A Note: Some have mentioned that it's possible the reason the recovery tool failed was because it didn't support large flash drives like the 32GB one I was using, and this is an issue that has come up in the past. Unfortunately I had already trashed the laptop so I'm unable to test that, but if you are having that issue, it might be worth trying a flash drive that is USB 2.0 and 4GB or less, and ensuring it's formatted as FAT32.
@@strangepizza7019 That applies to the majority of hardware systems. Most people format USB sticks to NTFS (especially those using Windows for which it'll be the default option), but FAT32 should always be the go-to for this sort of thing. Motherboards very rarely will have built-in support for NTFS, as it really requires Windows to work (or Linux which can read and write NTFS without issues), but the low-level hardware isn't going to work with anything other than FAT32 in most cases
I had that problem with an old Dell laptop I was trying to update the BIOS. I tried a 1gig USB drive and it just refused to boot from it. I then setup it up on a 256 meg drive. No problem.
UEFI does a lot more than just tell your computer where to find the bootloader. It also acts as an abstraction layer between the OS and the physical hardware. It usually handles stuff like wake-on-lan, virtualization extensions, hardware RAID and full-disk encryption, too. It's why it's generally a good idea to keep on top of EFI releases for your PC/motherboard. That said, never go bleeding-edge with them. Wait a month or two after any new firmware release to see if the forums light up with posts about problems being introduced by that new release. I learned this the hard way once.
Never go bleeding edge on any update . Take for instance me bricking my iMac on an Apple update . I usually wait months before I get around to allowing Mac to do it's update thing but just this one time I updated as soon as the red update available checkmark notified me and what a mess that unleashed . OMG . Now I realize that Apple Support is just a bunch of Chat Bots that don't achieve anything and that Real info is scattered willy nilly all over the internet , but , yeah , I got it to recover after almost taking a sledge hammer to my iMac , not to mention a few hours of desperate online searching .
god help the noobs . Apple must make tons of money off them as they truck their precious bricked Mac to the nearest Apple store so the GENIUSES can rip them off thoroughly .
who remembers the old days of thiojoe where he would make videos like "How to triple wifi speed for free" where he would tell you to wrap your router in aluminium foil
Well if you're wrapping the right stuff, that could get you some gain, but c'mon 3x speed is latency not throughput, and while I'ma not familiar with the videos or channel as it may have been; based on the interferences on your area, it could be feasible to get a 3x ms latency improvement by wrapping the body to separate the internal from externally pervasive radiation... If it was bad to begin with, and for said reasons.
Had no idea updating BIOS was risky. I updated mines last week because i was upgrading from a R5 2600 to an R7 5800x. It was actually super easy to do.
Yeah... It can be dangerous. I took a recommendation online to update my BIOS because I had some interesting crashing with my overclock, i accidently left my overclock settings on while updating the bios and it crashed... i was fucked for 2 days
As an electronics repair technician I've seen this happen more often than you'd think. For most motherboards we simply flash the chip with it's respective firmware using a similar tool you showed. Except its SPI to USB A. In rare cases we get a non standard cmos chip, then we use leads we souldered to a USB A male with tiny alligator clips on the other end. The software isn't that difficult. We have a dumbed down GUI based CMOS flashing tool that handles the complex stuff on the backend. Essentially it's like copying a file to a USB drive.
Can you share some tips for me.I have an old motherboard i tried to update bios and it bricked my motherboard.I cant find any new motherboard bcs my pc is old but i have no money to buy new pc.Any tools to reset the bios chip?
I got a virus on my laptop which corrupted the bios, causing a cmos error on boot and sometimes it would get stuck on a black screen. I gave it to a 3rd party store that somehow managed to fix it after failing the first time, I assume they also flashed the bios and cmos chip since they got corrupted.
The vast majority of bios updates is done successfully in most cases. As long as you follow all instructions for that pc or motherboard. If your not confident in that than you should let someone else update the bios. In my case all bios updates I have performed was successful. It really isn't hard at all. It may be scary the first time you do it because of all the scary language used about updating the bios. Just ignore all of that, follow all instructions and away you go. Be confident but make sure you follow all instructions.
I bought those grips but for some reason they didnt have stable connection and after hours of trying I decided to buy a Eeprom programmer and do the desoldering and soldering thing.
Interesting side note: During a BIOS update the downloaded file is usually verified to prevent flashing of broken or manipulated images. BIOS flashback in some cases skips this step entirely. This allows for flashing of custom images, ie adding NVME boot support to older mainboards and other hacky stuff.
