1305 Bricking BIOS pool

gipsy

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Jan 18, 2008
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If I only bought Gigabyte P67 board it would not be brick like my ASUS P8P67 PRO which I did flash with correct bios file (1305) with ASUS flash utility.
Dual BIOS sounds very, very good now to me. Last time this happen to me was 1996 MMX 166, iwill board and wrong bios file.
Realy hate 1000€ mashine where only thing working is 4x10€ fans spinning like hell, and yeah, red diode on MBO....
And what now, screwdriver in hand, undo all screws, pack MBO, callaround, wait, pay, wait, pain, wait, again crewdriver and pray.., and then what if I like or need to flash that BIOS again??
How stupid it is, on souch modern device to make it so fragile..

Feel free to ad any No. off bricked ASUS MBO by flashing the BIOS

Gipsy
 
If I only bought Gigabyte P67 board it would not be brick like my ASUS P8P67 PRO which I did flash with correct bios file (1305) with ASUS flash utility.
Dual BIOS sounds very, very good now to me. Last time this happen to me was 1996 MMX 166, iwill board and wrong bios file.
Realy hate 1000€ mashine where only thing working is 4x10€ fans spinning like hell, and yeah, red diode on MBO....
And what now, screwdriver in hand, undo all screws, pack MBO, callaround, wait, pay, wait, pain, wait, again crewdriver and pray.., and then what if I like or need to flash that BIOS again??
How stupid it is, on souch modern device to make it so fragile..

Feel free to ad any No. off bricked ASUS MBO by flashing the BIOS

Gipsy

what asus flash utility did you use?
 
...... Why would you flash a new bios in windows? Actually I flash bios' in windows just fine with no problems not that I really trust it, but I mean its UEFI, its really new and AFAIK windows flashing has never been fully trusted. Also with a board with a feature to flash straight from the UEFI why bother around in windows, especially with such a nice interface on it. I still am not going to test bios 1305 on my P8P67 PRO at least till the new ones are out so I can get a new one if it fails that I wont have to send in later to get the new chipset.
 
i bricked a board with the asus windows flash utility. lesson learned.

NEVER FLASH IN WINDOWS!!!
 
Did the OP flash in windows?

ALWAYS flash with a MS DOS flasher. Always.
As long as you aren't overclocked while flashing, a DOS flasher will almost NEVER brick your board. Any bricks that happen when flashing in DOS is a direct fault of the flashing program/binary bios file or compatibility issue.

The last time I ever had a bricked BIOS was when doing a backflash on an old abit BH6. And the backflash brick was a known bug (I believe you could go from FL to FU bios and back freely, but going from GY (the third bios) back to FL or FU would ALWAYS brick the board, and require a hot flash or BIOS chip swap.
A similar backflash brick happened between two revisions of Abit BH6 1.1 bios (KL? NK? PP?)

Also, when using a board with a single, socketed (removable) bios chip, it pays to pay an extra $15 and buy a spare chip for a rainy day....at least this way, you can hotflash the dead chip without risking the second chip...
 
I paid $20 extra for the Msi gd65 over the gd55 mainly for the dual bios. The reason being, because it is a new platform, I suspected I would be flashing quite a bit.
 
Did the OP flash in windows?

ALWAYS flash with a MS DOS flasher. Always.

Just goes to show that just because you're older or have been around forums, doesn't make you an authority. Motherboards have changed drastically in the last 10 years. The very reason that ASUS motherboards have a 32MB BIOS/UEFI chip is exactly for this contingency. That's why they have working back-out protocols, except for beta implementations.

Please stop spreading FUD. There is absolutely no reason that a Win7 implementation running at default cpu/mobo settings can't do just as well as a 25yo operating system.
 
altarego: Just goes to show that just because you're older or have been around forums, doesn't make you an authority. Motherboards have changed drastically in the last 10 years. The very reason that ASUS motherboards have a 32MB BIOS/UEFI chip is exactly for this contingency. That's why they have working back-out protocols, except for beta implementations.

