bios flashback question, asus z690-f

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Does this actually work? I tried going from 2802 to 3302 (skipping one intermediate BIOS), following Asus' video on YT: run the bios renamer, copy the .cap file to the root of a flash drive, plug said drive into the correct motherboard port, turn the power off, hold down the flashback button until the LED next to it blinks, then wait until the light goes out. Normally, flashing from within the bios takes a couple of minutes, but the flashback process has been running at least 20 minutes now and the LED is still on solid. I tried this last year with an older bios revision, same issue. Any thoughts? I mean, I guess I'll just flash it the regular way, but it would be nice if the flashback actually worked.
 
That is designed as a fallback incase you have trouble booting. I'd always go through the normal method rather than use flashback. Also last time I used it it did not take that long.
 
supposed to really only be for a unsupported cpu update or corrupt bios recovery.
only done it once, also an asus, and iirc it was done when the flashing stopped. it be nice it it would just auto-reboot or power down when done or something so you know its good...
stick with updating via bios, i do.
 
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Took the dog for a walk, and when I came back the LED was still solid. It had been an hour or so by that point, so I flipped the PSU switch, then unplugged the drive & rebooted. Still on the old bios. I just did it the regular way, and it's all set now. Had to go and turn XMP back on, though, which is a bit annoying, but it always happens, so whatever.
 
Does this actually work? I tried going from 2802 to 3302 (skipping one intermediate BIOS), following Asus' video on YT: run the bios renamer, copy the .cap file to the root of a flash drive, plug said drive into the correct motherboard port, turn the power off, hold down the flashback button until the LED next to it blinks, then wait until the light goes out. Normally, flashing from within the bios takes a couple of minutes, but the flashback process has been running at least 20 minutes now and the LED is still on solid. I tried this last year with an older bios revision, same issue. Any thoughts? I mean, I guess I'll just flash it the regular way, but it would be nice if the flashback actually worked.
Yes, it works and it works perfectly. This is how I update BIOS and no it's not just for when you have a corrupt BIOS or some other BIOS issues; it's for updating BIOS, just another method to update BIOS. You just need to make sure you place the firmware in the root drive and not in a folder and not have any other file(s) on the thumb drive. It sounds like you still had the firmware file in a folder.
 
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No, it was in the root drive, the directions are clear about that, but they didn't say the drive had to be emply, so it wasn't.
Ahh, that's why it did not work. The video doesn't specifically say not to have any files, but it specifically says to prepare drive by formatting it, which would wipe all files on the USB. Try it again next time. It's much easier than having to enter BIOS or the OS (I would not use the OS process).
 
No, it was in the root drive, the directions are clear about that, but they didn't say the drive had to be emply, so it wasn't.
Is the drive formatted as fat32 and did you use the specified USB port mentioned in the manual?

I flashed an older Asus board (BIOS was corrupted) a while ago and it worked.
 
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Is the drive formatted as fat32 and did you use the specified USB port mentioned in the manual?
Probably (and certainly, the bios can read the drive to find the file when I do it the regular way) and yes. The correct port's clearly marked on the back panel, too.
 
You could try pestering Asus about it but they'd probably want you to RMA the board if they did anything.
 
USB flashback is a required feature for me at this point and I only use that method for flashing. I find when it doesn't work its almost always user error. Empty freshly formatted flash drive, MBR partition scheme at least on Asrock boards (this one trips people up), no other folders, properly renamed (if applicable). When renaming make sure you have file extensions turned on, the number of times i've seen people rename their file to creative.ROM.ROM is too many...
 
USB flashback is a required feature for me at this point and I only use that method for flashing. I find when it doesn't work its almost always user error. Empty freshly formatted flash drive, MBR partition scheme at least on Asrock boards (this one trips people up), no other folders, properly renamed (if applicable). When renaming make sure you have file extensions turned on, the number of times i've seen people rename their file to creative.ROM.ROM is too many...
I know about file extensions--I have the "hide them" setting turned off on that PC, plus I used the biosrenamer tool to do it, so a bad name wouldn't have been my fault. My best guess is the "drive wasn't empty" theory, but I have to say that's a stupid reason for it not to work, because the bios should know what the file's called (otherwise, there's no reason to enforce a specific name.)
 
