Hd 6950 Flash Failed and black screen.

[Sweyn]

Hello people !

Registered today, well then, gonna explain the problem, I hope you'll can answer me, sorry if you misunderstand something, english isn't my language, I'm french.

So, I have to say that I made something really dumb, I tried to flash my new hd6950, but I forgot to look for the switch (commutator, dunno how can I say this, the switch to bios 1 and 2)

And now, I cannot have any image when I boot in bios 1, and I have a red Led on the GPU device on my motherboard... When I switch to bios 2, I can use Bios, USB boot, and Windows in safe mode.

I tried to use the command with the boot in USB with a hd6950 bios (I forgot to say that I totally forgot to save my bios... yes, seriously.) , but my file isn't detected, and if I use hd6970 bios (Asus bios, my card is a Club 3D ), it says that it's okay, but nothing seems to change. I obviously don't forget to switch from 2 to 1 when I managed to use the USB boot, but it doesn't work !

I used the .bat version of flashing, I tried with flash back to hd6950 and the flash to hd6970
but it doesn't work too. But that's probably because I'm in safe mode, and I can't launch it because it needs to use the administrator mode, but it doesn't work, the program pops up another window and it's probably blocked by the system...

Thanks for reading my thread, I hope someone will help me...

[Fros]

The first step would be to find your original Bios (never heard of the card you mention was yours so im rather useless on that front). The second step for me would be to drop the broken card into the second and add a working card to the first slot, from there you would load into windows like normal and use ATI winflash to flash the original bios of the broken card onto the broken card in ATI winflash you will see two cards that you can select its very important that you select the broken card to be flashed you will be able to tell the difference by the number of the bios.

This all may be very confusing and i am horrible at explaining things but from your post it sounds like you will def need a second card to help you flash your broken one. Just make sure you select the right card in ATI winflash and you will be fine, (It is possible to use DOS to do this but you would have to flash to a different number slot)

10) Open up the command prompt (Start->All Programs->Accessories) you may have to right click and run as adminstrator
11) Change to the ATI Winflash directory with the command "cd C:\winflash" or what ever directory you saved it in
12) Type "atiwinflash -unlockrom 0" (the "0" stands for the first PCIe card installed, "1" will work for the 2nd card)
13) Type "atiwinflash -f -p 0 modded.bin" (the "0" stands for the first PCIe card installed, "1" will work for the 2nd card)

Replace Modded.bin with your original bios and flash to the number 1 (for the second card)

[Sweyn]

Originally Posted by Fros

The first step would be to find your original Bios (never heard of the card you mention was yours so im rather useless on that front). The second step for me would be to drop the broken card into the second and add a working card to the first slot, from there you would load into windows like normal and use ATI winflash to flash the original bios of the broken card onto the broken card in ATI winflash you will see two cards that you can select its very important that you select the broken card to be flashed you will be able to tell the difference by the number of the bios.

This all may be very confusing and i am horrible at explaining things but from your post it sounds like you will def need a second card to help you flash your broken one. Just make sure you select the right card in ATI winflash and you will be fine, (It is possible to use DOS to do this but you would have to flash to a different number slot)

10) Open up the command prompt (Start->All Programs->Accessories) you may have to right click and run as adminstrator
11) Change to the ATI Winflash directory with the command "cd C:\winflash" or what ever directory you saved it in
12) Type "atiwinflash -unlockrom 0" (the "0" stands for the first PCIe card installed, "1" will work for the 2nd card)
13) Type "atiwinflash -f -p 0 modded.bin" (the "0" stands for the first PCIe card installed, "1" will work for the 2nd card)

Replace Modded.bin with your original bios and flash to the number 1 (for the second card)

Okay but there is something I can't understand, if I use unlockrom with my broken card on the pci express n°2, I'm supposed to type atiwinflash -unlockrom 1, instead of 0 ?

Can I use it from the safe mode of windows ? Then I could use only my broken card into switch n°2, and then turn to switch n°1 before flashing, I guess ?

[Sweyn]

Okay, I managed to restore the bios n°2, it seems fine for him, but curiously, my mouse and my keyboard cannot move now that I flashed the bios, but windows is working fine when I push the power button, what the heck ?

