Re: Which way you use when need to update your BIOS?

[ismobo]

I just want to add that the M-Flash write to FAT32 flash drive didn't appear to work on my X58 Pro-E (using original BIOS, 8.2 I think).

I'm using M-Flash on my X58 Pro-E since I don't have a floppy drive and am using Windows 7 64-bit.  Thankfully it worked great to load a new bios (8.5) from a FAT32 formatted (MSI) flash drive, but first I tried writing the original BIOS (8.2, I think) to this same FAT32 flash drive and, while it looked like it worked, it produced a unreadable corrupted file.

Well, the most important part is that it can load new BIOSes, so that's fine.

[owilky1]

MSIHQ Forum USB Flasher 

[littlejoeh]

Just a curiosity question, I am new to MSI products. Has anyone used the online MSI utility for flashing a gpu bios? I know everyone is talking about main board bios flashing. Just curious. Thanks.

[Stu]

Don't flash your VGA BIOS unless you really need to. It is very rare that it needs to be done, and is a lot riskier than flashing a mainboard BIOS.

If you have more questions, please start a new topic in the correct area of this forum, don't use this sticky topic!

[whosayzwhat]

msi live update

[Agent_24]

Don't flash your VGA BIOS unless you really need to. It is very rare that it needs to be done, and is a lot riskier than flashing a mainboard BIOS.

If you have more questions, please start a new topic in the correct area of this forum, don't use this sticky topic!

How is it riskier? As far as I know you can recover by booting your PC with an old PCI video card and then reflashing (although I have never actually needed to try)

Sure there is usually no need to update, though I have done it before, it was very easy, also I modded my 6600GT BIOS to enable the temperature sensor, worked perfectly

[chchyong89]

seem like USB one is the easiest way, but no idea where to download it, i am using windows 7, but fail to update online.. I AM SO SAD

[Mike]

If you mean the MSI HQ Forum USB flasher that was developed here by the moderators(who are not MSI employees or work for MSI), you get it in the download section of these forums, labled Download Area. 

Go to the first page of these forums, http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php , scroll down the page, and it is the last forum on the page; it's under the heading Technical Assistance.

[Tesla56]

I just completed my BIOS update from v1.0 to v1.6 on my P45 Platinum mobo.

I used the MSIHQ flash drive utility. I did run into a problem where I setup and prepped the pen drive (already FAT format) and ran it but only a black screen with flashing cursor appeared.
Posted help and was told to use the Geometry change option first. I had a quick search and came across the HP utility and updated my flash drive.

Flash was quick and easy 

Some new options and I see a new M-flash section too.

[wiesel201]

I´m flashing the BIOS of all my Boards using DOS and a bootable USB-Stick. I´m using the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool for preparing the Stick.

[sputnick69]

I do it directly in Windows using AFUWIN, I've never had any troubles doing it and it's very easy. 
Live update have never worked for me, maybe U100 is not supported?

[ericjwill]

I boot from a FreeDOS CD and have the BIOS image and flash util on a FAT32 formatted thumb drive.  It shows up as C: and works like a charm!

[krazytrucker]

MSI LIVE UPDATE 4 WORKS FINE FOR ME

[Aaron]

OK, THAT'S NICE.  Please, don't shout.

[Mechanics Fan]

Having attempted to flash the mainboard BIOS via CD-R and not being able to locate my DVD-RW drive in DOS; a member of another forum linked me to the MSI Flash Drive utility.  I registered with these forums, downloaded the tool and flashed the drive successfully in minutes.

Mainboard is P35 Neo-2 FR, CPU Intel E2180 (to be replaced by E5200 - hence the BIOS flash) DVD drive LG IDE GH22 (replacing a Samsung SATA which misbehaved).

Thanks for this tool, made my life so much better. 

John

[penthe]

I am just as I write this using the MSI HQ Forum Flashing Tool 
Cannot tell you Yet if I have succes. It is running the and it did finish ok I am unplugging the power now

[mrLobster]

Love the new Bios<->USB w/FAT option....though, I of course knew I was treading sketchy waters ;-) No probs so far, P45 platinum, always the beta'est bios ;-)

[raisethe3]

MSIHQ Forum USB Flasher

It took awhile, but finally figured it out today. 

[morbidus]

I prepare a USB stick or sd-card using hp-format tool and Free-DOS

Update manually ....

[PrOpHeT2]

MSIHQ Forum USB Flasher. It's the only way to update.