I know about file extensions--I have the "hide them" setting turned off on that PC, plus I used the biosrenamer tool to do it, so a bad name wouldn't have been my fault. My best guess is the "drive wasn't empty" theory, but I have to say that's a stupid reason for it not to work, because the bios should know what the file's called (otherwise, there's no reason to enforce a specific name.)
I've never had this problem, but I have an old dedicated USB2 drive I use for flashing and its always empty minus the file i'm trying to flash. I've never had a failure.
 
I used a partially filled drive to flash an Asrock X670E board (stuck on memory training), as well as the previously mentioned Asus board, and both were successful
 
My best guess is the "drive wasn't empty" theory, but I have to say that's a stupid reason for it not to work, because the bios should know what the file's called (otherwise, there's no reason to enforce a specific name
Highly speculative, but maybe some of the flashback software can't read fragmented files, and you're more likely to get a fragmented file if there'a other junk on the drive already.
 
Does this actually work? I tried going from 2802 to 3302 (skipping one intermediate BIOS), following Asus' video on YT: run the bios renamer, copy the .cap file to the root of a flash drive, plug said drive into the correct motherboard port, turn the power off, hold down the flashback button until the LED next to it blinks, then wait until the light goes out. Normally, flashing from within the bios takes a couple of minutes, but the flashback process has been running at least 20 minutes now and the LED is still on solid. I tried this last year with an older bios revision, same issue. Any thoughts? I mean, I guess I'll just flash it the regular way, but it would be nice if the flashback actually worked.
Solid with no blinking, means its not working.

Sometimes you just have to try a different drive. I've seen people try 3 or 4 different drives, before success.
That is designed as a fallback incase you have trouble booting. I'd always go through the normal method rather than use flashback. Also last time I used it it did not take that long.
Another major use case for this feature, is being able to update the bios on a new motherboard, for a CPU which released after the motherboard did. As motherboards often don't start shipping with support for newer CPUs, until months later.

For example: if you buy a new AM5 motherboard right now, and one of the new 8700G APUs which released in the past month-ish-----I doubt that motherboard will post with that CPU.
 
Solid with no blinking, means its not working.

Sometimes you just have to try a different drive. I've seen people try 3 or 4 different drives, before success.

Another major use case for this feature, is being able to update the bios on a new motherboard, for a CPU which released after the motherboard did. As motherboards often don't start shipping with support for newer CPUs, until months later.

For example: if you buy a new AM5 motherboard right now, and one of the new 8700G APUs which released in the past month-ish-----I doubt that motherboard will post with that CPU.

That's exactly what I did when I installed the AMD 7800x3D. I flashed the BIOS to the board before I installed anything so that I knew 100% that it had the correct BIOS to accept the new CPU. BIOS Flashback is a much easier process than the other version I must say.
 
In case anyone is interested in an update, I applied the latest, 3401, update this morning. Took a 16GB USB 2 flash drive, formatted it as FAT32, unzipped the bios download into it (2 files--the bios itself and the biosrenamer.exe), ran the renamer and then deleted that so there was only one file on the drive. DId a shut down, moved the thumb drive do the flashback port, held down the button about 3 seconds until the LED started flashing. The led on the thumb drive flashed a few times, and then about 5 seconds later the LED went solid. I waited about 10 minutes, just in case, and then rebooted. No update. Flashed the bios from the same drive using the bios EZ Flash, and it worked the first time.

The--several years old--page about bios flashback on ASUS' site--which doesn't list any boards newer than Z490--said USB2 and USB3 are supported. The bios itself was able to read the drive, although I did move it to a front-panel port because I forgot how the EZ bios thing works (I thought what I saw was a list of partitions on the boot drive, not a list of all partitions including the thumb drive.)
 
Through trial and error I found a flash drive that always works and it's the oldest one I own with a one gigabyte capacity. I don't think you can buy them anymore but it has never failed to flash a bios using flashback where as many newer flash drives have.
 
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