Please stop spreading FUD. There is absolutely no reason that a Win7 implementation running at default cpu/mobo settings can't do just as well as a 25yo operating system.
??????????? What was that ....whatever o_O

And ya agreed all ways from dos or the built in app that's part of the bios if it has one.
And agreed flashing from a multitasking OS is a bad idea, all it takes is for the anti virus or whatever to spaz as you flash and its bad news.

Man how many mobos are made now were you can change your eeprom {cmos\bios} chip ,seems their all soldered in to the mobos of late and are the size of a speck of dust.
GL getting that off the mobo.
 
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I paid $20 extra for the Msi gd65 over the gd55 mainly for the dual bios. The reason being, because it is a new platform, I suspected I would be flashing quite a bit.

I had one of those. Flashing a beta BIOS killed it. The system wouldn't boot using the new BIOS, and apparently the second BIOS is invoked only if the other one is corrupt (failed checksum, maybe). There was no way that I found to force the use of the backup BIOS. Perhaps the dual BIOS works under some circumstances, but it failed me.

I seem to have just bricked a P8P67 Pro by updating the BIOS using EZFlash. (System set to optimized defaults, CMOS cleared after the flash. Red CPU LED illuminates, no display.)
 
@WarZone "Man how many mobos are made now were you can change your eeprom {cmos\bios} chip ,seems their all sodded in to the mobos of late and are the size of a speck of dust.
GL getting that off the mobo." take a quick pic @ your MB and you will know
 
did some research, it is small 8 pin chip near the sata ports, named macronix mx25l3205. It was barely pushed in socket, taken out very easely by fingers.
price for chip is probably less than $1, as peopele are seling it for 15-20 programed and shiped around the world.
It will be realy nice to have it included with mbo with original bios, to save nervs to clients who where unlucky enough to flush the bios within windows, evan producer is suggesting to flush within win, or even include your own image to include in bios.

Gipsy
 
Just goes to show that just because you're older or have been around forums, doesn't make you an authority. Motherboards have changed drastically in the last 10 years. The very reason that ASUS motherboards have a 32MB BIOS/UEFI chip is exactly for this contingency. That's why they have working back-out protocols, except for beta implementations.

Please stop spreading FUD. There is absolutely no reason that a Win7 implementation running at default cpu/mobo settings can't do just as well as a 25yo operating system.

And why don't YOU stop trolling, kid?
Clearly you're in the minority here. Get your ass out of your windows 7 worship, ok?
Or maybe I'll just wait for you to brick your board with a failed BIOS flash someday and then laugh manically.

DOS flashers are the way to go. I only flash in windows if there's no other alternative. (like, flashing firmware on dvd drives, etc). If a DOS and a windows flasher exists, I'll use the DOS flasher. And many other people here feel the same way.

If someone flashes their BIOS with AFUDOS in DOS with a USB flash drive, and it works fine, and someone else flashes in windows and the board goes into an infinite boot loop forever, well GUESS WHAT IS AT FAULT?

Windows is STILL windows. It's still a multitasking operating system with drivers that can cause all sorts of weird issues. I don't care if it's windows 7 or windows Dec212012, it's STILL FRIGGIN WINDOWS.

Maybe you can chip in and go buy those people who used windows flashers and bricked their boards with 1302, a new motherboard. But I doubt you'd do that.

Time to put you on my ignore list. Gotta love all the assholes on these forums...
 
Well, after this frustration it came clear to me where the problem is:

Asus is pushing hard to be first and the best. One of the ways is to employ many good workers to build systems and testing testing...new bios etc.
The other way is to let clients do this for them, and clients, at least this comunity here is willing to do it for ASUS on much biger scale than they ever can employ. And we like it. It is interesting, to have constant feeling of improwing something, like geting something for nothing, while, let be honest, who realy need to flash the BIOS every day, and even push ASUS to speed up with realase.
In my case, MBO was working fine with all BIOS realases so far, no big change, I just felt like I have to flash it to improve allready well working system.
And, if that metters, and by Gary here, it metters, we should NOT belive ASUS and take comfort of flashing BIOS from Windows (if we knew)

Gipsy
 
I had one of those. Flashing a beta BIOS killed it. The system wouldn't boot using the new BIOS, and apparently the second BIOS is invoked only if the other one is corrupt (failed checksum, maybe). There was no way that I found to force the use of the backup BIOS. Perhaps the dual BIOS works under some circumstances, but it failed me.