[Svet]

I do it directly in Windows using AFUWIN, I've never had any troubles doing it and it's very easy. 
Live update have never worked for me, maybe U100 is not supported?

Live update have never worked for me, maybe U100 is not supported?

Yes, U100 is not supported by MSI's Live Update.
But you can use MSIHQ Forum USB Flasher's Live Update[SureHands], where U100 is supported.

[azuan]

i use bootable cdrom (which contain bootable dos) and insert the bios program inside it.

i think MSI should develop bios update inside bios itself that can read the romfile from harddisk. (like a*** did) ;)

[Jack t.N.]

i think MSI should develop bios update inside bios

Already done.  It is called M-Flash and has been around for quite a while now.

[Mike]

Actually, if the HDD drive or a partition is in Fat32, you can update from the HDD.

[Bas]

In short, because of all the bad and weird update things MSI (other manufacturers too), we decided to build our own FAIL-SAFE tool
And it has a perfect track record of 0% bad flashes.

M-flash, Live Update, Winflash, floppy etc, you name it, they all have killed a lot of boards.

Be smart and: >>Use the MSI HQ Forum USB flasher<<

[raisethe3]

@Bas- Wait....M-Flash killed their boards? I thought M-Flash is interesting because you can try the bios rom before you install it. Thus, this helps from getting your board bricked or killed.

But anyways, to the point, I use MSI USB HQ, and its awesome.

[Bas]

I know, you can start with it...that is the only good part about it
But when you actually flash with it, it turns out not to be safe at all.

[EBCManhattan]

This web page doesn't render properly in either of my browsers - Firefox or Opera, running on Linux Mint.  There are no voting buttons that I can see.  MSI's web workers should check for compatibility before making their features public, since many of us don't have access to IE.

I used M-Flash in my current bios to upgrade to a new level of bios.    Every other option seemed to require Windows, so I was glad M-Flash was there.  It worked fine.

[Mike]

You have to have made 10 posts, in the forums where posts count, before you can see voting or PM users.  Once you have made 10 posts, countable posts, you will be able to vote.  Look under your nick and you will see your post count.

[texas1978]

I mostly do it manually due to all of windows apps running could cause a failure and screw up everything.

thats my 2 cents

Tex

[rapid1]

I actually used the MSI update this time after saving my first operational bios to bios save. I have never done it this way before, however I also have not flashed a bios in a bit. I have always done it with a floppy and assorted dos bios flash utilities through the years. The update worked flawlessly though it still made me a bit nervous. I think from now on I will use the utility on here and a USB stick, I just feel naked having no recovery with the Bios update.

[Paladin77]

Simple I make the USB bootable. Boot into Dos and run flash.bat

[pw2much]

In the pass I was using the MSI Live Update and didn't know about the forum update Flasher until now when I logged on after getting an email about the changes to the forum but I guess I'll be using the forum flasher from now on!!

[Mike]

The emails about the forum changes were actually an unforseen event, but in your case, it gave you some useful information.

[sswilson]

Just picked up a used K9A2 Plat and was a bit put off that it doesn't have some form of "M-Flash", but I have to say using  the "forum flasher" worked like a charm.

I'm curious though.... I setup the usb stick using a different MSI board (so of course the program recognised my hardware), If I had been using a non-MSI board would the program still have allowed me to point to the appropriate bios file?

Either way... Kudos to you folks for putting this together. Works great, and reminds me of the good old days using a different manufacturer's hardware and getting his selfbooting bios install disk. (`twas over on the `street.....    ;)

Thanks a lot for the excellent tool.

[Mike]

thank you for your kind words.

We don't recommend M-flash either.  There seem to be a few bugs with some systems and have seen some boards killed by it.

[eric88]

I highly recommend  MSI HQ Forum USB Flasher it fixed my bad flash. 

By the way
Do not use live update online with windows. Mine started to have BSOD after using that method.

[BREWS]

Just bought and built upon a p45t-c51 board. Figured I would load new BIOS 01/07/10 immediately. I used MFlash with a USB stick and worked fine. Hate that the boot sequence gets scattered with the flash but figured it out. Working well. I will find and download the Forum Flash.

[wippo76]

i used M-flash
but second time of use 785gm e65 board became death and had to go RMA
so never use M-flash, the tool msi made in the bios sucks
next board no MSI anymore

[Mike]

  wippo76  We don't recommend Live Update or M-flash, but the tool developed here has a extremely high success rate.  To my knowledge, the MSI HQ Forum tool has never killed a board.  Regardless of M-flash or LU, MSI makes good hardware.  Don't let one experience taint your view.