Ubuntu v10.04 (64bit), 8GB Memory, Unbootable.

**Hedgehog1** · April 2nd, 2011

landstander,

To begin, you get 5 gold stars for both effort and documenting your findings and results!

Now - I was in a similar situation not too long ago - the mother board I had only supported 4 gigs. I wanted 12 gigs. That box became a nice PC for my Dad, and I got a new bare bones system and built that up.

In your case (as I believe the budget is small for you right now), consider a motherboard swap (keeping your CPU, RAM) This means selecting just the right mother board (Like Goldilocks - it has to be 'just right') so everything can move over.

It's just a thought.

The Hedge

**Quackers** · April 2nd, 2011

On a different tack altogether - have you tried the nomodeset boot option?
When booting from the cd and at the FIRST purple screen, press any key. Then choose your language and at the next screen press F6. Some options will appear bottom right. Choose the "nomodeset" option and see if the live desktop will then load.

**landstander** · April 3rd, 2011

First, thank you all so much for your help and support. I really appreciate it.

Responses:
oldfred:
I wish my BIOS worked as well as yours does, however if you look at the picture in my 4th post you'll see that if I try to boot a flash drive directly read flash from just booting into BIOS that the BIOS just freezes up and doesn't give me any access to any files, folders, directories, disks, flash drives or anything, and I'm determined to stay away from Windows to flash my BIOS because I'm convinced it can be done without the use of Microsoft products. As far as booting from a USB stick, my BIOS is too old and doesn't support booting from a USB drive. As far as booting from a floppy drive? After telling the BIOS that it has a floppy drive to work with, and setting it up to boot from that floppy drive, the light on the floppy drive comes on as if the disk is being read but then, the computer just skips over it and boots as if there was no floppy drive attached. I've tried many different floppy boot disks, I've tried reformatting them in many different ways. I can read and write to the floppy drive so I'm not sure why it doesn't take the floppy disk during boot process especially when the disk has everything on it that it would need (including its boot sector and boot files) in order to boot up and start a DOS environment.

Sorry for the long response its just that oldfred made a lot of really good suggestions and I wanted to give him a chance to understand where I'm at in this process.

Hedgehog1:
I think your most recent suggestion might eventually end up being the one I have to take in order to solve this problem. Hopefully I won't get to that dark place where I've exhausted every possible solution.

Quackers:
Once I have 8GB of memory installed, that first purple screen is where the computer freezes, so pushing any key at that point produces no results since the keyboard as well as the computer is unresponsive (no hard disk lights... nothing). The only thing I can do at that point is to shut the computer off and reduce it back down to 4GB and since the computer works fine with 4GB then the boot disk option becomes irrelevant. It sure would be nice to have that full 8GB though.

Update:
I've been reading in other forums that at least a few people found some success by doing the following:
1.) Burn a bootable FreeDOS Live CD.
2.) Burn a secondary CD that contains the Motherboard manufacturer's (in this case "ASUS") BIOS Flash utility, and the new BIOS file that will be needed when flashing the BIOS.
3.) Reboot the computer using the FreeDOS Live CD.
4.) Once FreeDOS is booted, take out the FreeDOS live CD and replace it with the CD that contains the BIOS Flashing utility and files.
5.) Flash the BIOS.

My attempts at step 1 from the above steps:
1st attempt: I used AcetoneISO (available in the Ubuntu repositories, awesome program, tone of features!) to extract the FreeDOS iso to a directory called FreeDOS. I then added the ASUS BIOS Flash utility and the most recent BIOS from ASUS for my Motherboard to the FreeDOS directory. I then used AcetoneISO to create a new iso file form the files in the FreeDOS directory.
1st attempt result: A non-bootable CD which ended up in my recycle/art parts pile.

2nd attempt: I used Brasero Dis Burner (also in the repos) to burn the FreeDOS iso to a disk checking the box that leaves the disk open to add more files when its done burning. I then burned the ASUS BIOS flash utility and the new BIOS file to that same disk.
2nd attempt result: The disk actually booted!