Hi, is it possible to reinstall an older BIOS on the motherboard? I have an Aorus x399 Gaming 7 which I updated the BIOS from an F2 to an F13a BIOS out of ignorance but I have read in some forums and TH-cam channels that it was not advisable to do so because GIGABYTE motherboards must be updated in a staggered manner. And I'm afraid that something affected the PC by doing it that way because after updating the BIOS my 16GB (2X8GB) PC only recognizes 8GB installed as instructed in DIMM_2_2A and DIMM_4_2B.
I really needed this video. Thank you. EDIT : Man im serious, cant find any good tech channels that have made a video on this subject, and its been bugging me for a while. Love you man.
Well, I had the worst case scenario. My cousin was updating the bios with a slightly different variant version. Bios did not recognise it before installation so it bricked. Long story short, i had to use an spi flasher, find a compatible program, desolder the chip, find the correct model and manually flash the .bin into it. The satisfaction was huge after all!
Hi, is it possible to reinstall an older BIOS on the motherboard? I have an Aorus x399 Gaming 7 which I updated the BIOS from an F2 to an F13a BIOS out of ignorance but I have read in some forums and TH-cam channels that it was not advisable to do so because GIGABYTE motherboards must be updated in a staggered manner. And I'm afraid that something affected the PC by doing it that way because after updating the BIOS my 16GB (2X8GB) PC only recognizes 8GB installed as instructed in DIMM_2_2A and DIMM_4_2B.
I have a story. A friend came in to give a laptop that shut down randomly and displayed overheating. So, I opened it up and cleaned it. Didn't check if it would randomly shut down, I just checked if it would boot and then I returned it. Then a few minutes later he calls me and says it randomly shutting down again. So I said, wait, Ill come over to your place and check it out. When I arrived, the laptop's BIOS WAS BEING UPDATED!. Apparently he turned it back on several times and the old problem of shutting down randomly still continued, and one time when it shut off, it recommended a bios update, and my friend clicked YES. Dude almost bricked his laptop. Had me screaming on him for a while for doing that on a lappy that randomly crashes. In any case, the silicon was faulty, and I installed a new processor and it worked out fine. 👍
@@bentley187 it was i3 3110m i believe. Swtiched it to a i5 3230m i had laying around. It was socketed, so no need for soldering, i just put in an new one and everything turned out fine.
@Bruh Bruh yea, i5 3230m is better than i3 3110m, so you can call it an updgrade. Just removed the old one from the socket and plugged in the new one. This was possible in all laptops before but now almost all are soldered and you cant remove them.
That friend is so lucky his laptop didn’t succumb to a corrupted BIOS. There were so many risks that came with that decision. Mainly, the laptop kept shutting down randomly which could’ve interrupted the BIOS update entirely. The other risk is the person’s decision making overall. He should’ve just did nothing else with his laptop and waited for you to arrive. Plus, it seemed that he clicked “YES” instantly. I’m not sure of the entire story, but I can definitely guarantee that it could’ve ended a lot worse.
This happened to a friend of mine, but I was there watching it happen. Back during Y2K, there was a rash of BIOS updating going on. I personally thought that it was mostly unnecessary to do, as Y2K was not really about modern computers like PC's, it was more about ancient computers from the 70's or earlier which were still running in businesses at the time. Anyways, we were part of an IT team, and were applying Y2K patches for servers, so we had to come in after midnight and work through into the early morning, while no one else was using the computers. My friend's boss asked him to update the BIOS of the Dell desktop that he was using for his personal work PC, while we were in there for the servers. I told my buddy not to do that, as there was more danger upgrading the BIOS than there was in not upgrading it. But he didn't listen, and sure enough the BIOS upgrade screwed everything up. The BIOS didn't fail its installation, it installed correctly, but for some reason Dell had changed the hard drive mapping routine between the two versions of the BIOS, and the new BIOS could no longer read the hard drive partition, even though nothing had changed on the hard drive. Then later we found out that Dell didn't even make the previous version of the BIOS available for downgrade! The only solution was to reformat the hard drive to the new partition scheme, and reinstall Windows. All previous data on the drive was lost, obviously! Thanks Dell.
What a coincidence, I was at work yesterday and a computer didn't recognize a headphone connected in the front jack 3.5, so I updated the BIOS and it worked after that.
If you are updating your bios from a USB port in BIOS mode, do not use a USB3 port as there is no support for that in the BIOS. More recent MBs do provide basic support for it but it is better to use an old USB2 port to update the bios.
