I was there when BIOS'es on MB's, I/O-cards like SCSI, and modems, had socketed UVPROM that you erased under a CFL light and after you flashed new content you put a sticker over the window to stop light from erasing it.
@@drakethedragon457 ultra-violet erasable programmable read only memory was actually it's name, Or UV EPROM / UVPROM. it could only be erased by exposing it to ultraviolet light. but it was a form of EPROM.. obviously.
Yeah, I found out a few months ago from one a compatriot(Russian) youtuber, was just as elated. Also because I love gadgets like that. Doubly so because I was hellbent on getting a UPS just for the reason of "what if power goes out while I'm updating the mobo", which power does go out on me sometimes 😂 Couldn't get a UPS, got a power filter. Mobo still unupdated :'DDD It finally got to western youtubers, hope to see more videos on it from top channels!
as allmors Most everything has a chip init somewhere ?Me too, I wonder if you can get the big clip in different Size's ,it could be hanxiy to themoding community also ,as also
Yes, they are actually used to Flash/Program various Chips in a Medium to Small Scale Manufacturing Unit. If cost or Design don't suit JTAG or factory Programmed Chips, then this solution is used. Or maybe you are a Hobbyist or something lol
Linus: the best way to deal with the issue is to stop it from happening in the first place Me: yes linus this how you solve 99% of the problems in the world
@@AboveColin honestly I do agree with him on that. I'm a new AMD user and my b550 motherboard came with an insanely old bios, it did not run my 5600x. I hate the fact that the first motherboard I bought did not have bios flashback. How bankruptingly, wife leaving you, world ending is it to include bios flashback with every new motherboard? I had to return that one and buy a new one because there was no way to update the bios.
@@alex786 I assume they dont add that feature on every MB in order to make the expensive ones more *appealing*, which sucks, but then again just *assuming
I had to do the ch341a route a few months ago, and found out the hard way that you also better remove the CPU to get proper reading, erasing/writing of the chip. I was getting lots of unmatching hashes of bios that I read from it, until finally tried to remove the CPU. And don't forget to buy a 1.8v adapter for ch341a if your bios needs 1.8v.
Do you need a bios dump to flash using this?? The manufacturer of my board has provided ROM in the bios download and I heard somewhere that i will need a working bios dump and not a ROM. My board: Colorful CVN B550 frozen v14
@@rajudahal3619 I have an asrock board and asrock provides ready to be flashed bios files, I think you can check by reading the flash and comparing the size of what you've read with what your manufacturer provides on download page, the file size should be identical
@@rajudahal3619 it's a good idea to get a bios dump of your chip anyway, as it contains your serial number info or whatever, if your board is still under warranty, I think colorful bios is also ready to flash, judging by byte size of the .rom
@@igoresque I tried reaching to support and they weren't much helpful. They clearly said bricked bios is void of warranty and didn't say anything on what i can do except that I need to go for a repair. :D
I work at a major company and have to deal with pre-production hardware on occasion. With that, we are provided flashing tools that Linus talks about at the end that cost upwards of $700. They are quite cool, but didn't know there were ones that cost less.
Someone tried leaving a comment on it. The flashing device we use at my company isn't marked up in price, it's the actual MSRP of the tool. My company has a partnership with this particular tool maker so the particular BIOS chips my company uses are automatically recognized by the tool. Every BIOS chip stores data differently, so the flashing tool has to know the chip it's writing/reading to know how to write an image to it.
The CH341a takes like half an hour on 256mbit ROM, it's very slow. The flashrom software is actually perfectly capable of detecting the correct flash chip, it supports just about all of them; but i had to compile it from source since my flash chip that i had to deal with recently was newer than the distro package, but the tool already had it programmed in. You can also just connect the chip to SPI pins of a Raspberry Pi and use flashrom utility from there, that's going to be a lot less slow.
2:44 the CH341A is known to have a flaw where it sends out 5v directly to the BIOS chip's data line instead of 3.3v. It will still work with reprogramming BIOS chip but it is not recommended for constant reflashing of a single chip. There is a mod people can do to fix this if people do plan on using this specific programmer for repairs.
I ordered a CH341A and it did not work (reading/writing always gave errors no matter what I tried) , what I ended up doing was using a Raspberry PI with a tool named flashrom and that worked flawlessly. And if I am correct a raspberry PI has 3.3V I/O pins.
@@korianes3590 The problem is that there aren't any 3.3v adapter because 3.3v Chips are meant to be directly flashed without adapters. I can't really explain it that well so I would recommend this vid as its very informative: th-cam.com/video/-ln3VIZKKaE/w-d-xo.html
Oh how the times have changed. The only time I've ever had to deal with a bad bios update was back in the 286 days when my AST Premium 286 decided to brick itself. Ordered a new flashed DiP from a company that was advertising in the back of a Popular Mechanics magazine, and it came within 3 days. Worked perfectly and was even a better bios version than the one I had previously.
One thing I would add about the specific example of an electrical storm... if you've got close by lighting strikes, probably best to just unplug crap from the wall since a UPS will not protect you from a nearby, let alone, direct lightning strike. I see a lot of people on social media claiming it will, and it most certainly won't. If that happens, a bricked mobo might be the least of your problems.
@@atodaso1668 Yes, and that surge protection is for nominal surges from the power grid, not the astronomical surge from a nearby/direct lightning strike. There is no consumer surge protection that will. And I'm pretty sure, they wouldn't cover that under an "act of god" out outright state that lightning strikes are NOT covered. They make surge suppression that you can put on your homes electrical panel that can suppress a lightning strike, but that's still not a guarantee and lightning strikes can still exceed even their ratings. The only surefire way to protect your equipment is to unplug it from the wall.
@@TheGameBench My friends call me weird for unplugging my computer when lightning's about but then one of them wonders why their computer suddenly stopped working one stormy night (the same night he was calling me an idiot for not trusting the surge protection on my mobo)
@@Snaily Happen to me once. Thanks god that everything survive except cheapo psu. How did it happen you ask, well I was in process of shutting down and would have made it if Thor give me about 20sec.
Heads up. Do not use a soldering iron to desolder a bios chip. Too many contacts and you will probably break one of the pads. You need a tool called a hot air station or some sort of heat gun, typical solder melting point is about 230 Celsius so make sure it can do that. They can run you about £70 or $85 if you’re US. Just be steady, gently tug with tweezers while heating and it comes straight off
Can confirm, dropping and catching a soldering iron hurts like hell. A proper soldering station would've helped my scenario though. What possessed me to attempt to catch it in my hands I will never know. I did finish the project I was working on though 🤣
@@DegustoDelSol ok. To preface this I was in college and my friends dorm they had stacked 3 small dressers, 2 on the side, one on top, and I was soldering on top of it cause it was near a window and we had a fan exhausting fumes out. We bought a $20 soldering iron and I was modding Nerf blasters at that time. It only came with the iron and nothing else, so I balenced it on the box it came in to keep it off the table... Yeah... It rolled off on the second blaster I was modding and smart me decided to catch it and burned in-between my middle finger and pointer finger. I've since done other stuff with it like build drones and fix random electronics, but man did I have PTSD after that moment lmao
Well, I can say that dropping it on to something isn't much better, I have a desk next to my bed and a TS100 which I use with a laptop power brick, as I'm sure you're aware laptop brick cables aren't nearly as flexible as your typical cables for soldering irons or test equipment, well this one is rather rigid so my iron slide off my lap, didn't even try to stop it and almost instantly melted a hole right through my bedsheet, I may not be hurt, but it's a little painful to look at that hole, the one plus side is it's at the edge, so I could cut it off and barely notice.
