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Lately I have been trying to find a way to update the BIOS on my 10-year-old Asus P5BW-LA from 3.08 to 3.17. I found an HP update program called sp35153.exe, but whenever I try to run it in Windows XP Pro SP3, it won't install because it thinks I'm not logged in as an Administrator, even when I am.
I recently found an old tutorial that shows you how to take a(n) .exe that is normally used for updating your motherboard BIOS from within Windows (usually provided by manufacturers, such as Dell in his case, or HP in mine) and run it from a bootable CD.
I'm pretty sure followed his tutorial correctly, but whenever I use the bootable CD, I only get an A:\ drive and no Z:\ drive. This is important because according to the tutorial, Z:\ is where my installer .exe should be on the CD. I even burned it again twice, once using 2.88MB floppy emulation and the other using 1.44 emulation (both are advanced settings). The latter had the same issue while the former wouldn't even boot into DOS (which is the way these CDs work).
Could it be a file size issue? His .exe file is only 758KB while mine is 1,341KB, which is pretty close to the 1.44MB capacity of a floppy disk.
Pete
Posted 2017-08-23T01:58:20.370
Reputation: 21
What you want isn't going to be possible. It takes entirely different drivers to talk to a cd rom then it does a floppy drive. I am not aware of any firmware on the market that supports doing so. – Ramhound – 2017-08-23T02:28:46.927
Those instructions are from 10 to 15 years ago or more. The instructions are obsolete. A BIOS update made to run in Windows, should be run in Windows. The instructions are for old DOS based BIOS updates. All major manufacturers support updating in more modern ways, most of them from within Windows, or from USB. Why are you attempting to update from a DOS boot disk? – Appleoddity – 2017-08-23T03:10:30.157
Every time I try to run the executable within Windows XP Pro SP3, it won't update because it thinks I'm not logged in as an Administrator, even though I am (HP Error 9999). I'm updating the BIOS on an Asus P5BW-LA in an HP Pavilion a1640n desktop originally built 2005-2006 (I apologize for not specifying this), so these instructions shouldn't be too outdated for this machine. I think I know why the .exe installer is giving me the error, but fixing it requires reinstalling Windows, and I'm not sure if it will even work. – Pete – 2017-08-23T03:16:27.603
(So just use a different hdd they are cheap) – Ramhound – 2017-08-23T03:17:24.120
^Yeah, I was thinking of getting an SSD as an upgrade. I guess I could keep the WD 1TB HDD I'm using with it right now for storing files that aren't used as much. I don't have much on the PC right now, so if I reinstall Windows I won't lose much (and I have a flash drive with the important stuff on it). For more info on the problem with the executable that I was having: https://superuser.com/questions/1241271/windows-based-bios-update-error-9999-not-logged-in-as-admin
– Pete – 2017-08-23T03:26:26.527