BIOS update issue

InfiniteNoise

InfiniteNoise

InfiniteNoise

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Joined
3 Feb 2011
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When I ordered i3-4160 for my H81I-Plus motherboard, I completely forgot the part about needing to upgrade the BIOS first.

Right now the PC is a heavy paperweight because it's not booting up (for the reason I mentioned above), so the only option I have now is to update the BIOS using ASUS's flashback thingy, the step is like this;


  • Download BIOS
  • Download renamer utility, use it to rename BIOS file
  • Format USB drive to FAT32
  • Copy BIOS to USB drive
  • Plug in the USB drive and let it do it thing (which should work even without CPU/RAM installed, which I tried, didnt help)

I've followed the instructions and still nothing, what am I missing? (Apart from buying pre-Haswell refresh CPUs of course but that isn't an option right now and I kind of need to use the PC as soon as I can :()
 
iirc you still need a cpu to boot into bios to flash the new bios

where are you based, perhaps one of the forum members could possibly help you
 
Idartalis said:
I've tried with CPU + RAM, CPU only, RAM only, without both, nothing.

I'm located in Rotherham, I suppose I could do that.
Click to expand...

that's cuz you need at least a working cpu + ram to boot into bios
without a pre-refresh cpu, you may be sol
you could either get help from
a) a forum member, or
b) ship back the board to ocuk and ask them to flash the bios for you
 
Not from OCUK so I can't do that.

From what I can read I don't need to be able to boot into BIOS, just a FAT32 formatted flash drive with the BIOS file

I suppose I could pop in one of the local store, buy pre-refresh CPU, flash BIOS, return it, not cool I know but it works.

edit: doesn't look like any of the local stores around here have what I need, meh, any local members willing to help me out?
 
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order pre flashed bios chip off the bay,tell them to put latest bios on it

pull out old bios chip/plug new one in and away you go,will cost you £10 tho

does the motherboard/manual state it supports asus flashback? if so it should work with no ram or cpu installed,it flashes bios from usb
 
I checked again, it doesn't look like it supports flashback, just crashfree, which requires the motherboard to be able to POST it seems.

Doesn't matter now, got a solution, picking up the CPU tonight and just return the one I ordered.
 
I have the exact same problem except with a FM2A88X-ITX+ and an X4 860 only I didn't discover the problem until I had installed everything so cannot even return the CPU for a supported one. :(
 
You should be able to return it even if it's been opened and used, I guess you didn't buy it from here?

I got my CPU from elsewhere and I was still able to raise a RMA to return it for a refund.
 
Your best bet is to keep a eye out for a cheap second hand Pentium or Celeron to enable you to flash the bios then sell it on again. You should be able to get a G1820 for £20 on the bay.

Same thing for you Zaphrod but the AMD alternative. In your case this would do the job.
 
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Just had this response form ASRock Support

Hello,

BIOS 2.40 is required for the system to boot with Athlon II X4 860.

Can you please give me your address? Then I can send you a chip with this BIOS version. Replacing the chip is easy. Please see the attached example.

:D:D:D:D:D:D
 
Yea, I can't complain, I sent the email last night and they replied today. I have never owned anything from ASRock but I will definitely buy more from them in the future.
 
Wow that was quick. That's the first time I have even heard of anyone getting a useful reply from Asrock. They must have some new guys in CS!!
 
Yea, I was kinda surprised. I still have issue as this was to replace the dead board/cpu in my ESXi Server and while I new I probably couldn't get vmware running again due to unsupported hardware I am surprised at how hard it is proving to get my data off the VMFS formatted drives. I have installed vmfs-tools and can see the VMDK files but I can do nothing with them. I get errors when I try to mount them and if I try to copy the raw data using dd I get errors also. The VMDK Files themselves are showing as larger than the drive itself so I cannot copy them off onto another identical drive so now I am trying to create a raid 0 array to copy the VMDK to and hopefully mount to copy my data out.

ESXi is great as far as it goes but it's limited hardware support is a pain. I think I will just use Linux and KVM from now on.
 
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