@@vgamesx1 luckily my friend lived in like the "slum" of all our dorms so the RAs didn't even notice the tiny burned hole in the floor where it landed after I let go when it was burning my hand lmao. Totally destroyed the tip of that cheapo soldering iron tho
@@StuckOnAFireHydrant It's supposed to come with a tiny little shitty foldout stand, all i've seen did. Though it doesn't help much against shitty stiff cords you get in cheapest soldering irons. I think dropped soldering iron moment is something most of us have experienced, it's fine.
In circuit programming(when the chip is still soldered on the motherboard), sometimes doesn't work. For a 100% certain good flash(as long there isn't a problem with the chip). You need to desolder the chip. There are even really cheap programmers like the USBasp, but those is a real pain to use on Windows. And those who have greater compatibility as the Minipro programmers (TL866/II/IIplus). Good luck everyone! 😁
USBasp is really bad option here, because you always, always need two of them, one to flash the other with capable firmware. CH341 with clip cable cost ~5$, not 10-15 like Linus said.
with clip you can just do this: 1) read existing BIOS chip 2 times and compare if hashes are the same, which means good read 2) then you can write a working BIOS file, and after that read the chip to check if hash is equal to the original file pretty much fool proof way
@@igoresque … except when your BIOS chip is so close to the MB that the clip doesn’t even make contact with the legs … yeah, I’ve run into that issue with a MSI board that bricked itself while updating the BIOS.
I am so glad you guys covered this!! I’ve used the exact same tool to save no less than 4 boards that all had corrupted BIOS’. Good video & keep up the good work!!
Will the bios be the exact same like the internet version after we use ch341a or will it be different and can it harm the computer if we use this device? Thanks for all!
As an electrical technician I would not recommend using a soldering iron for surface mount components. You sould use hot air gun for that instead. Solderig irons are for through hole components and maybe if needed, to pre-tin the pads for SMD components. Also don't forget to use good quality flux! Cheers!
An iron is perfectly fine for SO style packages like a BIOS typically will be, but removal is certainly more challenging. If you're replacing with a new chip, I'd personally just clip the leads off then the feet are easy to remove with an iron.
just my luck. when i was watching this video. around 0:45 when linus finished saying "when you bios gets corrupted" by pc froze. initially i thought it was a gag in the video but when it lasted too long without anything happening and i couldnt move my mouse. i think that means my computer just did a le funny at the perfect time
Love how you skimmed over GETTING A RAW BIOS DUMP TO FLASH! The downloaded bios file generally does NOT contain a full bios as it appears in the flash?
Depends. On ASUS you get a file packaged up in some metadata and you can extract with a special utility. Other manufacturers usually have raw dumps you can flash directly. However if the BIOS also contains MAC addresses, serial numbers, or other such personalised data, well it's not going to have those, tough.
I once rescued a 2004 motherboard with a DIY arduino-based ROM flasher. Lucky me that the chip was a simple removable 8 pin chip that I could plug into a breadboard.
That is awesome. It's really sad that they don't longer do it like that on motherboards. I had a Optiplex with corrupt BIOS. And the work to fix it was not worth it because of a SMT component, that I yet had to identify where it was. And desolder with a rework station. So i salvage what I could and recycled the motherboard. If it was easily repaired I wouldn't hasitate to reflash it in my programmer.
The CH341a is a lifesaver. I bricked the IPMI on a SuperMicro server board in my homelab (firmware updates -can- should always wait until you're sober) and managed to get it working again by flashing the correct image with the afore mentioned tool.
I knew this was possible but didn't someone commercialized it, this is perfect for not ultra techy people like me but still techy enough that can still flash a bricked bios with this tool
Last summer I lost power while I was updating my bios.These (2:35) still give me nightmares. Eventually I got a replacement chip because fortunately mine could be swapped.
I remember having to email a manufacturer to ask them to mail out a new (socketed) bios chip. It turned up in an envelope a week or so later and was ready to swap out. Good times!
A pretty comprehensive video without having to go into a technical deep dive of what's going on, bravo. The only thing I'd add to this is that obtaining a raw BIOS image can be a challenge sometimes. The UEFI spec contains a specific mechanism to deliver BIOS updates. In a nutshell, it's supposed to help verify the integrity of the update, maintain security of the system, and only update parts of the BIOS that are changed. This means the file you download may not be a file that is a 1:1 version of the data that should be on the flash part. I don't know of any way to use that to make an file suitable for flashing onto the BIOS chip. A quick way to tell is to check the file size. It should be exactly 4, 8, or 16 MiB (it should exactly match the size of the BIOS flash part). The next possible issue, at least with Intel mainboards is that the flash part containing the BIOS may also be shared with the built in ethernet adapter and the Intel ME. If that's the case, then the whole thing needs to be assembled into a single image with a tool like a hex editor. The process would to read the file, look at some data in the file (usually detailed in the chipset specs), then paste the good BIOS image into the correct spot, and finally flash the resulting file onto the system. When I was an engineer in this space, we had tools to put all this together. I don't know if the BIOS modding community have their own tools for this. In a production system, BIOS recovery mechanisms should work for nearly any situation but in my experience, OEMs are generally pretty bad at documenting them (BIOS is still something of a PC dark art and BIOS developers don't generally like to draw attention to themselves). It may help to pester support a bunch and hope that someone there gets brave enough to reach out to the BIOS engineering team who may be able to provide a solution before resorting to using an external flasher. It might also be possible to get a raw image file though companies might be extra cagey about that (as they perceive IP issues but if you have physical access and a flasher, there is little point).
A couple things to add for Intel systems (those are what I worked on, I left that industry before Ryzen). There may be some some sort of system level protections against BIOS tampering. That can come from TPM protections, or through specific protections built into the chipset and CPU (intel was working to make something at least as strong as ARM's trust zones). I think this is pretty rare on consumer stuff (exceptions may be Dell, HP, Lenovo, and similar companies). But there isn't a lot of transparency. One thing we may see in the future are systems that can deliver the BIOS in a virtual fashion via a feature called eSPI. It was something a server company I worked for in the past was investigating. The idea was that an embedded management microcontroller (generally one running Linux) would use the eSPI capability in the chipset to make a file stored in its filesystem available as a virtual flash part. That meant a BIOS upgrade would basically just involve copying a file to the filesystem and tell the right piece of software the filename to use for the new BIOS. I could see major OEM like Asus perusing this in the consumer space once the kinks are worked out and the extra hardware can be added in a cost effective way.
