New OS - Updating Drivers - BIOS

So I finally updated my OS and it worked great. I have my \Users folder on my D: drive and my apps on my C: drive.

Gah, I totally forgot about all the drivers I need to update now.

I found out when I plugged my eSata drive back into my PC and a reboot wouldn't recognize it.

A quick Google and they basically all talk about updating drivers, BIOS and most likely the drive chip on the mobo.

I have an Asus P5B Deluxe motherboard from eons ago, so off to their web site I went looking for the latest drivers.

There's so many drivers just for the mobo, I may just go insane.

First up, let's update the BIOS driver. What's the worst that could happen? Oh, yeah I could brick the machine. I'm on v1101, which looks like I update the BIOS at least once a while ago since the release date is after I bought the mobo. They now have v1238; but it's a beta. Actually they all are since v1101. I figure they don't want to officially support this old board anymore, but were nice enough to update it for a while.

More Googling around and I found this web page which basically says not to use the bios updater program that comes from Asus; heck it wouldn't even run on Win7 x64.
http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?id=20070215223109668&board_id=1&model=P5B+Deluxe/WiFi-AP&SLanguage=en-us&page=1

It pretty much says, stick the BIOS rom on a USB stick and reboot and there's a built in BIOS tool (EZ Flash 2) that you can use to reboot from the file on the USB key. That's great.

First, I need to write down all my BIOS settings just in case... (I think I needed a higher voltage for my RAM)
(I wish I could screen shot the BIOS settings. Hmm... I could take pictures of the screens.)

Ok, bye, hope to see you soon.

[Insert cool Terminator rebooting effects here]

Back, with only a couple hiccups.

1. Writing down all BIOS screens sucks. I got through about 4 screen, before I just said screw it and got the camera to take pictures of all the screens.
2. Don't forget to perform the CPR step (unplug and let rest for a couple minutes). I just let the BIOS reboot after it flashed itself and suddenly my CMOS didn't checksum. Yikes.
3. After CPR'ing, Windows did boot up, but using VGA. It immediately found the drivers for my video card (Radeon x1950) installed them and told me to reboot. Did that and all was fine.

So, BIOS checks out. I haven't bothered to tweak any of the settings. A few of the configuration screens are different from my last BIOS version. I don't think I did anything to the BIOS over the last few years anyway. I'll tackle the settings when I start trying to overclock.

That's it for tonight, more later...