It's an EEPROM using a SPI interface 😀 Older ones back in the day would've been EEPROM or EPROM using 8/16bit parallel data IO. SPI is a protocol like USB is protocol EEPROM is like the medium. Enjoy your videos 👍😀
As u said it's a simple EEPROM that can be write using a simple arduino or any microcontroller, this computer isn't so hard to fix it. I think i could give a try on this, there is a lot of tutorials on internet how to use external EEPROM or SPI on Arduino and soo u could use it to fix. Tip: only think u need to see is if the BIOS file downloaded is a simple RAW or if is compacted.
@@tobiwonkanogy2975 EEPROM is a type of programmable read only memory. It's magical because you can rewrite it, and all that is needed to write is a carefully controlled overvoltage (typically the circuitry for that is internal to the IC). EPROM was rewritable, but you had to expose the EPROM IC's memory section to UV light for a period to erase the old program first. SPI is magical because it is much easier to do the signal integrity stuff for a data/clock pair than for 8 or 16 parallel lines, and it's still very fast.
@@victorlacerda9659 There is a little more to flashing the bios memory than just talking at it over SPI. You would have to read through the specific IC's datasheet to figure out the process and write a driver to handle the flashing process. It's a little work, but it isn't too bad once you are going... Chances are if you know enough to do that quickly, your time is worth enough that you are better off paying the manufacturer a little to fix it for you instead... unless you are just doing it for the fun/challenge.
As an Eletrical Engineer I would say as a rule of thumb: update your BIOS only if you want a specifc function of the update if you don't know what you are doing. If you know what are you doing, you can update it and it will hardly go wrong unless you get power issues or the wrong version of the BIOS. And if that happens it is easy enough to re-record it but you will need a special hardware-device to do this
Haha, how very true, but that reminds me of my own experience with a bricked BIOS and how I went about fixing it. The thing was that I wanted to change my boot logo, so I picked up the manufacturer's utility to modify the resources. Piss poor translation of instructions mind you, but things made enough sense, I thought... Well there were actually 3 different images, the main image, the manufacturer's logo, and the chip logo. I wanted to replace all 3 in a way to display as if it was one single image, so I had a fun round going back and forth with Paint Shop Pro, but that's besides the point. Where things went wrong for me was the very first time I tried my modified BIOS file, I replaced all 3 images in one single editing session before I saved it. BIG MISTAKE! The file seemed to save correctly without issue, so I flashed it. Yay brick! I ended up figuring out that the resource editor itself was apparently a bit buggy, and I needed to replace only one image at a time, save that, then restart the utility to replace the next image. Then wash, rinse and repeat for the third image of course. Anyways, I was working at a computer repair shop at the time I bricked my own system, and we didn't have any such hardware to reflash a BIOS chip, so I got creative... I looked in our junk parts bin for any laptop motherboard I could find with the same capacity BIOS chip. Didn't matter to me what model at this point, it only mattered to me that the board marginally functioned. I found one, a different model but by the same manufacturer, so I figured the utility should work if I gave it the force wrong updates command. The particular board I picked was a good spare parts candidate as it had been damaged by electrostatic discharge which caused permanent color banding on screen coming from a damaged GPU, but otherwise worked fine. So, I hooked the thing up and did a quick Windows install on a spare drive, then took my modified BIOS and force flashed it onto the spare parts motherboard. The instant the flash completed, the system bricked. Okay, whatever... Then I desoldered the chip from the donor board and soldered it onto my motherboard. Success! It was a happy day for me, but I also learned just how tricky it can be to modify a BIOS, especially with a utility with a piss poor Chinese to English translation.
@Will Hike I actually was adding a new feature, I was changing my BIOS boot logo image to be an identity photo and return information if found stolen. Aside from that, there was also another reason to update my BIOS anyways. Some particular issue with a certain brand of LCD's caused the BIOS to falsely get reflashed to garbage data if the screen brightness was turned below 50%, something to do with piss poor voltage management on the particular brand LCD end somehow sending a high enough residual current to the BIOS chip to falsely trigger reflashing mode. So yeah, update your BIOS if you need new features, but also update your BIOS if it fixes known issues which might turn your equipment into a brick just from changing backlight brightness or some other random everyday activity.
@Will Hike Hah, now I wish I could on my old Dell B130, but I can't. The battery is shot and it won't allow a BIOS update with a faulty battery, and I ain't about to buy a battery for that old thing now. Hey, as long as it still works at least, not like I take it anywhere anyways. 🤷♂️
I should've come to this video sooner. I've upgraded my BIOS through holding down Windows+B on startup. It booted up but nothing is responding. The taskbar isn't working, Windows startup isn't working. I've forcefully restarted it but no luck. I'm an idiot for not doing proper research on it.