Many servers that are higher end for reliability can have up to four socketed bios chips so if one or two fail they can still continue running without any issues! :)
On some motherboards, the power rails of the BIOS chip might get sucked up to the rest of the board, which makes the programmer not able to supply enough current to run the BIOS chip properly at the correct voltage. This may or may not happen on CH341a, but it did happen on my TL866 programmer If you constantly get pin detection errors or read different data every single time you read the chip, you need to hook the alligator clip's board up to external power, such as a single AA/AAA battery holder for 1.5V BIOS chips, and a double battery holder for 3V BIOS chips. If you can't get those external power, then you will have to risk it a bit by using the motherboard's power and turn the system on while flashing...
2:10 "Modern BIOS chips" Please correct me if I'm wrong but BIOS chip package didn't change in like 15 years and still remains in the SO-8 package... Furthermore I could solder this type of ICs when I was 15yo so I'm sure some grown up adult can do same right?
Thank you very much, I wrote the bios file to the bios chip as .bin and my computer was saved, thanks to you. (Advice for those who will do it: test clips are useless things, I cut off the cables and soldered them to the chip, I attached them poorly, but it was enough to throw the bios, then I removed it immediately)
I was gonna get ready to learn how to solder or get 200 bucks. But this is a life saver. I was just rippeed off and sold a faulty cpu thst shut off mid update. This is so much easier
The ch341a is dangerous, the data lines can sometimes be at 5v logic levels rather than the typical 3.3v, I have destroyed laptop motherboards by trying to use the clip to flash it in circuit because while the bios chip itself is usually 5v tolerant, the pch or ec or whatever else is connected might not be There's a fix for the issue, you need to lift one of the pins on the ch341 chip and solder it to the 3.3v regulator on the programmer, there are guides on how to do this
Have you checked that the chip is actually 3.3V (still not 5V-tolerant) rather than 1.8V? Though normally using ch341a unmodded is not an issue. Because on the driven data pins that are connected to ch341a, with ch341a itself being powered by 5V, you have to just make sure vcc pin going to flash is the correct voltage, because the data pins, even if they're driven with 5V, are only capable of supplying less than half a milliamp of current, which is dissipated by the ESD diodes to VCC inside the flash chip. 5V-tolerant would mean 5V can be connected without current limiting, which isn't the case. And going over on VCC is always bad news. Also VCC must be present before any data connection is attempted, else it's not going to be great, which is you could say a hazard with these test clamps. Something to keep in mind is just how death-prone the AMS1117 3.3V regulator on the ch341a boards is, and sometimes it sends full input voltage to the output once it dies. That would be bad news indeed.
I am actually trolling the comments for this exact issue. I have a laptop that failed a Bios update due to a forced restart. r/TechSupport didn't even bother responding. What is the other story for laptops?
@@thetalesofdaneandco I mean it's harder because you have to open the device and there are no clean BIOS files from the Manufacturer, you have to take It from a similar machine and sometimes even tinker with the ME Region.
@@andre_warmeling I corrupted my laptop BIOS and WINRAID forum mods helped me to rebuild the image to flash with a programmer. Not an easy task. But my laptop works now
Ok, we need to see you guys successfully perform that last one with the special clamp. Someone please ship them your dead motherboard so they can try it.
Finally some decent consumer repair advice although to myself this video is 7 years late. Remember with HP laptop Bios repairs you need the 1.8V adapter
For once I love the sponsor. That isn't the specific model of Sennheiser open backed headphones I have, but I can confirm, they're the best. I have a frankenstein setup with a headphone amp and mic instead.
Had a rare instance where I have a X470 motherboard with dual bios, so, to run the Ryzen 3700x, I needed to flash the bios to gain support for it. Didn't think anything of it til my bios corrupted, and the second bios was not compatible with the 3700x, and I have a Monoblock water block on my motherboard.... fun times😂
That programming IC clamp that you recommended is basically useless for PC BIOS reflashing. When you connect it to the programmer it will immediately supply 3.3V to the IC and thus power everything else that is powered from that power rail on the motherboard obviously overloading poor programmer and triggering over current protection.
Yeah, not only i was able to resurrect my Intel DZ87KLT-75K from the dead, i also managed to deep clean its ME region so that i could update it to the last known BIOS version. Afterwards i further updated the ME firmware so that it could support the I7-4790K. However these BIOS chips work around the 3,3V mark, so it is advisable to do a small fix. Check the 'Community' section on my channel to know what to do.
I mistakenly formatted my bios update file in NTFS when i was suppose to format it in FAT32. My PC ran for like 2 days with no apparent problems then one night i turned off my PC for the night and in the morning when i turned on my PC i got a black screen and my keyboard didn't light up. I can't enter bios or hear POST beeps. I was considering this tool as an option. Is there any way you can make a tutorial on how to use the CH341A programmer?
@ 02:53 - 03:06 But if the BIOS chip has a write protect pin that method will not work. You will have to either desolder & lift that leg of the IC off the PCB or remove the entire chip (via hot air station or solder blobbing). 🤔😶😕😳
A minor critique @1:15 from an engineer in the electronics manufacturing services industry. When you say PCB, it refers to only the bare unpopulated circuit board. The correct term would be printed circuit board assembly or pcba. Kind of like when someone says GPU when really they mean video card. Differences in terminology like this have been the cause of wasted engineering hours in my experience.
I'm not so sure you could physically replace the chip since modern MB's use multiple physical layers of solder, which the way I understand is completely impossible to get right without the special hardware to disassemble+reassemble the board.
Like a decade ago I bricked my mom's Vista era laptop because after reinstalling the OS I went to update the bios, but the laptop froze during said installation. I never could fix it, because the information that I found said that to repair that one I needed to do so via a floppy disk.
One of my favorite videos so far wish I would have known this 3 months ago I just tossed some other board out from a bad flash but I bought a new chip and it still wouldn't turn on I imagine the chip I bought was not flashed with the proper bias I guess
I like how all of those techniques require having at least one more PC with internet access. Let's solve it for the "normal" people who only have one PC that got bricked.
They have them in several videos.. It's a surge protector with a big enough battery so that if power is lost your devices can continue to function so that way they may be shut down properly.
@@StefanoAgrotis Thanks for the explanation. I still think it would make a pretty cool video to inform people like me who are unaware of the purpose or functioning of the actual thing.
