Not the best place for this, but figured it wouldn't hurt to ask anyway because I'm just looking for some kind of knowledge to extract certain files. Anyway, I have an Alienware Area-51 M9750 (which I mentioned a couple times). I was having a problem with my SLI for whatever reason, and after trial and error and countless hours of troubleshooting I could not get it to work again. Every time I enable SLI, my system blue screens and reboots and I have to uninstall my graphics driver in order to run the system with a single card setting so that it will not crash. I don't know the cause of the problem, it was just something that I woke up to and saw the beautiful blue screen on my laptop. That's not the main problem though. In looking for some way to fix this, I decided that I needed to update my BIOS. Now, I got the BIOS file from Alienware's tech support which they packaged in a bootable .iso file to burn to a CD. Easy enough to flash with, just follow the on screen instructions and blah blah blah.
However, when I was flashing my BIOS my PC shut off, presumably from heat. It was done with the delete portion, and about 68% within the write portion. That means my computer is effectively a brick right now because I don't have a BIOS on the motherboard. After many calls and attempts to fix this with tech support, I got a few method on how to try to fix this problem. Every solution involves using a 3.5 inch floppy drive and putting your BIOS on to it, and starting your PC and forcing your system to update the BIOS from the floppy drive. So that doesn't seem so hard. One particular solution is from this site:
Recover or Undo Corrupt AMI BIOS Flash Update ยป My Digital Life (http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/03/09/recover-or-undo-corrupt-ami-bios-flash-update/)
The problem is, however, that the ONLY form of the BIOS file you can get from Alienware is in a .iso file format. When opened up the file (m9750_BIOS_0F04_XP.iso) with Power ISO and pretty much any .iso program out there (Magic Iso, Daemon tools, etc.) you cannot see the actual BIOS files because they are hidden. So finally I got a program called IsoBuster Pro which I was able to look inside the m9750_BIOS_0F04_XP.iso successfully and find the hidden files. There was a folder within the .iso called Bootable Disc which contained 2 files: BootCatalog.cat and BootImage.img. The BootImage.img file looked interesting so I extracted that with IsoBuster Pro and then loaded that file with IsoBuster Pro. When looking inside the BootImage.img file, I finally found the .rom BIOS file I was looking for (w8350f04.rom) which is shown in this screen shot:
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/BurningRage02004/Misc/Rom.jpg)
So now the problem is, how do I extract the w8350f04.rom file from the BootImage.img file? I've tried to use the extract command from IsoBuster Pro and it will not extract the file (I have a fully licensed and registered version of IsoBuster Pro 2.6). Every time I execute the extract command the popup progress bar disappears instantly and I hear a beep like it's been done, but it actually hasn't. I have searched high and low for programs that can extract something from a .img file successfully to no avail. I've mounted the BootImage.img using Daemon Tools and when I try to view the files within the .img it keeps giving me an error that says something like "unknown file system". WinRar cannot open the BootImage.img, but I was able to open the m9750_BIOS_0F04_XP.iso that conained the BootImage.img with it (go figure... although the BootImage.img was hidden when opened with WinRar). Neither can PowerISO or Magic ISO.
Just in case anyone knows how to or would like to extract the files themselves, here is an uploaded link for the BIOS file I have which is hosted on Mediafire. It is a .rar pack with the original m9750_BIOS_0F04_XP.iso (straight from the Alienware website) file and the extracted BootImage.img file that I am looking to extract the w8350f04.rom file from:
Bios Files.rar (http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?cnmqucmzitm)
Any help would be greatly appreciated. The solution is so close because I have the .rom file in my possession, but no way to actually extract it from this BootImage.img file to put on my floppy and actually use it to flash my BIOS. Without it, my computer is as good as dead. Thanks for your time for anyone who's read and/or replied to help. Cheers.
Freshly squeezed w8350f04.rom:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?tnnuy42jzil
Hopefully it's what you were looking for
OMG Dude. You are a total LIFESAVER. Seriously, I owe you big time. I haven't seen my PC on for days. I've been working for countless hours trying to get this damn thing to work. You're definitely my hero lol. How'd you extract the files if you don't mind?
No worries, I hope it works out for you. I extracted it by mounting it in Linux.
Sweet action. I don't have Linux so I wasn't able to do that. Now here's to hoping that I can get SLI working again. :rofl:
To Norrin Radd,
It is really cool that you were able to help Burning Rage with his computer problem. I have been in some situations with my computer that I didn't think I could get through. So I know how getting such dilemmas resolved is a MAJOR relief.