@@SoggySage Some boards/BIOSes have what they call a 'boot block protection' feature, where it can reflash the BIOS from a specially made USB flash drive with the BIOS file having a particular exact filename, specific to each board though. That particular failsafe mode doesn't even turn on the display though, and it only works if the flash drive is prepared EXACTLY right and also must be plugged into USB port number 0, whichever port the manufacturer decided to designate as USB 0 anyways. With the screen not even turned on, you can't do squat nor can you see the status. For older boards with this feature, the flash drive is basically supposed to be configured as an automatic bootable DOS compatible flash drive with the BIOS installer utility and BIOS file, preconfigured to run the utility silently from the AUTOEXEC.BAT file. Newer boards might be happy with just the BIOS file itself and may contain its own reflashing utility built in. Any which way you go with that method can be a pure headache as you can't see what the system is even doing, and it takes some time too. Also the hotkey for that mode varies from one manufacturer to another.
Hi, is it possible to reinstall an older BIOS on the motherboard? I have an Aorus x399 Gaming 7 which I updated the BIOS from an F2 to an F13a BIOS out of ignorance but I have read in some forums and TH-cam channels that it was not advisable to do so because GIGABYTE motherboards must be updated in a staggered manner. And I'm afraid that something affected the PC by doing it that way because after updating the BIOS my 16GB (2X8GB) PC only recognizes 8GB installed as instructed in DIMM_2_2A and DIMM_4_2B.
You absolutely need to update your bios. If you are on AMD the bios update contains important cpu microcode update, too which highly recommended to install for performance and optimizations. All modern motherboards and laptops have a way too recover from a corrupted bios so it is not that of a big deal. Plus, you can actually install updates from the bios itself which reduces crash possibilities.
except when your bios update starts rebooting your pc for no reason and getting old bios update doesn't help for some reason (no bsod, no minidump). happened to some guy on newest lenovo laptop JUCN59WW update for Legion 5 15ARH7H/Legion R7000P ARH7H/Legion R7000 ARH7H/Legion 5 15ARH7/Legion R7000P ARH7/Legion R7000 ARH7/Legion 5 Pro 16ARH7H/Legion R9000P ARH7H/Legion 5 Pro 16ARH7/Legion R9000P ARH7. I'm not updating bios for some 5% processor gains or whatever.
In bringing my journey one step closer to getting a 5000 series AMD CPU, I had to update my BIOS... Except that it was on such old firmware that I couldn't just update it, I had to do about two updates before it would finally install the update that I needed. I'm pretty sure the combined stress from watching the progress bar slowly go up multiple times has taken at least a year away from my life.
The introduction of dual BIOS really put my mind at ease during these tense minutes. I flashed many many times because I worked as a technician for a while and only one something happened and it was recoverable. As basic as BIOS was and UEFI is, it probably is one of the most stable pieces of code inside your machine. But ever since two chips are common it really feels so much better to update them, I cannot understate it enough. Maybe it's an irrational fear, just like meteorites and the sun burning out, but as long as there is a solution like this, I'm happy. Great video btw!
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Don't always rely on that. I remember buying an Aorus motherboard with a few years ago and I had to update it. The update failed and the feature was worthless because the stupid thing wrote the update to BOTH chips, with no option to change the behaviour. Fortunately I got a refund.
I KNOW REALLY I had a bios update for like months but the update is like a few mb and I'm like you want me to update my BIOS for only a few mb? Yea if it ain't broke don't mess with it and I'm not gunna do it!
I've been lucky so far with HP BIOS updates and their UEFI diagnostics updates on my laptop. I'd like to give a shoutout to Toshiba, though. Delivered a BIOS update, update tool seemed to hang while install and I foolishly cut the power and hard restarted. Had to convince the owner that the laptop (early Win 7 era, so 1st gen core i processor) couldn't handle Windows 8 and seemingly went no display in the process.
One of the worst bios experiences I had was my first HP Pavilion. Wiped it to give to my brother and the bloatware decided to do a bios update (and general driver installs). While the bios is being written a Windows update restart Countdown appears in the bottom right... And it refused to let me click cancel. HP were amazing as the device was 3 years old and they still serviced it to recover the bios. Learned JTAGs because of this. 😂 EDIT: this was 2010.
What, how were you even updating the bios from within windows in the first place? Usually you put the bios update on USB and then boot into the bios directly and flash it, I've never heard of being able to do it while the computer is booted into the operating system
@@whirlwind872 the HP Pavilion used a bios updator tool from within windows. It's been years since I had that laptop but my works laptop has a similar bios updating tool. It's just a ROM chip at the end of the day, providing the hardware is setup to allow flashing the right software can do it from the operating system level.