Those clips rarely work even when you get a solid connection, also the CH341A is pretty good, but there's a lot of BIOS chips that aren't supported, so before you buy one, look for the BIOS chip on your motherboard and make sure it's on the supported list, that will save you money and time if it isn't supported. The chip code will often, but not always start with 25 and some numbers and letters after, i.e 25Q64B or 25Q256F. Another couple of tips with a BIOS flash using the CH341A or similar product, make sure to save the original BIOS to a file before overwriting it (even if the data on the chip is bad) this way you can revert back in case it doesn't work, and flash the image twice as sometimes the flash might succeed and verify, but still not work, so do it again just to be sure. If you still can't get it to work or the CH341A is giving you issues, then take it to someone with knowledge and skill necessary to remove the chip safely and flash using a eeprom programmer as they will likely have better success, and should be cheaper and quicker than buying a new one or sending it off for warranty (which some motherboard manufacturers won't honour warranties for a bad BIOS update)
@@igoresque like I said, I have had flashes that didn't work even if they verified correctly. The data showed as being exact when compared against the file, even the checksum was identical, but it still had issues. It wasn't a one off either, this has happened on multiple occasions, and either the system wouldn't boot or it would but would crash or exhibit strange behaviour, and the only thing that fixed it was a second flash on top of the one done before. Imo it's better for the person looking at this to do it twice and have it work than to do it once, rebuild the system and still have it not work or act strange.
@@PaulTheFox1988 how can it verify correctly if it's not flashed correctly? Like you have initial working file that gets written to flash, then you read the flash and compare both files hash sums. How can it not be correct if you successfully read the flash and got matching hashes?
@@igoresque I wish I could tell you, but that has been my experience, it flashes, it verifies, the checksum matched, but the system acts weird or doesn't boot until I flash a second time. I don't know if it is the cmos, because when I remove the chip I also removed the battery and short clear cmos jumpers. I have heard others claim its an artifact of flashing eeproms that they will seemingly take the new data but it's marginal until you flash a second time, but whatever the reason it does happen, and again it's been multiple systems and each time a second flash has fixed it.
I work at a tech repair shop. There is a shiny new ITX board in our recycling bin I believe the bios is corrupted. If it's save able I would totally try to save it
I have one big remark on this procedure, yes flashing the BIOS from the manufacturer will work. But it usually comes with one BIG drawback, you loose the identity of you machine. Like the MAC address on Intel cards will be reset to something like 88:88:88:88:87:88. If you do not want to loose these, first dump your BIOS as this contains the regions you do not want to overwrite and save it somewhere safe. Now flash the BIOS with the "working" one. Now comes the tricky bit, depending on the platform your motherboards ME might simply deny you from overwriting these parts of the BIOS when it is in control. The first block is usually the bootblock and is never overwritten, the ID data usually sits at the end. You might need to whip out the HEX editor to get your original data back! The other more dangerous way, is to "hot" flash your non-working BIOS while it is in a running system (in the BIOS) and then follow it by doing the BIOS upgrade from the BIOS itself.
Obviously, if you have a removable BIOS chip... this would be much easier as you can just swap it out to flash the "broken" backup back... pop it in and do the update.
unless u got a msi board they use a chip thats smaller then that test clamp and theres no available test clamp for the package size i have an msi x470 gaming plus that has a bios hip thats smaller then SOP8
"It used to be that some motherboards had replaceable BIOS chips"
... I was there, 3000 years ago
How did the dinosaurs look like?
I was there when BIOS'es on MB's, I/O-cards like SCSI, and modems, had socketed UVPROM that you erased under a CFL light and after you flashed new content you put a sticker over the window to stop light from erasing it.
pepperidge farm remembers
@@bgezal UVPROM would've been the assumed name but they were actuallly just called EPROM [Erasable Programmabe Read only memory]
@@drakethedragon457 ultra-violet erasable programmable read only memory was actually it's name, Or UV EPROM / UVPROM. it could only be erased by exposing it to ultraviolet light. but it was a form of EPROM.. obviously.
Linus: "Speaking of drop"
Explains why the motherboard was bricked in the first place.
Underrated comment
I love how LTT animation now looks flawless while Techquickie is still faithful to its current style
what animation?
I had no idea that sort of device existed - fantastic to know!
Yeah, I found out a few months ago from one a compatriot(Russian) youtuber, was just as elated. Also because I love gadgets like that.
Doubly so because I was hellbent on getting a UPS just for the reason of "what if power goes out while I'm updating the mobo", which power does go out on me sometimes 😂 Couldn't get a UPS, got a power filter. Mobo still unupdated :'DDD
It finally got to western youtubers, hope to see more videos on it from top channels!
Same
as allmors
Most everything has a chip init somewhere ?Me too, I wonder if you can get the big clip in different Size's ,it could be hanxiy to themoding community also ,as also
Yes, they are actually used to Flash/Program various Chips in a Medium to Small Scale Manufacturing Unit. If cost or Design don't suit JTAG or factory Programmed Chips, then this solution is used. Or maybe you are a Hobbyist or something lol
Gosh. Now more people will stop praying.
Linus: the best way to deal with the issue is to stop it from happening in the first place
Me: yes linus this how you solve 99% of the problems in the world
@@AboveColin honestly I do agree with him on that.
I'm a new AMD user and my b550 motherboard came with an insanely old bios, it did not run my 5600x.
I hate the fact that the first motherboard I bought did not have bios flashback. How bankruptingly, wife leaving you, world ending is it to include bios flashback with every new motherboard?
I had to return that one and buy a new one because there was no way to update the bios.
@UCHm6_SHC3f4dWwEC7oHpQ4w Here's my miracle cure for lung cancer: never start smoking!
@@neondemon5137 and avoiding smokers
@@alex786 I assume they dont add that feature on every MB in order to make the expensive ones more *appealing*, which sucks, but then again just *assuming
@@neondemon5137 nah, just dont have lungs
Weather: decides to worsen during BIOS update
Me: **nervous sweating**
Haha
UPS: I got you man.
bios update
I had to do the ch341a route a few months ago, and found out the hard way that you also better remove the CPU to get proper reading, erasing/writing of the chip.
I was getting lots of unmatching hashes of bios that I read from it, until finally tried to remove the CPU.
And don't forget to buy a 1.8v adapter for ch341a if your bios needs 1.8v.
Do you need a bios dump to flash using this?? The manufacturer of my board has provided ROM in the bios download and I heard somewhere that i will need a working bios dump and not a ROM.
My board: Colorful CVN B550 frozen v14
@@rajudahal3619 I have an asrock board and asrock provides ready to be flashed bios files, I think you can check by reading the flash and comparing the size of what you've read with what your manufacturer provides on download page, the file size should be identical
@@rajudahal3619 it's a good idea to get a bios dump of your chip anyway, as it contains your serial number info or whatever, if your board is still under warranty, I think colorful bios is also ready to flash, judging by byte size of the .rom
@@igoresque I tried reaching to support and they weren't much helpful. They clearly said bricked bios is void of warranty and didn't say anything on what i can do except that I need to go for a repair. :D
@@rajudahal3619 that makes it easier, you don't have to worry about it anymore
Or you can just try to whack the bios chip with a hammer a few times.