...but after the FreeDOS boot screen where I select the option to continue booting FreeDOS, it spits out a bunch of text and then freezes and reports that the BIOS can't recognize the number of sectors or tracks.

Here is a picture of that pitiful story:

3rd attempt: I used GnomeBaker CD/DVD writer this time burning at a slow speed with every safety caching backup checking option to create a good working CD.
3rd attempt result: Same exact result as the 2nd result above. See the picture.

What next:
I've started an ASUS support request, and 2 days later I'm still waiting to hear back from them. Maybe I'll start a new thread on a FreeDOS forum to see if any one over there can help me understand why there OS doesn't seem to work. Or maybe I'll see if someone on a CD/DVD burning forum can help me create a disk that actually works.

Comment:
WOW computers are almost more trouble then there worth, but when I think of how busy I am with all these wonderful hardware problems to troubleshoot for days on end with no end in sight I feel a strong sense of having staved off weeks of boredom that can now be replaced with school since spring quarter starts on Monday.

Thanks again for all your help and encouragement. I seriously would have given up by now if it wasn't for all your great suggestions and helpful constructive comments. Thanks.

Current Status:
Unresolved.

**Hedgehog1** · April 3rd, 2011

landstander,

Your posts are very well organized and readable!

I am (sorta) glad you were able to stave off boredom... I think...

If you get this fixed and need to kill hours of useful time, baseball season is upon us.

Anyway, I do fear we have created a monster (who writes really good posts). Being tenacious is all good and fine, but is an extra 4 gigs really worth all this? (yes)

Hopefully Asus Tech Support will have a fix.

The 'are we gonna need an intervention here?' Hedge

**landstander** · April 3rd, 2011

Thanks Hedgehog1,

Yes I must admit that I enjoy troubleshooting my own computer. I used to do this for a living but found that working on other peoples computers somehow took all the fun out of it. I think it might have been the time constraints and the bosses always telling me to just replace stuff instead of actually figuring out what the problem was in the first place. etc... Any way.

Update:
For whatever reason, FreeDOS does not boot and FreeDOS doesn't have a forum only a mailing list (to which I posted a message). I've recently discovered a bootable CD called "Ultimate Boot CD" or UBCD for short. It actually boots up and I'm able to get a command prompt. However I'm still not able to access the files I need to flash the BIOS from there.... and still no word back from the ASUS support staff.

Next step:
I'll try to modify the UBCD iso file to include the files I need in order to flash the BIOS, but I'm not quite sure how to do that and have a bootable iso when I'm done. AcetoneISO is the only program I've found so far in Ubuntu that lets you extract the contents of an iso file, modify it, then write it back to an iso file, but I'm suspecting that the boot sector of the CD might get lost during this process.

I'll keep you posted on my findings and failures as I go.
Again, if anybody has any idea's on how to flash a BIOS that basically doesn't let you use any of its built in flash utilities please feel free to add your idea's tips or suggestions here.

Note: I think the firmware is AmiBIOS v3.06 but I'm not sure if I'm spelling AmiBIOS correctly since the name is only on the screen for a few seconds during each boot.

Again, thanks for keeping up with this thread.

**landstander** · April 4th, 2011

Update:
First partial success.

Preamble:
Ok, 1st this task was extremely difficult to pull off. ASUS tech support has still not gotten back to me, and I'm not sure what I've done has solved the problem or has updated my BIOS to the newest version or not because I wrote down the version number from the ASUS EZ Flash utility embedded within the BIOS instead of writing down the version/revision number for the BIOS itself. Now that its updated I'm not sure if I've actually updated it or downgraded it.

Re-Description of the problem:
The problem I was facing has multiple parts. I will describe these parts in order starting with the main problem, and each successive problem that unfolded from that main problem.

