I have a Gateway D865GLS mobo The Gateway D865GLS and the Intel D865GLS mobos are essentially the same except for the BIOS. This board has the Gateway BIOS. Can I flash it to the Intel BIOS?
No, because the mobo is from a different brand. You should only flash your BIOS if you are 100% sure that it will solve any problems. Otherwise don't. If flashing fails and you don't have any backups, then you'll need to replace the whole mobo.
I greatly appreciate your replying, however I am more interested in how to do the flash than why newbies shouldn't do it.
Well, first I would make sure that they are identical motherboards with just a different BIOS aesthetic. After that, you'll want to find out if they're the same BIOS coding, i.e. AMI, Phoenix, etc. If not, it won't go. I never looked up as to why, but I suspect it's due to the flash programs being designed only for those BIOSes. Any BIOS upgrade that you can flash is going to be available for floppy download, which you'll run in outside of Windows, so a Windows 98 startup disk will be handy. You may also be able to flash the BIOS through Windows with programs like [google]Winflash[/google]. In any case, the BIOS updates usually come with a readme file, which you should read, of course. The main things to remember in any BIOS flashing are don't do it when there's a storm going that could cut power, make sure the BIOSes are compatible (both AMI or both Phoenix), back up the current BIOS before you do the flash, and don't interrupt the procedure in progress. If all hell does break loose BadFlash can help.