While chanting the litany of percussive maintenance.
@@Carahan Remind me how does that one go again
Works for a stuck starter. Sound logic.
Good method, though it is single use
10/10 would recommend 👌🏼
I work at a major company and have to deal with pre-production hardware on occasion. With that, we are provided flashing tools that Linus talks about at the end that cost upwards of $700. They are quite cool, but didn't know there were ones that cost less.
Someone tried leaving a comment on it. The flashing device we use at my company isn't marked up in price, it's the actual MSRP of the tool. My company has a partnership with this particular tool maker so the particular BIOS chips my company uses are automatically recognized by the tool. Every BIOS chip stores data differently, so the flashing tool has to know the chip it's writing/reading to know how to write an image to it.
The CH341a takes like half an hour on 256mbit ROM, it's very slow. The flashrom software is actually perfectly capable of detecting the correct flash chip, it supports just about all of them; but i had to compile it from source since my flash chip that i had to deal with recently was newer than the distro package, but the tool already had it programmed in.
You can also just connect the chip to SPI pins of a Raspberry Pi and use flashrom utility from there, that's going to be a lot less slow.
@@SianaGearzdid you use flashrom together with ch341a programmer on your first example?
Thank you! Now I can update bios without having a heart attack.
A UPS is your friend
@@kevincooper3850 Yeah, need buy one
Everyone talks about the newest Gpu but not about ups.
@@chesanducharika exactly. If not for anything but protection from voltage spikes
@@cybervoid8442 most do come with battery. Mine can last my desktop for 8 hours
@@kevincooper3850 That's a long time
2:44 the CH341A is known to have a flaw where it sends out 5v directly to the BIOS chip's data line instead of 3.3v. It will still work with reprogramming BIOS chip but it is not recommended for constant reflashing of a single chip. There is a mod people can do to fix this if people do plan on using this specific programmer for repairs.
I ordered a CH341A and it did not work (reading/writing always gave errors no matter what I tried) , what I ended up doing was using a Raspberry PI with a tool named flashrom and that worked flawlessly. And if I am correct a raspberry PI has 3.3V I/O pins.
voltage mod is the solution
@@olafdesneeuwman8983 arm based single board computer fix x86 based computer bios
there is adaptaters to put on it with different power if i remember correctly i used one to repair my 2to hdd and it worked fine
@@korianes3590 The problem is that there aren't any 3.3v adapter because 3.3v Chips are meant to be directly flashed without adapters.
I can't really explain it that well so I would recommend this vid as its very informative: th-cam.com/video/-ln3VIZKKaE/w-d-xo.html
Oh how the times have changed. The only time I've ever had to deal with a bad bios update was back in the 286 days when my AST Premium 286 decided to brick itself. Ordered a new flashed DiP from a company that was advertising in the back of a Popular Mechanics magazine, and it came within 3 days. Worked perfectly and was even a better bios version than the one I had previously.
One thing I would add about the specific example of an electrical storm... if you've got close by lighting strikes, probably best to just unplug crap from the wall since a UPS will not protect you from a nearby, let alone, direct lightning strike. I see a lot of people on social media claiming it will, and it most certainly won't. If that happens, a bricked mobo might be the least of your problems.
They have built in surge protection covered by a warranty
@@atodaso1668 Yes, and that surge protection is for nominal surges from the power grid, not the astronomical surge from a nearby/direct lightning strike. There is no consumer surge protection that will. And I'm pretty sure, they wouldn't cover that under an "act of god" out outright state that lightning strikes are NOT covered. They make surge suppression that you can put on your homes electrical panel that can suppress a lightning strike, but that's still not a guarantee and lightning strikes can still exceed even their ratings.
The only surefire way to protect your equipment is to unplug it from the wall.
@@TheGameBench My friends call me weird for unplugging my computer when lightning's about but then one of them wonders why their computer suddenly stopped working one stormy night (the same night he was calling me an idiot for not trusting the surge protection on my mobo)
@@Snaily Happen to me once. Thanks god that everything survive except cheapo psu.
How did it happen you ask, well I was in process of shutting down and would have made it if Thor give me about 20sec.
Don't forget to unplug your router from the internet too. Lightning travels over any wire.
Heads up. Do not use a soldering iron to desolder a bios chip. Too many contacts and you will probably break one of the pads. You need a tool called a hot air station or some sort of heat gun, typical solder melting point is about 230 Celsius so make sure it can do that. They can run you about £70 or $85 if you’re US. Just be steady, gently tug with tweezers while heating and it comes straight off
Can confirm, dropping and catching a soldering iron hurts like hell. A proper soldering station would've helped my scenario though. What possessed me to attempt to catch it in my hands I will never know. I did finish the project I was working on though 🤣
OK, honest question, how and why did you drop it? What could have happened so you let loose? I'm really curious
@@DegustoDelSol ok. To preface this I was in college and my friends dorm they had stacked 3 small dressers, 2 on the side, one on top, and I was soldering on top of it cause it was near a window and we had a fan exhausting fumes out. We bought a $20 soldering iron and I was modding Nerf blasters at that time. It only came with the iron and nothing else, so I balenced it on the box it came in to keep it off the table... Yeah... It rolled off on the second blaster I was modding and smart me decided to catch it and burned in-between my middle finger and pointer finger.
I've since done other stuff with it like build drones and fix random electronics, but man did I have PTSD after that moment lmao
Well, I can say that dropping it on to something isn't much better, I have a desk next to my bed and a TS100 which I use with a laptop power brick, as I'm sure you're aware laptop brick cables aren't nearly as flexible as your typical cables for soldering irons or test equipment, well this one is rather rigid so my iron slide off my lap, didn't even try to stop it and almost instantly melted a hole right through my bedsheet, I may not be hurt, but it's a little painful to look at that hole, the one plus side is it's at the edge, so I could cut it off and barely notice.
@@vgamesx1 luckily my friend lived in like the "slum" of all our dorms so the RAs didn't even notice the tiny burned hole in the floor where it landed after I let go when it was burning my hand lmao. Totally destroyed the tip of that cheapo soldering iron tho
@@StuckOnAFireHydrant It's supposed to come with a tiny little shitty foldout stand, all i've seen did. Though it doesn't help much against shitty stiff cords you get in cheapest soldering irons.
I think dropped soldering iron moment is something most of us have experienced, it's fine.
I'd be cool to see a video of one of you guys attempting to unbrick a bricked motherboard. It wouldn't have to be bricked, could just pretend it is.
And it could _become_ bricked through the process of "faking it"!
In circuit programming(when the chip is still soldered on the motherboard), sometimes doesn't work. For a 100% certain good flash(as long there isn't a problem with the chip). You need to desolder the chip.
