...
>
> I actually spent some time, copied my BIOS' version and name down, and
> started looking for a newer version. I saw a lot of stuff out there, and
if
> I flash wrong - **shudder**.
>
> At one point I did upgrade to 2000, but my scanner never worked, so I went
> back. Maybe XP would work, maybe.
>
> And as for a bargain, I'm convincing myself *maybe*. Migrating from a 5GB
> to anything larger was long overdue. It was less expensive than the 120GB
on
> sale that week, so I reckoned I was gettin' over.
>
> "David H. Lipman" <DLipman~nospam~@Verizon.Net> wrote in message
> news:usAIQ1b9DHA.1504@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
> > Win9x/ME does not support 48bit LBA which is required for hard disks
> grater than 137GB. As
> > you noted, you BIOS doesn't support it either so you are out-of-luck.
> >
> > "IF" you can determine the motherboard make and model and then Flash the
> BIOS with upgraded
> > FirmWare, then you may be able to use third party software in WinME to
> support the 160GB
> > drive. If your hardware supports it and you have sufficient RAM
(>=256MB)
> you may want to
> > go to WinXP.
> >
> > So your bargain isn't much of a bargain anymore - is it ?
> >
> > Dave