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So i was assembling a PC for my dad for a (holiday) gift. I got him the Leadtek A250 Ultra TD (Gf4ti 4600 with VIVO).

Long story short. I got greedy and decided to give him my Leadtek A250 TD (Gf4ti 4400 with VIVO) and install the newer card in my PC.

Everything went well until I tried to update the BIOS on the new card. I did this succesfully with my old 4400 card! The Leadtek's come with a cool "winfox" utility that does this in windows! I've done it twice on my original card without a problem. But not this time. Got a checksum error and it wouldn't even let me put the old BIOS back on. PC won't start with this new card installed anymore.

I remember reading a thread earlier - something about getting a chip with the right BIOS from the manufacturer and installing it on the card? I have this other very similar 4400 card here which still works thankfully - are the programmable BIOS chips removeable/replaceable for idiots like me? I am out of ideas

thanks for the help - I feel like a turkey!

I imagine you'd have to solder a chip like that right onto the board. The best way to try and fix the bios of that card is to boot it up with a PCI video card in the machine, and try flashing again.

okay okay I got it back. An old PCI graphics card saved my butt.

Just a few things to share if you are thinking about updating your BIOS (doesn't matter what card you are using):

1> don't do it! If you are reading this, then your card is functioning fine. Only update your BIOS if something is screwed up.

2> make sure you backup the existing BIOS before blowing it away with a new one!

3> make sure you have another card (preferably a PCI) for backup when things go wrong!

4> winfox or not, I recommend doing this from a clean boot on a floppy to your basic DOS prompt - not your operating system environment.

5> when things go wrong (error occurs during flash) that means it is likely that only part of the BIOS was written to the PROM - this is what hapened to me - and if you try to re-flash the old BIOS back on, it will compare it to what is currently on the card and say "aint no way dude" because they don't match. DUH. I had to completely wipe the BIOS and start over. This may be why I wasn't able to fix it while running XP (and without the help of a second graphics card!)

Good luck

I flashed my Leadtek GF4 Ti4400 BIOS with Winfox and it crashed on me... so bad BIOS.

I was a fool and i decided to use my dads machine to d/l the original bios and i flashed my GF4 without the use of the monitor.

Leadtek supplied me with a way to do it which involved making a bootable floppy and editing a file on it so that it would flash automatically.

Unfortunately, I did a fresh install of Win XP on my new 80gig WD SE and i couldnt find my emails section so i cant get the email from Leadtek with the specifics.