There are even really cheap programmers like the USBasp, but those is a real pain to use on Windows.
And those who have greater compatibility as the Minipro programmers (TL866/II/IIplus).
Good luck everyone! 😁
USBasp is really bad option here, because you always, always need two of them, one to flash the other with capable firmware. CH341 with clip cable cost ~5$, not 10-15 like Linus said.
@@evilgremlin I also had to get a voltage adapter for my chip, since ch341a doesn't do 1.8v, still was a mere $7 fix for my mobo
with clip you can just do this:
1) read existing BIOS chip 2 times and compare if hashes are the same, which means good read
2) then you can write a working BIOS file, and after that read the chip to check if hash is equal to the original file
pretty much fool proof way
@@igoresque … except when your BIOS chip is so close to the MB that the clip doesn’t even make contact with the legs … yeah, I’ve run into that issue with a MSI board that bricked itself while updating the BIOS.
@@StolenJoker84 I thought we were talking about the quality of the flash using clip, not the ability to attach the clip
I am so glad you guys covered this!! I’ve used the exact same tool to save no less than 4 boards that all had corrupted BIOS’. Good video & keep up the good work!!
Will the bios be the exact same like the internet version after we use ch341a or will it be different and can it harm the computer if we use this device? Thanks for all!
As an electrical technician I would not recommend using a soldering iron for surface mount components. You sould use hot air gun for that instead.
Solderig irons are for through hole components and maybe if needed, to pre-tin the pads for SMD components. Also don't forget to use good quality flux!
Cheers!
An iron is perfectly fine for SO style packages like a BIOS typically will be, but removal is certainly more challenging. If you're replacing with a new chip, I'd personally just clip the leads off then the feet are easy to remove with an iron.
just my luck. when i was watching this video. around 0:45 when linus finished saying "when you bios gets corrupted" by pc froze. initially i thought it was a gag in the video but when it lasted too long without anything happening and i couldnt move my mouse. i think that means my computer just did a le funny at the perfect time
This is why I adore this channel. Jumper cable style BIOS flashing! I never knew.
Love how you skimmed over GETTING A RAW BIOS DUMP TO FLASH! The downloaded bios file generally does NOT contain a full bios as it appears in the flash?
Depends. On ASUS you get a file packaged up in some metadata and you can extract with a special utility. Other manufacturers usually have raw dumps you can flash directly. However if the BIOS also contains MAC addresses, serial numbers, or other such personalised data, well it's not going to have those, tough.
Thank you so much for takin off your toque and washing/combing your hair! Looks nice :)
I once rescued a 2004 motherboard with a DIY arduino-based ROM flasher. Lucky me that the chip was a simple removable 8 pin chip that I could plug into a breadboard.
That is awesome. It's really sad that they don't longer do it like that on motherboards. I had a Optiplex with corrupt BIOS. And the work to fix it was not worth it because of a SMT component, that I yet had to identify where it was. And desolder with a rework station.
So i salvage what I could and recycled the motherboard. If it was easily repaired I wouldn't hasitate to reflash it in my programmer.
The CH341a is a lifesaver. I bricked the IPMI on a SuperMicro server board in my homelab (firmware updates -can- should always wait until you're sober) and managed to get it working again by flashing the correct image with the afore mentioned tool.
I knew this was possible but didn't someone commercialized it, this is perfect for not ultra techy people like me but still techy enough that can still flash a bricked bios with this tool
Last summer I lost power while I was updating my bios.These (2:35) still give me nightmares. Eventually I got a replacement chip because fortunately mine could be swapped.
0:07 or maybe beacuse you have connected the PCIe power cable to the CPU power pins (or what the name was)
I remember having to email a manufacturer to ask them to mail out a new (socketed) bios chip. It turned up in an envelope a week or so later and was ready to swap out. Good times!
Thanks Linus, I could’ve used this yesterday when a motherboard I was looking at wasn’t POSTing
A pretty comprehensive video without having to go into a technical deep dive of what's going on, bravo.
The only thing I'd add to this is that obtaining a raw BIOS image can be a challenge sometimes. The UEFI spec contains a specific mechanism to deliver BIOS updates. In a nutshell, it's supposed to help verify the integrity of the update, maintain security of the system, and only update parts of the BIOS that are changed.
This means the file you download may not be a file that is a 1:1 version of the data that should be on the flash part. I don't know of any way to use that to make an file suitable for flashing onto the BIOS chip.
A quick way to tell is to check the file size. It should be exactly 4, 8, or 16 MiB (it should exactly match the size of the BIOS flash part).
The next possible issue, at least with Intel mainboards is that the flash part containing the BIOS may also be shared with the built in ethernet adapter and the Intel ME. If that's the case, then the whole thing needs to be assembled into a single image with a tool like a hex editor. The process would to read the file, look at some data in the file (usually detailed in the chipset specs), then paste the good BIOS image into the correct spot, and finally flash the resulting file onto the system.
When I was an engineer in this space, we had tools to put all this together. I don't know if the BIOS modding community have their own tools for this.
In a production system, BIOS recovery mechanisms should work for nearly any situation but in my experience, OEMs are generally pretty bad at documenting them (BIOS is still something of a PC dark art and BIOS developers don't generally like to draw attention to themselves).
It may help to pester support a bunch and hope that someone there gets brave enough to reach out to the BIOS engineering team who may be able to provide a solution before resorting to using an external flasher. It might also be possible to get a raw image file though companies might be extra cagey about that (as they perceive IP issues but if you have physical access and a flasher, there is little point).
A couple things to add for Intel systems (those are what I worked on, I left that industry before Ryzen). There may be some some sort of system level protections against BIOS tampering. That can come from TPM protections, or through specific protections built into the chipset and CPU (intel was working to make something at least as strong as ARM's trust zones). I think this is pretty rare on consumer stuff (exceptions may be Dell, HP, Lenovo, and similar companies). But there isn't a lot of transparency.
One thing we may see in the future are systems that can deliver the BIOS in a virtual fashion via a feature called eSPI. It was something a server company I worked for in the past was investigating. The idea was that an embedded management microcontroller (generally one running Linux) would use the eSPI capability in the chipset to make a file stored in its filesystem available as a virtual flash part. That meant a BIOS upgrade would basically just involve copying a file to the filesystem and tell the right piece of software the filename to use for the new BIOS.
I could see major OEM like Asus perusing this in the consumer space once the kinks are worked out and the extra hardware can be added in a cost effective way.
Many servers that are higher end for reliability can have up to four socketed bios chips so if one or two fail they can still continue running without any issues! :)
On some motherboards, the power rails of the BIOS chip might get sucked up to the rest of the board, which makes the programmer not able to supply enough current to run the BIOS chip properly at the correct voltage. This may or may not happen on CH341a, but it did happen on my TL866 programmer
If you constantly get pin detection errors or read different data every single time you read the chip, you need to hook the alligator clip's board up to external power, such as a single AA/AAA battery holder for 1.5V BIOS chips, and a double battery holder for 3V BIOS chips. If you can't get those external power, then you will have to risk it a bit by using the motherboard's power and turn the system on while flashing...
