I was watching my computer boot up earlier, and noticed the speed ratings were totally out. It was saying my processor was 2 cores running at 462Mhz, rather than 1.86Ghz each. Now, this seems a bit too much out for a little error. So, the obvious option seemed to be update the BIOS. I went to the Asus website, and had 2 options, create a DOS boot floppy and install from there, or use their software from within windows.
Now, the last time I used their software it froze my pc, and corrupted the BIOS, luckily it just auto-restored it when I rebooted. So I chose the floppy option. What A Mistake.
Firstly, I don’t have a floppy drive in my PC, so, off to the cupboard and under a pill of crap I find one, plug it in, start up, anf the light just won’t go off, and I can’t access it. After a couple of reboots I finally gave up. Back to the cupboard, another floppy, this time it worked. So, hanging out of the side of my computer, stacked upon 100 CD-r’s I was able to format it as a boot disk, then copy over the files.
Nice and simple, or so it sounds. Shutdown, Reboot, but Nooo Won’t load up any of the files. Stubborn thing. By now I’d spent about 1/2 an hour messing around with floppy discs and had had no success. So, I find a live XP CD (Not sure where it came from, it’s just there). So I booted into that, which took bloody ages, formated it, and then copied over the files. Et Voila. Kindof.
Same process again, reboot, open the flashing software, load the bios file, FREEZE. For crying out loud, one simple thing, and a computer cannot handle it. Alls I ask from it is that it boots from a floppy disc, updates the bios, and done, job’s a good ‘un.
By now I was getting rather annoyed, but, was wanting to sort this problem, so refused to give up. I was looking around for other floppy discs and found one in the motherboard box labelled “Asus Updated BIOS”. Thinking it couldn’t get any worse, I gave this a try, finally, the darn thing worked. No, it isn’t the most up to date bios, but it works, and that counts for something.
Anyway, I think this is enough ranting for one night 
On a unrelated note though, aren’t computers cheap! I was looking around on ebuyer earlier, just messing, as you do 
And wondered how much you could get a computer for, the total, justunder £140 (this is with a 250Gb HDD though, so it could be less). No, it isn’t the best spec in the world, but it would make a good file/development server, with ubuntu on it. For anyone interested here are the parts:
- MSI Motherboard
- Intel Celeron D Processor (2.66Ghz)
- 256Mb DDR Ram
- 250 Gb Hard Drive
- DVD Drive
- And finally, something to put it all in (optional of course, you are free to stack everything up in a corner, just don’t let any pets near it )
Now, it is possible to make it cheaper, but be reasonable,have you ever tried to run ubuntu with 128 meg of ram, I have, through MS Virtual PC, trust me, you need lots of patience (and I’m talking about pre-install)
Anyway, I think i’ve written far to much random irrelated stuff for now.