I seem to have just bricked a P8P67 Pro by updating the BIOS using EZFlash. (System set to optimized defaults, CMOS cleared after the flash. Red CPU LED illuminates, no display.)

False sense of security I guess, haha. I wonder if the Gigabyte solution works better.
 
Ok I'm not trying to troll -- this question comes purely from ignorance: if you can trust Windows to send data to your SATA drive, why can't you trust it to send data to your motherboard's bios chip? Is there a fundamental difference?
 
In DOS mode you don't have a ton of processes running and drivers loaded. Much simpler environment for to deal with.
 
Ok I'm not trying to troll -- this question comes purely from ignorance: if you can trust Windows to send data to your SATA drive, why can't you trust it to send data to your motherboard's bios chip? Is there a fundamental difference?

Because if something crashes during a write to you hard drive, you reboot chances are pretty good that all will back to normal. You may possibly have to reinstall an application and less likely Windows itself.

If something crashes while flashing your BIOS... your computer is toast with little means to recover it. I've never seen MS-DOS blue screen. :D
 
Because if something crashes during a write to you hard drive, you reboot chances are pretty good that all will back to normal. You may possibly have to reinstall an application and less likely Windows itself.

If something crashes while flashing your BIOS... your computer is toast with little means to recover it. I've never seen MS-DOS blue screen. :D

Yeah DOS might be less crash-prone, but to be fair most of us spend a few minutes a year in DOS.

Anyway I see the point about Windows being a multi-tasking OS and Asus' BIOS-flashing code has perhaps received less verification that it works well with the rest of the environment than most SATA drivers.
 
Because if something crashes during a write to you hard drive, you reboot chances are pretty good that all will back to normal. You may possibly have to reinstall an application and less likely Windows itself.

If something crashes while flashing your BIOS... your computer is toast with little means to recover it. I've never seen MS-DOS blue screen. :D

seen plenty of DOS freezes....EMM386 segmentations faults, himem.sys bomb outs...keyboard or Mouse taking early xmas holiday, dosshell giving you the finger...etc, etc

and my personal favorite:

"Cannot find command shell"
 
i think you missed my point...DOS screws up just as much as windows...
 
i think you missed my point...DOS screws up just as much as windows...

You listed a bunch of extensions that take over and enhance the basic functions the DOS kernel provides. It's hard for something to screw up if it's not running in the first place. In Windows you have a thousand different things interacting with the OS and each other while the flash app is trying to do it's thing. The point is to limit the potential for things to go wrong. You can't do that in a multi-tasking OS, regardless of whether it's Windows, OS X, or Linux.
 
Theirs bios chips and eeprom chips in all most everything in your computer .
My self ill flash just about anything from windows and not care as long as its not for the motherboard .
Why its simple, if it doesn't work out for your dvd drive\video card\sound card\lan\whatever you can all ways re-flash, if were talking its your motherboard and its doesn't work out then you cant even boot the computer any more and your world of shit.

Why do it from dos? simple, only one program can run in dos and any given time and in this case its the program you use to flash your bios so its safer to do it this way.

And ya i know on a modern mobo its a 8 pin chip of late but sadly most mobos its soldered on their good.

The big one is what it use to look like, on newer motherboards its the tiny sized ones .
plcc-dip-soic.jpg


And their all most all ways soldered on to the mobos of late, really it be nice if their was a international standard for a connection thingy for motherboards that you could connect to a 5 pin thing on the mobo that was universal to all motherboards and on the other end it was usb or something, that way as long as you have a 2nd working computer its np to fix the problem if you know what you doing .
Sadly this isn't the case.
Its even more fun no laptops when they crap out on this topic.