EDIT : I don't know why, but my mouse and keyboard works now, seems that I have to wait some seconds to work, anyway, when I try to flash the bios n°1 with Atiwinflash with the original bios, it says "Non-correspondance des SubsystemID " Any ideas ? :x I can try to flash it with a boot Usb ? I'm just to afraid to damage bios n°2 once more... x)

[Fros]

Im kind of lost as to what your trying to do by flashing your card, if you are flashing it simply to unlock the extra shaders then this video will explain everything you need to do.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrHIsd-rzwc
By doing it that way its pretty much bullet proof the only thing you are doing is changing the shaders rather then flashing a different bios to the card

As to the error message you are getting, that is written in french, when i tried to google it all i got was alot of forum posts written in french. Its also worth noting that some cards are just not able to be unlocked. and some manufacturers will lock one of the bios switches on cards with a dual bios so that it is impossible to brick the card.

[Fros]

Originally Posted by Sweyn

Okay but there is something I can't understand, if I use unlockrom with my broken card on the pci express n°2, I'm supposed to type atiwinflash -unlockrom 1, instead of 0 ?

Can I use it from the safe mode of windows ? Then I could use only my broken card into switch n°2, and then turn to switch n°1 before flashing, I guess ?

Yes if you have two cards install in two seperate PCI-E lanes if the second card is the one you want to flash you type atiwinflash -unlockrom 1 you would also type atiwinflash -f -p 1 modded.bin after that command, that should complete the flash then you would be prompted to restart. (With modded.bin being your bios you want to flash.)

Atiwinflash cant be used in safe mode as far as i know

[Sweyn]

Well, my bios N°2 is now working fine, but I'd like to restore the bios n°2, which isn't working, with atiwinflash in windows normal mode, I think the error message means that the ID of the bios doesn't match with the card itself. So I guess that I have to use the Usb Boot instead, but I can't load anything, I'd like to install the hd6950 drivers, then unlock shaders and overclock...

[Fros]

As for getting BIOS 1 bootable again, boot into windows (on BIOS Switch 2), get the unlocked BIOS from MSI (linked in the article above) and open ATI Winflash. Load the new BIOS into ATI Winflash, then, while the PC is running, flip the BIOS switch to the 1st position. Now, flash the BIOS and reboot.
That should fix your booting problem, and unlock the shaders in one strike


~ That post was found at http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/33...on-overclocked
This may fix your problem just after you have booted into the working one, flip the switch while the computers running and do the flash then.
You should def go through that forum post and see what everyone there is doing, that problem seems very close to yours and has alot of good info IMO.

[Sweyn]

I'm going mad, now that I repaired the bios 1, I wanted to play, it worked from yesterday to now, then I got my two screens frozen, then the first screen ( hd 6950 display ) went black and my second screen remained frozen, I restarted the pc, and it crashes again in windows normal mode, I thought that it was okay, but it seems not... And I don't really remember how I managed to repair it...

So, do I try another usb boot and flash in bios n°2 ?

EDIT : I tried to re-flash, but I don't know why, it doesn't find the .bin file of my original card, nor the others, but it recognized the asushd6970 one, and it doesn't work... what the f*** is that, I only can acces safe mode of bios n°2 now, and I really don't know what I'm supposed to do if this doesn't work, any ideas why it is not recognized ?

For example, I download the hd6950 club 3D bios, and renamed it biosoriginal, now, I reboot my pc on USB boot, and I type atiflash -unlockrom 0 , then I type atiflash -p -f 1 (because my broken card is in pci express n°2 ) biosoriginal.bin, and it says that the file's not found... Did I missed something ?

The two bios are broken, so I use the other vga, but it seems that I can't load windows normal, I have to use the safe mode... --'

[Fros]

You unlocked the Rom on card1 and flashed card 2, that probably effected it but im not sure about everything else
Should have been atiflash -unlockrom 1, atiflash -p -f 1

[Sweyn]

it seems that my file is now recognized, (yet I think i'm stupid, forgot to copy the new files in the usb key )

But when I type atiflash -unlockrom 1, it says that the adapter's not found, so I guess my card isn't recognized, any ideas why ?


Edit : I don't know if this can help, but when I have the two vga's connected, windows cannot start, I only can use safe mode, but if I remove the Hd 6950, it works fine, BUT the usb boot doesn't detect the card... That's pretty strange, if it wasn't detected by the system, it wouldn't crash when loading, even if my card was plugged, I don't know if it's supposed to be good or not, but I had to precise it, also, my hd6950 is plugged in the other pci express 16x slot, I wondered if the number 0 and 1 was made for the first and the second vga, or the first and second pci plus, I tried the command with 1 2 3 and 4, but it still doesn't work...