Next time you don't want windows to reboot itself after an update because you are doing important work or whatever, just use this command: "shutdown -a"
So far I had not 'bricked' any BIOS and what you missed is that there are usually options to save the current BIOS. A really good tip is (especially for Modem Firmware/BIOS) that you reset to the default settings and then flash the BIOS/Firmware and after flashing resetting again to the default settings. Some programmers haven't tested the setting or introduced new settings and if there was a change in the configuration or some situation not tested that may lead to problems with the BIOS! Also always have your laptop etc on full loaded battery and per cable to power connected. If on PC if possible, plug in the PC to an UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply). In your case with the USB not functioning that may be due the BIOS not in the expected (maybe even specific named) directory or put into the root of the BIOS and thus not find and stops. In some cases, what could help is use the procedure for 'resetting the BIOS' to the 'default setting'. Furthermore, in some cases a BIOS update is as well needed for newer drivers. I had in cases of HP with Windows Updates that the BIOS needed to be on a certain version or else it wouldn't update the new Feature Update. What's pretty common is that for newer CPUs there is a BIOS update needed or not even boot with the newer CPU. Some newer drivers expect a newer Firmware/BIOS and if not get, not functions.
In that case a capacitor on the MB can be used to continue providing power to the CMOS. Really though, the CMOS power should only be needed for the clock. Everything else should be non-volatile, with the jumper doing an explicit clear.
For some strange reason, if I unplug the battery from my old Dell laptop, the CMOS battery will become fully drained in a few days and I have to replace it and re-update the BIOS settings again so I just always leave it plugged in and charged. Strange. It acts like the CMOS battery is the backup for the main one. You would think it should be the opposite. 🤔
@@arthurmann578 some laptops need the second battery isa there a round spot on the laptop big battery if so a second builtin battery is needed which is the big battery which second ceos in it
@@arthurmann578 no. In this case it would be one chip that permanently holds a default version and any updates and settings are stored on this other chip, which is volatile. So this second chip always needs power to remember anything.
14:54 It may seem somewhat daunting at first glance, but the flashrom command via the linux commandline works great with these USB-based BIOS flashing devices. No de-soldering when using the SOP8 clip and little to lose when a motherboard bricked anyways. A very satisfying experience when a previously dead system springs back to life with minimal cost involved. Good that you mentioned this method in your video.
one important thing to note about the cpu vulnerabilities fixes would be that some would chose not to do it because of potential performance impacts some have had on systems. which is indeed a worthy consideration if a person knows they will never be put in the position to be vulnerable anyway.
Assuming the user is keeping their OS up to date, those vulnerability updates will be forced on them anyway. Windows and Linux can load CPU microcode at run-time.
6:40 except when it does. Especially recently on Ryzen systems, there's been a lot of important updates delivered on BIOS updates, like better memory compatibility, tuning of frequency scaling, the recent USB dropping out issue on last gen Zen. Hell, even support for newer gen CPUs on older chipsets. Some security patches have also been delivered on BIOS updates.
@ImNotBooboobear Maybe in 2009. Defender is leaps and bounds better than it was a decade ago, when it gained its bad reputation. It's more than enough for most users, and even faster than third-party solutions nowadays.
Had to update my BIOS because my cpu wasn't supported . I have to say it was pretty smooth and had no problem with post or anything. I feel kinda lucky now that I know that BIOS updates could be potentially harmful
by chance was it a 13th gen intel cpu? I'm using a 13700k with a ASUS TUFF gaming wifi plus z690 d4 motherboard and XMP doesnt work so I can put ram to the right speed or overclock the cpu and I need a BIOs update but I'm scared to do it because of the risks
@@sebastianb5997 shouldn't be. Bios updates for compatibility aren't that bad. Also, you can always send it back to the manufacturer and ask them update the BIOS for you.
@@JustYourAverageBronyaEnjoyer old Dell latitude will refuse to update the BIOS if the laptop NOT plugged in to AC and have at least 20% of charge in the battery
Updating bios today is much safer compared to back in the day. I just updated my bios for the first time and i could feel the increase of stability right away mostly in my games and fps
@Bob Thompson It improved the efficiency of how your components communicate with each other and could have also improved the power delivery to your CPU.
Wow! Your the best Ive ever heard. Im a total Noob at 40 years old. Just trying to tinker a little as a hobby but. I want to learn everything you know. So thoughtful and thorough liked and subscribed. You’re the man keep it up!
GREAT video, really well made. Thank you for all the excellent info. Glad you take the time (no matter how long it takes to explain) to really cover everything about what you are talking about. Seems like other youtubers are so focused on " THIS VIDEO HAS TO BE 10 MINUTES, OR 5 MINUTES E.T.C" . Your videos never feel rushed, and by the end i am usually always surprised how long the video was lol.
