Restoring the XFX GeForce 8800 GTX board's original BIOS? - 2008/04/12 18:37I accidentally ruined the BIOS using RivaTuner, but after attempting to recover it using nvFlash, it was completely deleted. I have already downloaded the XFX GeForce 8800 GTX BIOS's Rev.01, .02 and .03 from the downloads section. My card is labelled Rev.2, can I use a Rev.03 BIOS? How can I restore the BIOS? The nvFlash program does not seem to recognize the GeForce 8800. Regards...
| | The administrator has disabled public write access.
Mavke
Admin Admin
Posts: 13751
Karma: 346
Re:Restoring the XFX GeForce 8800 GTX board's original BIOS? - 2008/04/13 10:05filipe wrote: I accidentally ruined the BIOS using RivaTuner, but after attempting to recover it using nvFlash, it was completely deleted. I have already downloaded the XFX GeForce 8800 GTX BIOS's Rev.01, .02 and .03 from the downloads section. Whow, that I don't really get how you can ruin the BIOS using RivaTuner as thet program doesn't do any BIOS changes at all really, it just allows you to overclock the card and so on. So whatever you did must be some kind of bad flashing? Then on the BIOS versions of our downloads section, these are our own internal numbering scheme and have nothing to do with the board revision, so any of these BIOS's should work. Though the best thing to do is if you still now the version number of the BIOS to take the BIOS with the closest version number to try first.
| | The administrator has disabled public write access.
filipe
User Junior Boarder
Posts: 11
Karma: 0
Re:Restoring the XFX GeForce 8800 GTX board's original BIOS? - 2008/04/15 04:50Thanks, I already have the BIOS files. I ruined my BIOS by disabling vertex units in RivaTuner, the board worked but didn't display any graphics image, DOS only. I tried restoring it using nvFlash but it failed and completely deleted the BIOS from my card without restoring it. What would be the best way to recover it? Which other software may I use?
| | The administrator has disabled public write access.
DarkFox
User Senior Boarder
Posts: 202
Karma: 7
Re:Restoring the XFX GeForce 8800 GTX board's original BIOS? - 2008/04/15 07:30Have you tried booting into safe mode in windows? Rivatuner makes no BIOS changes at all to my knowledge, it merely changes information stored in the windows registry, driver settings, and the internal registers of the GPU which control clock speed etc (which all reset to BIOS defaults at bootup). I think that if you boot into safe mode and uninstall rivatuner (including all configuration settings) then reinstall it it should fix your problem.
| | The administrator has disabled public write access.
Mavke
Admin Admin
Posts: 13751
Karma: 346
Re:Restoring the XFX GeForce 8800 GTX board's original BIOS? - 2008/04/15 09:51filipe wrote: Thanks, I already have the BIOS files. I ruined my BIOS by disabling vertex units in RivaTuner, the board worked but didn't display any graphics image, DOS only. I tried restoring it using nvFlash but it failed and completely deleted the BIOS from my card without restoring it. Okay thanks for this additional information. Now RivaTuner doesn't change the BIOS at all it just does a software override which is gone as soon as you undo it via RivaTuner or when you simply uninstall RivaTuner. So, what you should do is start in save mode and uninstall RivaTuner and restart. No BIOS update will make a difference as the problem is not the BIOS it is the software override...
| | The administrator has disabled public write access.
filipe
User Junior Boarder
Posts: 11
Karma: 0
Re:Restoring the XFX GeForce 8800 GTX board's original BIOS? - 2008/04/15 21:41Windows would not even start in safe mode after I modified NVStrap in RivaTuner. No graphics were shown at all. So I had to restore it the old way and it didn't work for me too. What else should I try?
| | The administrator has disabled public write access.
DarkFox
User Senior Boarder
Posts: 202
Karma: 7
Re:Restoring the XFX GeForce 8800 GTX board's original BIOS? - 2008/04/16 02:21Did you try the last known good configuration option? You could use another video card if you have one lying around, but it would need to be an ATI card so that the NVStrap settings can't possibly affect it, due to completely incompatible drivers. Alternatively you could use a Linux distro with the NTFS-3g driver installed and manually delete everything to do with RivaTuner, but that's messy...
| | The administrator has disabled public write access.
Mavke
Admin Admin
Posts: 13751
Karma: 346
Re:Restoring the XFX GeForce 8800 GTX board's original BIOS? - 2008/04/16 19:12filipe wrote: Windows would not even start in safe mode after I modified NVStrap in RivaTuner. No graphics were shown at all. So I had to restore it the old way and it didn't work for me too. What else should I try? I have removed some posts as they are just useless. Since you have done something without knowing what you actually did we are somehow in the dark. Meaning, that RivaTuner can not screw up the BIOS and therefore you should have never flashed the card, just an uninstall of RivaTuner would have done it. There is no other tool that can reflash the graphics card, except nvFlash latest version. Though since it is not working I would strongly suggest to visit a friend to try the card and to try on his PC if you can flash it back to the original BIOS? And if the card would work there, I suggest you reinstall your PC completely.
| | The administrator has disabled public write access.
filipe
User Junior Boarder
Posts: 11
Karma: 0
Re:Restoring the XFX GeForce 8800 GTX board's original BIOS? - 2008/04/17 21:50I got now the latest nvFlash, now I'm pretty sure I got it. Will try soon. Can it restore a card that had the BIOS completely erased? The other version I was using of nvFlash did this little service already for me and I hope to fix it. The rest of the PC seems fine since it worked 100% with a GeForce 6800 I used to replace the GeForce 8800 for a while. I have uninstalled and re-installed RivaTuner anyway, and I will never touch NVStrap again until I've learned 100% about it.
| | The administrator has disabled public write access.
Mavke
Admin Admin
Posts: 13751
Karma: 346
Re:Restoring the XFX GeForce 8800 GTX board's original BIOS? - 2008/04/17 23:03filipe wrote: I got now the latest nvFlash, now I'm pretty sure I got it. Will try soon. Can it restore a card that had the BIOS completely erased? The other version I was using of nvFlash did this little service already for me and I hope to fix it. Well normally you can but it is not as easy, though erasing completely means that you would have used the erase option of nvFlash, which I doubt somehow. So I would believe that the flash just went bad and that your card now has difficulties getting initialized and some mainboard are better in still get it done with a faulty BIOS and than you can reflash.
| | The administrator has disabled public write access.
NiBiTor v4.5a