As for some motherboards setup with twin bios agreed its a bogus setup imho.

if it were my call their be twin bios chips .
One based on rom that's removable {safe mode bios} with all the tools you need to work the eeprom like formatting it or updating it and or as a last resort you could fire up the computer off it .

To change from one bios to the other would be done with a dip switch or a jumper, the eeprom would all way be removable as would the rom bios chip and settings are saved on a little chunk of ram that's powered by the bios battery.Removable as well if needed.
As well id have a jumper or dip switch that when flipped it becomes imposable to change the bios settings so as to protect the bios from malware and the like.
 
You listed a bunch of extensions that take over and enhance the basic functions the DOS kernel provides. It's hard for something to screw up if it's not running in the first place. In Windows you have a thousand different things interacting with the OS and each other while the flash app is trying to do it's thing. The point is to limit the potential for things to go wrong. You can't do that in a multi-tasking OS, regardless of whether it's Windows, OS X, or Linux.

ive always flashed from windows, when available, all the way back to 95, and OS/2 (3.1 was a dosshell so it doesnt count...lol)...

Ive never once bricked anything including optical drives, Sound cards, Motherboards, Hard Drives, and sundry USB devcices.

I am a programmer, and i can assure you its safe to flash in windows. There are checksums, parity checks, error checks and other protections built into the flasher binaries not much unlike with modern sata connections.

if you bricked it in windows, it would have bricked in dos/EFI as well...statitically speaking you have the same odds of bricking in any mode....

something else is going on...
 
Theirs bios chips and eeprom chips in all most everything in your computer .
My self ill flash just about anything from windows and not care as long as its not for the motherboard .
Why its simple, if it doesn't work out for your dvd drive\video card\sound card\lan\whatever you can all ways re-flash, if were talking its your motherboard and its doesn't work out then you cant even boot the computer any more and your world of shit.

Why do it from dos? simple, only one program can run in dos and any given time and in this case its the program you use to flash your bios so its safer to do it this way.

And ya i know on a modern mobo its a 8 pin chip of late but sadly most mobos its soldered on their good.

The big one is what it use to look like, on newer motherboards its the tiny sized ones .
plcc-dip-soic.jpg


And their all most all ways soldered on to the mobos of late, really it be nice if their was a international standard for a connection thingy for motherboards that you could connect to a 5 pin thing on the mobo that was universal to all motherboards and on the other end it was usb or something, that way as long as you have a 2nd working computer its np to fix the problem if you know what you doing .
Sadly this isn't the case.
Its even more fun no laptops when they crap out on this topic.

As for some motherboards setup with twin bios agreed its a bogus setup imho.

if it were my call their be twin bios chips .
One based on rom that's removable {safe mode bios} with all the tools you need to work the eeprom like formatting it or updating it and or as a last resort you could fire up the computer off it .

To change from one bios to the other would be done with a dip switch or a jumper, the eeprom would all way be removable as would the rom bios chip and settings are saved on a little chunk of ram that's powered by the bios battery.Removable as well if needed.
As well id have a jumper or dip switch that when flipped it becomes imposable to change the bios settings so as to protect the bios from malware and the like.

My ATI 6950 has that..if u wanna fiddle with the bios and you hose it, there is a little switch you flip on the top of the card that automatically brings up the factory ROM thats not rewritable. Then you can re-flash the writable one from inside the factory bios.

pretty neat idea really...you can newer screw up and not get it back outside of the rewritable chip actually blowing up and even then you still have the factory bios.

The gigbyte boards (i have 2 with dual bios) actually re-write the 2nd bios at some point which means the potential for disaster is still there albeit much reduced from a single bios setup.
 
ive always flashed from windows, when available, all the way back to 95, and OS/2 (3.1 was a dosshell so it doesnt count...lol)...

Ive never once bricked anything including optical drives, Sound cards, Motherboards, Hard Drives, and sundry USB devcices.