Had to Update the BIOS of my Asus rog strix b450-f gaming ii yesterday so i can put in my 5600g and i have to say it was quite easy. Just put the recent Version on a USB Stick and then use the EZ BIOS Flash Tool that Asus offers in the BIOS itself. It may not be that easy on every MB just wanted to leave that here 👍
@@beaumartinmusic USB should be atleast 1GB, but the most important one is that IT SHOULD BE MBR FORMAT (google or youtube on how to reformat it into mbr).
I find that with old flash drives, like 256MB FAT, with a read/write led I have more chances of success on recovering from corrupt bioses. Also, it may be that you have to use a specific USB port for it to work. I was successful with quite a few desktops and laptops that had a built it recovery quite easily. My favourite fix is a compaq laptop though, with corrupt bios. It would go into bios settings but could not see any drives (it could not recognise the drives properly- it would display junk data there), nor did usb work to boot. I couldn't use DOS to flash, even tried a usb floppy drive-sometimes that works btw. With no other visual recovery mode, it had a key combo (ctrl alt esc and B?) that low level turned it on, no display, and looked for a specific BIOS filename on a FAT partitioned USB drive. If it found the correct filename, it would beep *loudly* several times and flash it. That worked. Generally if the boot block (the "slow portion flashing" on your video is intact, there's hope. Some flash programs do that writing at the very end, after the main block is flashed successfully. It depends on the bios. Try another usb stick configuration and different bios images! I'd suggest the one it initially had, if possible.
For me, I always keep my bios/UEFI updated as security vulnerabilities aren’t unheard of, nor are bugs or missing hardware support. While I like to live dangerously, I’d still probably only recommend doing it if you have a reason to. Those reasons are generally given in the release notes.
It depends on the operating systems. There are operating systems, that chelc for these (known) vulnerabilitys at install time, and if found, will apply a software fix to prevent it. (May not the most efficient method, but easier)
19:37 lesson: never buy a laptop with an eMMC drive (they are also slow and often (like in this case) very small) and if, do regular backups (in the case of a small drive like that, you could just clone the partition). The backups should be stored on an external HDD or on optical discs, as SSDs are not reliable enough to be suitable for backups.
though I think this is a great video that really goes into detail how much engineering and delicacy goes into the BIOS/UEFI system, I still think it's fear mongering a bit. yes, the wisdom is "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and it's still possible to brick a bios if you're not careful, but this isn't the early 2000s (back when BIOS was actually used) where if your bios updated breaks you're SOL, manufactures have a bunch of safeguards in place (and even the manufactures of like the psu and what not) if your power cuts out during an update, if the power comes back on quickly it's fine (capacitor buffer commonly found in the PSU) as mentioned there's a dual bios mode. However I think the real MVP of BIOS recovery options is the cold flash features. this will be different dependent on company but my motherboard (Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master) as a feature where a single USB port can flash the BIOS, it doesn't matter if the bios itself is working, as long as the computer is powered off and plugged in it'll reflash the BIOS (i've had other motherboards from the likes of asrock and asus, and they seem to also have similar features when it comes to recovery) tl;dr: it's still possible to brick a BIOS but the possibility of it happening is so small it's negligible
Your recovery tool was most likely crashing because you were using too big of a usb drive, regardless if you formated it in the required partition . Anything larger than 4 GB is usually gonna be problematic. Try to use a USB stick 4 GB or smaller and I'm pretty confident it will work.
@@Vysair technically you can low level format a stick of large capacity to look like a small capacity one for the host system. The thing is that in time most hosts will support modern large capacity drives, but till that time comes, you either use a small capacity drive (4 Gb max), or format a large one to look like a 4 Gb drive.
That's the reason why I'm still running Windows 7 on my 12 year old gaming pc and Windows Updates turned OFF since the first week I got it. I don't see any reason to turn them on since my system is still working fine without any updates for 12 years.
@@powerpc6037 What a coincidence. Me too. I bought this PC with a G1840 Celeron and 4Gb DDR3 RAM at more or less the time Win 8 got out, but insisted to get Win 7 32bit instead. In time I've upgraded this rig to i5 and 16Gb Ram, but Win 7 has remained, still rock solid. It is not that I don't want to go to Win 10 or 11, it's I don't need to go over there, for the moment.