The 64bit OS would freeze up once its memory was upgraded from 4GB to 8GB. Downgrading to 4GB allowed me to start the computer and continue researching a fix for this problem.
After exhaustive testing of the memory chips to make sure they were all in good working condition, it was determined that this might possibly be a BIOS issue. This meant updating the BIOS, however, my particular BIOS would not let me update it via its embedded update utilities which meant using the flash utility provided by the motherboards manufacurer (ASUS). This ASUS BIOS flashing utility was programed to be executed in a DOS environment which leads to the next problem.
How to get access to a DOS environment in Linux (without the use of Microsoft products) when a 1.44MB floppy disk is too small to host the BIOS files necessary to run through the BIOS flashing procedure.

Discoveries:

ASUS has (for whatever reason) made it so that the download links and driver updates for my particular Motherboard no longer exist from the "P5E3 Deluxe WiFi/ap@n" motherboard webpage. When seraching through the ASUS forums I discovered that a few users had started providing links to the updated drivers and download files for my Motherboard right in the ASUS forums.
Some of these updates include, a beta BIOS file, and an updated version of the "BIOS update" section of the motherboard user manual.
According to this new updated section of this Motherboard manual. One of the reasons I might not have been able to get access to the USB flash drive (from the ASUS EZ Flash 2 utility embedded in the BIOS) is that the USB stick that contains the new BIOS update must be the only USB device plugged into the computer and it must be plugged into a very specific USB port in order for the utility to find and discover the USB stick. (I will try this next)

Links to discovered files:
ASUS forum where they talk about the files and updates for the "P5E3 Deluxe WiFi/ap@n" motherboard
http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?...Language=en-us
Note: The above URL, in the BIOS section, contains a broken link to the most up to date beta version of the BIOS. So I'm providing a link to the spot in the forum thread where I found the link to that bleeding edge updated version of the BIOS as well as a direct link to where the file is currently being hosted:
Forum Thread:
http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?...Language=en-us
Direct Link to hosted file:
http://www.mediafire.com/?3e4h8e7m8jcmky7
(Or you can try follow the links at the ASUS website Location : Forum > Motherboard > P5E3 DELUXE/WiFi-AP > Topic : [Sharing]New (custom) Bios)

How I updated my BIOS:
Warning: This took a ridiculous amount of research and effort on my part. If your having the same problem, with the same motherboard and OS, but your not comfortable with the command line then you might consider a different approach to solving your problem.