2:10 "Modern BIOS chips"
Please correct me if I'm wrong but BIOS chip package didn't change in like 15 years and still remains in the SO-8 package...
Furthermore I could solder this type of ICs when I was 15yo so I'm sure some grown up adult can do same right?
This is much better, those rushed "youtube shorts" videos have been agitating me.
Dawid and the Saga of GT 210s has taught us about this all to well.
4:20 minutes, nice
Good to see the sponsor spots back at the end.
Thank you very much, I wrote the bios file to the bios chip as .bin and my computer was saved, thanks to you. (Advice for those who will do it: test clips are useless things, I cut off the cables and soldered them to the chip, I attached them poorly, but it was enough to throw the bios, then I removed it immediately)
Again, do not use test clips and use Neoprogrammer
Best Techquickie ever. I honestly did not know a couple of those.
I’ve already had to flash my bios with this external EPROM programmer, it was not easy, but It saved me from buying another motherboard.
I was gonna get ready to learn how to solder or get 200 bucks. But this is a life saver. I was just rippeed off and sold a faulty cpu thst shut off mid update. This is so much easier
Note to self: Keep bricked motherboards away from Red Shirt Jeff. 🤣
That cable for BIOS flashing can also let you flash custom versions of your BIOS, for ThinkPads this can include removing WiFi card whitelists
Best episode in a while very interesting and lots of new info to me
The ch341a is dangerous, the data lines can sometimes be at 5v logic levels rather than the typical 3.3v, I have destroyed laptop motherboards by trying to use the clip to flash it in circuit because while the bios chip itself is usually 5v tolerant, the pch or ec or whatever else is connected might not be
There's a fix for the issue, you need to lift one of the pins on the ch341 chip and solder it to the 3.3v regulator on the programmer, there are guides on how to do this
Have you checked that the chip is actually 3.3V (still not 5V-tolerant) rather than 1.8V?
Though normally using ch341a unmodded is not an issue. Because on the driven data pins that are connected to ch341a, with ch341a itself being powered by 5V, you have to just make sure vcc pin going to flash is the correct voltage, because the data pins, even if they're driven with 5V, are only capable of supplying less than half a milliamp of current, which is dissipated by the ESD diodes to VCC inside the flash chip. 5V-tolerant would mean 5V can be connected without current limiting, which isn't the case. And going over on VCC is always bad news. Also VCC must be present before any data connection is attempted, else it's not going to be great, which is you could say a hazard with these test clamps.
Something to keep in mind is just how death-prone the AMS1117 3.3V regulator on the ch341a boards is, and sometimes it sends full input voltage to the output once it dies. That would be bad news indeed.
Great video, never had this problem, but its refreshing to see someone thought of that updater device.
I run a repair shop and I do these desktop BIOS flashes without charging, when possible. It's another story with laptops, though.
I am actually trolling the comments for this exact issue. I have a laptop that failed a Bios update due to a forced restart. r/TechSupport didn't even bother responding. What is the other story for laptops?
@@thetalesofdaneandco I mean it's harder because you have to open the device and there are no clean BIOS files from the Manufacturer, you have to take It from a similar machine and sometimes even tinker with the ME Region.
@@andre_warmeling I corrupted my laptop BIOS and WINRAID forum mods helped me to rebuild the image to flash with a programmer. Not an easy task. But my laptop works now
@@nohay4549 Yes, that is possible sometimes. I'm glad it worked out for you.
Ok, we need to see you guys successfully perform that last one with the special clamp. Someone please ship them your dead motherboard so they can try it.
AdamantIT has some videos about this topic aswell, very well explained.
Finally some decent consumer repair advice although to myself this video is 7 years late. Remember with HP laptop Bios repairs you need the 1.8V adapter
Pretty mindblowing that how this can be still a thing while there’s already easy solutions
Wish you could leave a link to asprogrammer.. Also, can you ask you tube to add a brightness adjuster in the videos setting icon? ...
linus you've gained a loyal subscriber today with this one video...
For once I love the sponsor. That isn't the specific model of Sennheiser open backed headphones I have, but I can confirm, they're the best. I have a frankenstein setup with a headphone amp and mic instead.
Had a rare instance where I have a X470 motherboard with dual bios, so, to run the Ryzen 3700x, I needed to flash the bios to gain support for it. Didn't think anything of it til my bios corrupted, and the second bios was not compatible with the 3700x, and I have a Monoblock water block on my motherboard.... fun times😂
That programming IC clamp that you recommended is basically useless for PC BIOS reflashing. When you connect it to the programmer it will immediately supply 3.3V to the IC and thus power everything else that is powered from that power rail on the motherboard obviously overloading poor programmer and triggering over current protection.
Had this problem the other day. Popped out the cmos battery for 20 seconds and put it back in. Good as new.
Good to see you here, Linus. Good video!
Would be nice to make it a full video on ltt about how to fix bios!
Love this style of Techquickie the best👍
Yeah, not only i was able to resurrect my Intel DZ87KLT-75K from the dead, i also managed to deep clean its ME region so that i could update it to the last known BIOS version. Afterwards i further updated the ME firmware so that it could support the I7-4790K. However these BIOS chips work around the 3,3V mark, so it is advisable to do a small fix. Check the 'Community' section on my channel to know what to do.
I mistakenly formatted my bios update file in NTFS when i was suppose to format it in FAT32. My PC ran for like 2 days with no apparent problems then one night i turned off my PC for the night and in the morning when i turned on my PC i got a black screen and my keyboard didn't light up. I can't enter bios or hear POST beeps. I was considering this tool as an option.
Is there any way you can make a tutorial on how to use the CH341A programmer?
About that UPS, is there a power supply for desktops that will take 12v dc input instead of ac?
Linus: makes the Video exactly 4:20 minutes long.
Me: Nice
@ 02:53 - 03:06
But if the BIOS chip has a write protect pin that method will not work. You will have to either desolder & lift that leg of the IC off the PCB or remove the entire chip (via hot air station or solder blobbing). 🤔😶😕😳
were is a good place to get the program to use this item ?
Linus it’s called an alligator clamps not a car jumper cable thingy LOL good video
So excited to watch this! I just accidentally dropped a brick on my mobo and split it on half :(
My asrock Fatal1ty AB350 Gaming-ITX/ac am4 motberboard has bios in what looks like a tiny socket, and that was released around 2017?
A minor critique @1:15 from an engineer in the electronics manufacturing services industry. When you say PCB, it refers to only the bare unpopulated circuit board. The correct term would be printed circuit board assembly or pcba. Kind of like when someone says GPU when really they mean video card. Differences in terminology like this have been the cause of wasted engineering hours in my experience.