I am a programmer, and i can assure you its safe to flash in windows. There are checksums, parity checks, error checks and other protections built into the flasher binaries not much unlike with modern sata connections.

if you bricked it in windows, it would have bricked in dos/EFI as well...statitically speaking you have the same odds of bricking in any mode....

something else is going on...

No one is saying that the software and binaries that are involved in BIOS flashing are unsafe. We're saying the environment itself is unsafe. A valid checksum is going to do you no good if your video drivers cause a BSOD or if an access violation that crashes the flash software while writing valid data to the flash chip.

That said, I also always flash in Windows. It's more convenient, and I've yet to have a problem doing it. However, I'm fully aware of the risks of doing it that way. If something DOES go wrong, I have no one to blame but myself.
 
i will partially agree with you.

A hardware failure can occur at anypoint, so to that i agree...

however, modern error correction allows for spontanius reboots durring a flash with no ill effect (writes are not finalized until the final bit is set and will electrically revert if its not set. )

Something to do with charge states, im not an engineer, so i cant explain it exactly.

But literally, for it not to be a bug inherent in the bios hardware itself (which you would not escape in dos), the moon would have to be aligned with Jupiter, and you will have had to sacrafied 3 chickens and a small child for it to brick.

The odds are that small.

if a dozen people brick their boards, and 5000 are successful at flashing it. Id say that well within manufacturing tolerances for hardware.

Dont forget people who are satisfied rarely (rarely, not never, they do sometimes) post their experiences, only people who have issues complain.

So when u see a lot of complaints, it skews your perception.
 
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That's why you don't have those things loaded.

^^
QFT.

DOS won't crash if nothing is loaded, unless the computer is unstable or something.
That's why there's something called a clean boot. No himem.sys, no emm386, no real mode drivers...and that's why we use it to flash. You can't run windows without drivers. Even safe mode requires drivers, which is why safe mode can bluescreen, too. (safe mode can bluescreen after a hardware change. DOS won't).

BTW, a lot of people bricked their 965p/975/p45 boards/corrupted their bios, by using the windows flasher, and had no problems at all using the DOS flasher.
If the windows flasher works, then that's great. And I hope and WANT flashers to be more reliable and secure. But there's been no end of people having issues with flashing bioses from windows. EFI is supposed to be better/safer to flash from windows than traditional award bios, so that's good. Doesn't mean I will do it, though :)
 
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ive seen lots of people brick their hardware flashing in dos over the years..if the hardware is faulty, the hardware is faulty...dos wont save you..
 
I bricked through the BIOS EzFlash 2 utility, not through windows. RMAing to my vendor so I stay under warranty (which I strongly suspect replacing the bios chip would void). Then I'll have to RMA again a few weeks later for the B3 stepping.

I only wanted to resolve my C300 freezes >:|
 
I bricked through the BIOS EzFlash 2 utility, not through windows. RMAing to my vendor so I stay under warranty (which I strongly suspect replacing the bios chip would void). Then I'll have to RMA again a few weeks later for the B3 stepping.

I only wanted to resolve my C300 freezes >:|

ASUS support says that replacing a bios chip wouldn't affect the warranty
but anyway you can always put original one back before replacing
 
Back when we had to flash bios from floppy's I always used windows instead, it was IMO much safer than relying on a floppy drive. I never had an issue, both with the Abit and Asus windows bios applications.

But now that we can flash from a USB in dos, that is definately the way to go, it only takes a few more minutes than using Windows. With windows there are so many apps/services running, the risk has to be higher.
 
Yeah, relying on a floppy which may be bad was a scary thing to do. Always paid to do a full sector check before using one. Thankfully, more recent flashers would error check the floppy while reading the file, BEFORE starting the flash, and then read it again. AFUDOS saved me on one occasion like that. The much older awdflash was FAR less graceful...

But if the hardware were working, then the flash worked.
 
however, modern error correction allows for spontanius reboots durring a flash with no ill effect (writes are not finalized until the final bit is set and will electrically revert if its not set. )

You obviously have no idea how the BIOS chip is flashed.
 
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