Hi Guys,

Finally.... finally ....we have some success!

PROBLEM: After flashing Bios v1403 I kept getting the error message:
"Boot Disk Error, Please insert system disk"

As I didnt have a floppy drive on my gaming rig, I tried to create a bios flash / MS-DOS USB Flash Memory Stick / CD-ROM. I'm relatively intelligent and trust me... it was too complicated by far. So after 3 days I gave in and went and bought a couple of floppy drives. One for each system in the house... one to make the boot floppy and one for my bricked Quad Core system.

Step One: I downloaded Caldera Dr Dos 1703 as recommended and ran the exe. It creates an MS-DOS boot disk. Please note that the floppy "looks" empty but it isnt.... approx 121KB is used up.

Step Two: I downloaded AWDFLASH v1.32 and Bios v.1205 and put them onto the floppy 'loose' (i.e. not in any folders)

Step Three: Make sure the bios settings looked to boot the floppy or removable disk first (press DEL during boot to bring up Bios Menu). I put the disk into the bricked system and booted up.

Step Four: After Caldera Dr Dos runs, an A:\ command prompt comes up. I did the force flash by typing:

AWDFLASH 1205.bin / f

...not forgetting the spaces:

AWDFLASH(space)1205.bin(space)/ f

.. without the ' /f ' force flash, I kept getting error messages; without the newest AWDFLASH error messages kept coming up. The 'power down' option didnt work. Other bios versions and AWDFLASH combinations didn't work.

Anyhow, the reflash worked.

BUT when I tried to restart after reflashing the Bios, I still had the same problem; namely "Boot Disk Error, Please insert system disk" .. or something like that. I was really confused until I plugged in my brain...

ANSWER: I have multiple hard drives on my system.. namely first HDD (C:\) = SATA, second HDD (D:\) = IDE, third HDD (E:\) = SATA

I figured out that perhaps the system could not figure out which hard drive to boot up from i.e. the system could not 'find' the XP installation. All the bios settings seemed to be correct and there shouldn't have been any reason for this to be the case (autodetect function on hard drives was ON and the hard drives were shown up, ordered and named correctly).

SOLUTION: Opened the system and unplugged all the 'unnecessary' hard drives leaving only the main C:\ with the XP installation on it. I made sure the bios boot settings had the 'Boot Priority' with the hard drive before anything else (removable disk, CD-ROM etc). Woo! Everything boots fine. Finally, one by one, I reconnected another hard drive, rebooted, checked it was recognised properly and then did the same again for the final hard drive.

Perhaps this might have worked with Bios 1403... I will never know because I now am not likely to flash with this Bios... Once bitten, Twice shy....

Just a warning to some of you like me.... if Bios 1403 bricks your system...
CHECK WHAT THE ERROR IS BEFORE YOU GO ON A WILD GOOSE CHASE.

Thanks to everyone for their advice... I have all the files if anyone is struggling (but they are available.. .look around).

Peace to All....
Vote OBAMA for our last best chance for world peace....
"Take not the disbelievers as friends and protectors"

Hello guys.

I registered to say thank you :-) This finally worked!

I was stupid enough to flash to 1404 bios (don't fix what works, right?), and it borked my system.

I finally managed to create an USB boot drive (as I don't have a floppy drive) and started up the 1.06 AWD flash tool. And to my irritation it said Unknown Flashtype on both 1103 and 1205 bios.

So I tried with the newest AWD flash tool, 1.31. It accepted the bios 1205, but complained that it was an older version and that I couldn't flash.

Then I tried the command "awdflash.exe /f 1205.bin" and it started flashing after creating a backup of the 1404 bios. You can imagine my relief :-D

For those of you who doesn't have a floppy drive and want to boot from a usb drive, check out this page which explains the process to great detail: http://www.gamebeat.net/forum/showthread.php?t=1057

Thanks again guys!!