Even if the computer/motherboard have a recovery tool, it still have a great chance to fail as demonstrated in the video. The most "safe" recovery tool is the Dual Bios system, where if somehow anything goes wrong you can switch to the backup bios, boot, switch again to the corrupted bios and reflash that bios. DO NOT TRY TO FLASH THE BACKUP BIOS, if you do this you are in risk of having 2 corrupted BIOS.
That USB flash program tool (ch341a) is actually super easy to use, and you don't need to de-solder anything. Also, I'm 90% sure you could fix that laptop with it.
Flash is a kind of EEPROM. Flash is faster, but unlike "conventional" EEPROM it can only be erased in blocks, if you want to erase just a single bit, you need to store the whole block memory or a dedicated cache, erase the whole block and then rewrite it. Erasing in this case means changing an altered bit to it's out-of-the-box state (usually this is defined as a 1, so 0 -> 1 is erasing while 1 -> 0 is writing).
I remember my dad used a software on windows that changed some settings of the bios(UEFI actually) and basically corrupted it. Luckly the motherboard has dual bios on it and had an built in auto recovery program that resseted everything back to factory settings.
Bricked a bios once, back in the old days of removable EEPROM. I took it out, booted another similar mobo, took out its bios whilst it was on windows, installed the corrupted one and flashed it within windows and it worked
10:21 the recovery tool is usually not stored on a separate chip, but on a block of the main EEPROM, which doesn't get rewritten if you flash the BIOS.
When I first updated my bios a few hours after building my pc I used gigabyte's bios update app. It didn't restarted the pc properly so it got stuck on a black screen. After a few hours I hit the restart button on my case and it rebooted normally. It was very scary almost bricking my new motherboard. Now I learned my lesson, never update bios on windows.
I know a couple of examples when newer OS were giving BSOD or kernel panic, and only Windows 7 SP1 worked well. The reason was outdated BIOS. Also, updates are usually good for security (not only for stability). I don't think updating BIOS on a laptop could be a problem even if power supply is not stable. 5 minutes on battery power is not too risky. For desktops, it is also good to use UPS (or borrow for the time of update). So I would not really agree. Normally it is better to update, and follow the instructions coming with an update
I had an HP laptop, purchased c2010, which had this curious problem of turning off when it got too warm. Depending on conditions, it sometimes happened only a couple minutes after startup. Using a cooling desk (USB-powered) mitigated this in many cases, but not all, like when heavily using production software or following several boots in a row (making it a vicious cycle). I found upon research that this was a cooling configuration problem with the BIOS, which an update fixed. The update utility (which I used within Windows) was incredibly janky-looking, as if they didn't expect the average user to have to do it. Nothing like the slick, branded update tool you showed, so I'm glad to see the progress. What I found most intriguing about this is that a BIOS problem actually affected normal computer use, not just the startup procedure.
I'm a non-native English speaker and thought when i was reading the titel of corruption = criminality :)) I've a question: I will upgrade my old Laptops with Wifi 6 Intel AX200 WLAN-Cards and maybe I will need patched BIOS' because of Lenovos Whitelist. I found a forum where some programmers fixing BIOS for "unlocking". this whitelist. Is it possible that they can spy my online banking data etc. if I install the patched BIOS from them? Sorry for my english.
100% Recommend a UPS. A battery that activates as soon as mains power is lost. Saves even your windows being slightly corrupted because of it being shut off when doing something important. Also saves work.
The bios chip is an eprom and spi is the communication interface, very common chips. They can be reprogrammed with those tools shown in the video, the clamp is designed to connect to the chip without desoldering it but it need a proper programmer. Manual reprogramming is not that daunting it's just that searching for 'bios programing tool' will return odd results. Also bonus fun fact, emmc chips have the same interface as that of a micro sd card, it's faster than a sd card just because it uses two at the same time but it's slower than a ssd. If files from a emmc chip needs to be recovered in a pinch, soldering it's corresponding pins to an sd card reader will in fact work most of the times, will depend on the reader.
I made a bios update yesterday on my MSI gaming PC and my pc didn't turn on so I took out my Gpu my cpu cooler and took out cmos battery, popped it back in and then I cleaned my whole PC and put on my new Thermal paste I bought but never used. And now everything is clean and it works again like a charm
I remember back in the early Days of ryzen, if your CPU wasn't supported in the current BIOS version, you'd have to get a loaner CPU from one of the companies to flash. these days though, most competent motherboards allow you to flash the BIOS without a CPU installed.
Well typically I got a BIOS update (a while ago) when I was checking for a windows update. I think it's better to have an update installed in the system settings. Instead of having to download it from the manufacturers website. Because if there is an update in the systen settings. Then it might mean that is safe to the device,and you need to update it. So it wouldn't feel risky doing it. If you're like me who feels like doing something risky to a device would ruin it. Just be like me and don't do it.