[Fros]

You still have both cards installed into two PCI-E slots?, if that's the case then something went really wrong at some point or another.

Card 1 is 0 in atwinflash, the second card is 1 and so on

EDIT: Try unplugging your USB flash drive, i remember one time when i spent hours troubleshooting that when my motherboard had simple refused to let windows recognize it, and thus windows was stuck trying to load something it couldn't and would hang forever.

[Sweyn]

Well I understood something, the atiflash doesn't recognize nvidia cards, so I had to type the command in atiflash 0 even if this was the second card plugged, I load another flash, but it did not repaired the card, I'll use another, I'll see about that, I hope it will work...


I just can't understand what's going on, I managed to repair the bios n°2, and when I installed the drivers, when I rebooted I couldn't boot windows, got an ati error, atikmpag.sys BSOD ..., seems that the bios I used doesn't match ...

Edit : I'm looking for another bios more compatible, I guess that is the problem.

EDIT : Seems that the drivers are getting me the crashs, if I install them, my pc gets a bsod, what am I supposed to do ?

[Fros]

Have you tried to install just the Video driver and not the entire catalyst program? some video card bios have compatibility issues with certain motherboards my brothers msi 6950 requires him to install the drivers without catalyst or his screen goes greenish and crashes, where in my computer it boots fine no matter how i install the drivers (we concluded that this was because of his motherboard, though it might not be)

[Sweyn]

Well I let windows install de drivers, but now I crash before it install it, so ... Should I load another usb flash ?

[Fros]

Well at this point the only thing left that can be wrong is the BIOS or the card. The only solution i can see is if you find the original bios that came with the card from the factory, get a good flash on it and if it still crashed id hope and pray they accept the RMA. (Def leave out all of the flashing you have done on the RMA form) :P

[Sweyn]

I'll look for another bios then. I guess that's the only thing I can do...
Just to know, if I install the right bios they souldn't see anything, but what's the original switch when we receive the card ? I don't remember, is it the 1 or 2 ?

[Fros]

On one of my 6950's the first bios is a standard 6950 bios that is unwritable (they locked it) and the second switch came with 6970 shaders on. In a fair world you should not have been able to flash your first bios (Some people claim there bios switch 1 flashed once then would lock itself, No idea if there is fact to this) so that you would have a fail proof backup.

[Sweyn]

I didn't really understood what you said Fros, the first bios is the n°1 if I'm right ? But I managed to flash both bios because I tried to restore both. What do you mean by have a fail proof backup ?

[Fros]

I mean that the manufacturer should have locked one of the Bios's so that you could not flash it, if they had your card would still be able to boot up in bios #1.
And yes the first bios is usually the default one

[Sweyn]

Well it seems that the second bios isn't locked like you said, if it was, I couldn't have broke it, right ? or perhaps my card is indeed repaired, but doesn't reacts good with windows ...

[Sweyn]

One of my friend gave me the original bios of my card (He has the same card as mine), I'll try it tomorrow when I'll can touch it. But it doesn't answer me, is the bios n°2 really locked ? I don't think so... and are the two bios differents or it's just a question of locking ? (Just asking for the RMA, if I restore both bios with the one my friend gave me, It will work fine, right ? )

[Fros]

Neither one of your Bio's are locked i was just mentioning that alot of company's tend to lock one, didn't mean to add confusion.

As long as both Bio's are originals i don't see how they could decline your rma. but i have no experience or ever even heard of your card manufacturer, though that's probably because we are from different parts of the world.

[Sweyn]

Okay I see, man I'm in my last way to repair it, one of my friends bought the same card as me, and he gave me his bios, saved with atiflash, but the file isn't recognized as a .bat file, it's only detected as a file, what should I do, Do I boot in usb and only write the name of the file, without any .bat or .rom ?

[Fros]

You need to rename the file to a .bin or .rom, .bat is a batch file (you don't want a batch file) in order to do this right click it go to file,open the file with notepad (you will see alot of crazy stuff, ignore it) then click save as this will give you a "File name" spot and a "Save as type" box, in the save as type drop down box select all files, then rename the file with the extension as a.bin (example: Bios.bin) this will make a different file in the form of a .bin. Go to were you saved the file and select the new one that is a .bin file.

This is all assuming you have the bios saved the right way of course.

Edit: the renaming will have to be done in windows on a different computer if yours is not working.