I downlaoded the Ultamate Boot CD (UBCD) to a directory on my hard drive. (Note: UBCD is an iso file found here: Ultamate Boot CD <--This link was found by clicking on a tiny hard drive icon located at the bottom of this link: UBCD Website.)
Using AcetoneISO (found in the Ubuntu repositories) I extracted the contents of the UBCD iso file to a directory called "ISO_extracted" (but if your reproducing these steps for yourself it could be a directory of your choice).
I also extracted the boot image from UBCD to the same directory (Note: I'm not sure I needed to do this, but I'll check and report back)
WARNING: The UBCD website has a section called "customizing UBCD" which is where I figured out how to do most of this, however the website tries to instruct you to create a system of menu's to run your files from inside UBCD. (1st This is dangerous when updating the BIOS and its better to have direct access to the command prompt when using these files. 2nd It is always dangerous to flash your BIOS and you should never do this unless your willing to purchase a new Motherboard if something goes wrong. 3rd I've discovered a method of using UBCD which is much easier than the method described on there website). Just add the two files you need to use to the UBCD root directory (the directory you extracted the iso file to).
I added the 2 files found at the ASUS website to the root of the "ISO_extrated" directory. These files were called "AFU236U.exe, and "P5E3-Deluxe-1415.ROM". where AFU236U.exe is the ASUS BIOS flashing utility and the other file is an older BIOS file. The newest files as of this post is P5E3-Deluxe-1503.ROM and both of these files can be downloaded from one of the ASUS forum links previously mentioned.
After adding the files to the UBCD root directory (the directory you extracted the iso file to). You then use this directory tree to create a new iso file. Since I didn't have any luck making a bootable iso file using AcetoneISO in an earlier attempt I decided to go with a linux version of a utility found in UBCD itself. This utility needed execution privileges before it could be used. So I did the following:
- Open up the Nautilus file browser and go to the "/ISO_extracted/ubcd/tools/linux/ubcd2iso" folder where "ISO_extracted" is the name of the folder where you extracted the files from UBCD.
- Right click on the file "ubcd2iso.sh"
- Select "Properties" from the bottom of the pop up menu.
- Select the "Permissions" at the top middle of the window.
- Select the checkbox to the left of the words "Allow executing file as program"
- ...and lastly select the "close" button at the lower right hand side of the window.
This gives the file the ability to be executed from the command line.
Then simply run the ubcd2iso.sh file from the command line by giving it the path to your directory tree, followed by the path to where you want the new iso to be created. Example:
Lets say you've extracted your files to /home/user1/ISO_extracted and that you want to use the ubcd2iso.sh script to create a file called "ubcd_custom.iso" in a folder you've created in your $HOME directory called ISO_Disks. (By default Ubuntu comes with the bash scripting engine installed. So to use a script that has the ".sh" extension we use the "bash" command.) We would do this by the following line of code:
Code:
```
bash ubcd2iso.sh /home/user1/ISO_extracted /home/user1/ISO_Disks/ubcd-custom.iso
```
Burn this iso file to a new CD or DVD (I used Brasero Disc Burner (also found in the Ubuntu repositories if you don't already have it installed)).
Reboot the computer using this new customized Ultamate Bood CD.
Once your booted into the UBCD's first main menu, select boot to FreeDOS option. (Sorry I'm having to do this part from memory because I don't have those menu's in front of me for reference).
There should be an option from there to View or Browse your files.
From here choose "drpDown" located at the lower right hand side of the screen (it will be listed next to the number 9). This brings up a new menu at the top of the screen.
Select "right" and choose the C:\ drive.
Then quit or exit UBCD, (Again I'm very sorry but I don't have these menu's in front of me so its difficult to remember how I got out of the program to the C: prompt, you'll just have to do like I did and search through as many of the menu options as possible until you find the right one).
Once your at the command prompt the two files you've chosen to download from the ASUS website will be listed by issuing the "dir" command. From here you can update your BIOS by using the 2 files you've downloaded from the ASUS forum links as well as the instructions from the updated version of the BIOS section of the Motherboards Manual (Found in the ASUS forum links at the beginning of this thread).

Drawbacks to the above method:
Every time it is necessary to flash the BIOS (which hopefully isn't that often) using this method would mean it will also be necessary to burn a new Ultimate Boot CD with new BIOS files on it. If the instructions in the new Motherboard manual do the trick and I'm able to flash the BIOS from a USB stick then this entire post will be a mute point.

Current Status:
Still testing and working on updating to see if I can get the 8GB to work. I'm actually not that optimistic that the BIOS update will fix this problem, but I did find a bunch of solutions to related problems, so if I do reach a conclusion about this thread, I'm not sure what I should label the thread as... maybe [Sort of solved]? *shrug* I guess I'll just have to cross that bridge when I get there.

Thanks.

**Hedgehog1** · April 4th, 2011

Your bios has been updated (Hurray!). And here I thought it might never really happen!

And look Ma! Only 92

simple steps, too!

I wonder what the odds are this update will support the 8 gigs?

This is a real page-turner!

The Hedge

**landstander** · June 16th, 2011

Final Update:
After extensive testing and talking with tech support at ASUS, I've come to the conclusion that the memory chips that I have are not supported by ASUS for this specific motherboard, in other words they are incompatible over 4GB but somehow compatible at 4GB and under.

*shrug* makes no sense but there you have it.

Sometimes you don't get what you pay for.

So the moral of this story is:
You should always read your motherboards qualified memory vendor list very carefully and only purchase memory sticks that are listed as qualified for the specific configuration your going to be using.

Note: I would mark this thread as solved but that would give the wrong impressions since it is very much unsolved and unsolvable without the purchase of very expensive qualified memory sticks. There is no option to mark this thread as "intractable" or "unsolvable" so I guess I will just have to leave it as is.