I want to see a video testing one of these chip clamps
Mobo manufacturer: We're gonna make motherboards hard to repair and then offer a DIY repair program.
Had no idea those existed. Great video
LTT should buy DROP since the founder of LTT is the master of DROP already! 😀
I'm sad that the wrench in the thumbnail wasn't a viable option. Missed opportunity to embrace Linus' natural talents.
How about a shorted 3 pin argb header. Any ideas on fixing that one?
Honestly, every desktop user should have a UPS. They're not that expensive and they're a lifesaver.
New fear unlocked: dropping a sawdering iron on my foot
I thought that video would make me feel confident to update mine. Instead, I m gonna let it be old :D
Yeah same
honestly i did not have any problem upgrading my x470 board and my b550 board ...
I did my bios update a couple of weeks ago, it's really easy tbh, just use an ups or an inverter
@@spac18 Honestly idk about other countries but i only experienced 1 Power Failure in my lifetime (Germany) so i did just risk it no problem ...
Don't read my name;;"+$;#!#
I'm not so sure you could physically replace the chip since modern MB's use multiple physical layers of solder, which the way I understand is completely impossible to get right without the special hardware to disassemble+reassemble the board.
nah that's bullshit, modern flash chips are still easily replaceable with a hot air gun (or even a soldering iron) to this day
@@AryaFairywren If it's surfaced-mounted, sure.
Like a decade ago I bricked my mom's Vista era laptop because after reinstalling the OS I went to update the bios, but the laptop froze during said installation. I never could fix it, because the information that I found said that to repair that one I needed to do so via a floppy disk.
4:20? Nice 😎
One of my favorite videos so far wish I would have known this 3 months ago I just tossed some other board out from a bad flash but I bought a new chip and it still wouldn't turn on I imagine the chip I bought was not flashed with the proper bias I guess
This kind of bricking is only related to BIOS flashing.
What about bricking related to power delivery component/VRM failure?
I like how all of those techniques require having at least one more PC with internet access. Let's solve it for the "normal" people who only have one PC that got bricked.
Ask a friend? Sure many people wouldn't have an extra PC lying around but I'm sure they know someone with a working computer.
if you’re willing to risk your pc not working after bios update, then you better have some sort of a backup plan
Can you make a video about the UPS thing? You always talk about it but it's not really clear what it actually does.
They have them in several videos.. It's a surge protector with a big enough battery so that if power is lost your devices can continue to function so that way they may be shut down properly.
@@StefanoAgrotis Thanks for the explanation.
I still think it would make a pretty cool video to inform people like me who are unaware of the purpose or functioning of the actual thing.
Those clips rarely work even when you get a solid connection, also the CH341A is pretty good, but there's a lot of BIOS chips that aren't supported, so before you buy one, look for the BIOS chip on your motherboard and make sure it's on the supported list, that will save you money and time if it isn't supported. The chip code will often, but not always start with 25 and some numbers and letters after, i.e 25Q64B or 25Q256F.
Another couple of tips with a BIOS flash using the CH341A or similar product, make sure to save the original BIOS to a file before overwriting it (even if the data on the chip is bad) this way you can revert back in case it doesn't work, and flash the image twice as sometimes the flash might succeed and verify, but still not work, so do it again just to be sure.
If you still can't get it to work or the CH341A is giving you issues, then take it to someone with knowledge and skill necessary to remove the chip safely and flash using a eeprom programmer as they will likely have better success, and should be cheaper and quicker than buying a new one or sending it off for warranty (which some motherboard manufacturers won't honour warranties for a bad BIOS update)
you don’t need to flash twice,
just read the flash after it’s been written to and check if bios-in and bios-out have the same hash
@@igoresque like I said, I have had flashes that didn't work even if they verified correctly.
The data showed as being exact when compared against the file, even the checksum was identical, but it still had issues.
It wasn't a one off either, this has happened on multiple occasions, and either the system wouldn't boot or it would but would crash or exhibit strange behaviour, and the only thing that fixed it was a second flash on top of the one done before.
Imo it's better for the person looking at this to do it twice and have it work than to do it once, rebuild the system and still have it not work or act strange.
@@PaulTheFox1988 how can it verify correctly if it's not flashed correctly?
Like you have initial working file that gets written to flash, then you read the flash and compare both files hash sums. How can it not be correct if you successfully read the flash and got matching hashes?
maybe it has something to do with cmos not being reset properly?
@@igoresque I wish I could tell you, but that has been my experience, it flashes, it verifies, the checksum matched, but the system acts weird or doesn't boot until I flash a second time.
I don't know if it is the cmos, because when I remove the chip I also removed the battery and short clear cmos jumpers.
I have heard others claim its an artifact of flashing eeproms that they will seemingly take the new data but it's marginal until you flash a second time, but whatever the reason it does happen, and again it's been multiple systems and each time a second flash has fixed it.
I work at a tech repair shop. There is a shiny new ITX board in our recycling bin I believe the bios is corrupted. If it's save able I would totally try to save it
That soldering iron drop gave me nightmarish flashbacks of me actually dropping the soldering iron in electronics class.
The first time I hot swapped a bios chip and it actually worked, I felt like a boss.
The bootblock that handles this feature usually requires a certain key combination to be pressed as well, usually on laptops!
I have one big remark on this procedure, yes flashing the BIOS from the manufacturer will work. But it usually comes with one BIG drawback, you loose the identity of you machine. Like the MAC address on Intel cards will be reset to something like 88:88:88:88:87:88.
If you do not want to loose these, first dump your BIOS as this contains the regions you do not want to overwrite and save it somewhere safe. Now flash the BIOS with the "working" one.
Now comes the tricky bit, depending on the platform your motherboards ME might simply deny you from overwriting these parts of the BIOS when it is in control. The first block is usually the bootblock and is never overwritten, the ID data usually sits at the end. You might need to whip out the HEX editor to get your original data back!
The other more dangerous way, is to "hot" flash your non-working BIOS while it is in a running system (in the BIOS) and then follow it by doing the BIOS upgrade from the BIOS itself.
Obviously, if you have a removable BIOS chip... this would be much easier as you can just swap it out to flash the "broken" backup back... pop it in and do the update.
2:30 this will void my manufacturer warranty won’t it
I replaced the removable bios chip on my ASUS x58 sabertooth. It is still running by the way, with a xeon 5670. Running windows 7 for my older games.
I bet you a dollar that linus dropped his motherboard in the middle of a bios update and decided to make this video.
Nobody gonna talk about one of Linus' best sponsor transitions ever?!? 😂
i've done the USB flash method on a Asus board. Works great
The clamp method seems to be the more practice option.
Could also be used to Flash ‘’ Lock ‘’ device that are named after a popular fruit.
unless u got a msi board they use a chip thats smaller then that test clamp and theres no available test clamp for the package size i have an msi x470 gaming plus that has a bios hip thats smaller then SOP8