as luck would have it!
I will attempt to downgrade then following the instructions on page one.
hopefully I can manage it without much trouble from the hardware.
Thanks for the info
The most important thing first make backup dump of your original unit's firmware, on safe place!! several copies of it won't hurt: After original firmware dumped +multiple backuped, nothing bad can happen if modded firmware flash goes wrong, or due to bad modifying.
The Win7 x32 + (other)-Dosflashv-
2.0 method does
not bring any advantage in most cases, as you still need BIOS/Legacy mode here, too + SATA operation at IDE also.
And you still need to install portio32.sys and dsiable windows driver signature checking.
Also there are reports of read and/or write errors sometimes during reading/flashing, so not certainly so reliable.
So, to dump original unit's firmware, I'd use a FreeDOS +Dosflash
1.7 method described at beginning of Teddy's 1st post.
If Dosflash 1.7 detects your unit, because it plays together with your SATA controller hardware, your good to go via this method.
i've seen no problems reported from people so far with this way.
FreeDOS and Rufus Tool donwload link in 1st post
=>"
Steps for dumping firmware : (DOS Method)"
=>"Prepare an USB FreeDOS bootable stick, using Rufus (which can be downloaded
here)."
Then after that just copy the Dosflash.
1.7 files, provided in Teddys 1st post below at attachments, to the root directory of FreeDOS bootable flash drive, previously prepared by Rufus.
If no older BIOS-computer, then In UEFI firmware disable UEFI (switch to BIOS/CSM/Legacy (BIOS compatibilty made) and set SATA to IDE-operation.
Boot from FreeDos USB flash drive, and when in FreeDOS with command prompt then type in Dosflash or Dosflash.exe.
Choose correct port number by pressing corresponding number +OK where it shows your drive.
Press on "R"( for Reading)- be very careful, do NOT press on "E", "E" , which means erasing , "E"is directly next to "R" on keyboard, so take the time to really have pressed the "R" button before any Enter.
if mistakenly pressed "E", take attention to really reach the Backspace-button on keyboard as the (unwanted) Return in this case, is directly beneath backspace!!
Then if really only "R" in selection is displayed, confirm with Enter
Wait until all 32 slots are done.
I'd make it two times to reading, then check both dumps that both have same checksum, to confirm that also USB flash drive is still OK, especially if it should already have been stressed with much data written to it etc.
As I had an USB flash drive, ca. 100 Gbyte written to it, the pen drive no longer was so reliable, bit flips seen after a few weeks, without using it during that, and always used the safely-remove before etc.
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If your computer does not have SATA at IDE and UEFI and without BIOS emulation, afaik you can use a virtual machine like VMware booting FreeDOS within there, and it should detect your drive, see previous poster picture on this page here.
Maybe Virtualbox Virtaul machine works too,
I'm not sure though if the computer and virtual machine software must support or (shouldn't use) some kind of special device passthough (Intel VT-d or AMD IOMMU) , so that Dósflash_1.7 in virtual machine can detect the Asus drive correctly.