XP, NTFS, and MS-DOS boot disk

[s4ntos3]

Ok, here's a lesson in frustration that has me pulling my hair out:

I got a 512 MB stick of RAM the other day and installed it just to find out the hard way that my MB has compatibility issues with the 3rd DIMM (other two are full). Turns out that there is a BIOS revision that fixes the problem. So, I download the BIOS image and awdflash.exe, prepare a simple MS-DOS boot disk, and reboot the machine. Oh, what do I see?

DISK I/O ERROR.

It seems that my computer is adamantly against the idea of booting from a floppy. Every once in a great while, I can convince it to load command.com and can even (with a great number of four letter words) get it start awdflash.exe. But regardless of how many time I threaten it, I can't get it to load the BIOS image off the disk(s) (oh yes, I tried a great many number of disks).

Now, if this was all there was to this story, I would think that my FD was crapping out on me, but here's the kicker: I can read/write just fine from Windows Explorer. But, just to insure that it is not the FD, I bought a new one. I get almost the exact same behavior, except this one is even more dysfunctional when it comes to booting from FD; I can't even get it to load the command interpreter. It's laughing at me, I can feel it.

This makes me think it is one of two things:
a) The FD controller on my MB is crapping out.
b) My MB does not like boot disks created from an NTFS drive.

Got any ideas? Anybody know how to create a boot disk on CD-ROM

System Information:
OS - XP Sp 1
File System - NTFS
MB - Soyo SY-K7V Dragon Plus
FDD - Standard 1.44 MB 3 1/2" floppy drive

Note: boot disk utilities do not seem to provide a solution since they only provide basic functionality on top of the MS-DOS command interpreter.

[Disk_Contented]

Any of the cd burner progs can do this.
Simply create a boot CD from a floppy using the wizard if poss.
It will come up as drive A: when booted.

Have you got a spare Bios chip?

You know what will happen if the proceedure goes wrong.

[s4ntos3]

No, i don't have an extra BIOS chip. Soyo charges $15 just to reprogram one.

Anyway, I've tried copying the entire disk contents from an MS-DOS boot disk to a CD-ROM, but that didn't work.

NOT A SYSTEM DISK

So, I take it you are talking about a different process? Anyway, I'll look into it. Thanks.

[Disk_Contented]

You have to let the burner program do it.
Regarding the spare chip, any will do that has the same part number as yours. Let me explain:
Boot into Dos, remove the original Bios chip, (bios is in memory by now) replace with the "donor", Flash it.
Reboot as you do and if all went well, you have your original chip safe as a backup.
If the flash went wrong, as it can, turn off and replace your original chip and you lose nothing.
You could allways try again.
It does work, believe me.

[s4ntos3]

Just one problem with that. I can't boot into dos without a boot disk. I'll keep that in mind though for future reference. WOuld be nice to have a couple compatible BIOS chips around.

THanks again.