Best/proper way to updating the BIOs without permanently breaking anything?

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imeem2

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In the span of 3 years, I RMAed 2 MPG X670E carbon motherboards. The most recent one was the result of 7D70v1Q (causing usb over current, booting directly into bios, no longer detecting the NIC) . The first one i think it was also bios related as well ( updated to 7D70v1e, then stated noticing BSOD crashes, very slow performance, mouse lagging etc..) and downgrading the BIOs didn't fix the issue.

but I have updated BIOs other times and it was good, not sure why it is a hit/miss for me. Currently im on my third one.

How do I prevent something like this from happening in the future? For example, do you recommend only using the rear USB port, only use the FLASH BIOs usb port, and avoid front panel USB ports?
 
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I would update using M Flash from within the BIOS. I have used the front panel USB port on multiple occasions and it never had a problem finding and updating the BIOS. Heck, the USB stick I use for BIOS updates is hooked with a USB extension wire.

If I understand things correctly, but correct me if I am wrong, the Flash BIOS procedure that uses a dedicated port at the rear is very choosy of which USB stick you are using.
 
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ericj159802e9 said:
I would update using M Flash from within the BIOS. I have used the front panel USB port on multiple occasions and it never had a problem finding and updating the BIOS. Heck, the USB stick I use for BIOS updates is hooked with a USB extension wire.

If I understand things correctly, but correct me if I am wrong, the Flash BIOS procedure that uses a dedicated port at the rear is very choosy of which USB stick you are using.
Click to expand...

Another user said they use the flash bios usb port, but use M-Flash with it.

I asked MSI and they said best to follow this video:

. But it's a bit different than their article... : https://www.msi.com/support/technical_details/MB_BIOS_Update
 
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I think you are making it a bit bigger than it is. In my experience when M-Flash sees the BIOS file it will successfully update as my experience with a USB stick on a USB extension wire shows.. On one occasion I put the BIOS file in the root of an SSD and let M-Flash update the BIOS from there.
 
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In theory you could use any port as long as it's detected by M-Flash.
I had some detecting issues in the past on a different system using the front panel usb port, therefor I figure that you can't miss using the rear usb flash port.
M-Flash gives you a certain control, Earlier last year I downloaded a new bios file for my current system, copied it to the usb drive and started M-Flash. The older bios files were there also, and M-Flash could see all files, but only the new one was showing with blank numbers, the older ones had the correct identifier but the new one didn't show it. So I did not trust it and downloaded the file again and replaced the one on the usb drive. Now it was shown correctly in M-Flash with the correct identifier.
So yeah, maybe the flash procedure would refuse that file which seemed corrupted, or maybe not. Who knows what could have happened.
But using the flash button procedure with that file would be a great risk for sure. Because that would go blindly.
So my preferred method is M-Flash with the usb flash port on the rear.
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However, if a board goes bad after a succesful flash, and reflashing the previous working one doesn't fix it, you simply have a bad board.
Nowadays you can search for your motherboard and get the specific bios files for that type. So downloading the wrong bios is a user error, like downloading the "E" version for the non E version. And even then I suspect M-Flash will tell you it's not a valid bios file. You may have had plain bad luck with 2 boards going out after a bios flash, that shouldn't happen in the first place
 
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Never had an issue using M-Flash, it always checks the file before starting the update.
 
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Last September I made a W11 migration using a MSI Tomahawk x670e. I had to flash the bios several time.
Before placing the processor I used the dedicated rear USB port and the push button: it worked well but there is not any real feed back during the process.
Once the computer was fully built, I used MFLASH and a front USB socket accessible on the case: it worked flawlessly.
As an advice, always use a freshly formated USB key, if possible of small capacity (32 or 64 GB). The bios file needs to be placed at the root directory.
 
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The reason for asking is that about a month ago my system was acting up and not cooperative with regard to USB world for two or three days. I found out because M-Flash started rejecting BIOS file that I was trying to use to update.

During that period it would corrupt files written to a specific USB stick. It it one of two that I use for flashing a BIOS using M-Flash. It turned out that when ejecting the USB drive using the Remove Hardware routine of Windows or rebooting Windows would corrupt files on that particular USB stick. I did extensive testing establishing this using hash checks to confirm that the file had changed. I did not change the file name so the detection that the BIOS file was not correct must be done by different means. Typically you would hash checking for this. Hence my question.
 
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