Windows update is getting the files for bios updates from the manufacturer, most of the time being the same update that is being offered from the company website itself, so not really a difference there, then you have to factor that doing a bios update even through windows update means that windows is still running so all of the same crashes that bring down windows would brick the computer in the same manner. windows update is fine and passable for installing windows updates because even if a feature update or security update fails and the computer does not boot you can still access recovery partitions and use system restore to bring the machine back, but if the bios update gets clocked then all of those options are screwed anyway, honestly doing the update through windows update is just as much of a nail biter as selecting the update file from the manufacturer directly. also just because windows recommends the update doesnt mean its safe, there have been windows updates to windows itself that have caused instability to the operating system, yes in theory using the service should be safer, but thats a theory for a perfect world which well we dont live in.
@@compzac Yeah. Anyway I tend to not update things that can be risky, like one is of course is the bios, system drivers, and this may not be really risky but I don't like installing optional updates because those optional updates can be buggy.
Fun fact: Asus does have Boards where the BIOS chip is replaceable without soldering - like it just sits in a socket and replacements are available for ~ 9 USD.
Being a newer pc builder I'd never updated bios before and because of these risks sort of dreaded doing it but I felt like I had to. Reason being was I upgraded to a B550 motherboard and a Ryzen 9 5900X and in some games, while playing randomly the computer would just restart and in some more rarer scenarios I'd get a blue screen WHEA error related to cpu core issues. Turned out the bios was over 11 months old and after upgrading I played the couple of games where it would happen and it's been rock solid so a bios update can be quite important.
I got a lot of game crashes and blue screens related to driver issues and I legit couldn’t figure out what was wrong, I cleaned all my GPU drivers with DDU, re-installed Windows and did all kinds of troubleshooting with no good results. I updated my BIOS as a last resort and it wasn’t even an old copy (december 2021) and I wasn’t sure that this was the issue but I went for it… I put the correct latest BIOS update on a USB and did it, I was shitting myself and it restarted multiple times. I tried playing some games and really pushed my PC to it’s limits and I got no crashes or any BSoD, I fucking did it and my PC has worked ever since, this was today and tonorrow it might start crashing again. Tomorrow is another chapter and if it starts crashing again I will personally throw myself in the local river.
@@xsweetse Nice! I've been running an Asus X670E-A motherboard with a 7800X 3D so I did like 4 bios updates on it due to the whole overvolting fiasco. It's not that bad updating bios.
Very fair evaluation of the risks. I have had to update BIOS a couple of times in decades I have used these beasts. Normally, I just leave it be. As you say, ONLY if you need to for a security issue or new hardware you can't use without updating.
FOR ANYONE OUT THERE WHO IS SCARED OF UPDADEING THERE BIOS: if you just recently got your computer or if part of your physical system isn't working UPDATE YOUR BIOS it could fix your problems also u should always update your bios if you dont feel like it will go wrong (its just the right thing to do)
@@Sparkette ya ik but honestly Joes wrong this time. It's not that likely. Honestly it's like 200x less likely then the average 200 GB SSD (idk if that's true or not)
As a computer repair tech with a two-year degree I would take some time and invest in something like this to repair and rebuild surface mount chips in case of accidental complications arising from flashing the bios chip. Now it's time to invest in a hot air desolder/soldering station. They were relatively inexpensive as well as being pretty reliable just a few years ago. Precision tweezers are going to be a big help too. Don't forget copper desoldering wicks to bleed off excess solder as well as plenty of flux and the type of wire solder that works best for you. Create a filtered computer fan fume hood for your workstation so you don't have to breathe in the fumes from the tin/lead solder mix. If you can spare the expense, a good camera setup would help clarify things. Do you have it in you as a technician to actually fix that problem on your laptop by desoldering the physical chip and rewriting it back to normal? Honestly, if I could get some of the equipment you featured here I could make some extra money. In addition to normal computer repair. A repair tech can always undercut the dealership to make money if he has the proper tools. The only thing I would need would be the programs to access and flash the chip properly. If the customer's computer is fixed and I can undercut an RMA price in half, this is a no-brainer. It's just another skill in a successful repair technician's toolbelt. You are being paid to use that knowledge as a repair tech. If the customer flat out said they lost power to a desktop while flashing the bios, I could get that computer back to him in a day instead of a month without the cost of RMA. I honestly have run across a few computers in my life that, had I had the proper equipment and software to do such a repair, I could have saved a few laptops that were deemed unrepairable unless dealership prices were involved. Skills make the repairman if he has the right software and equipment.
I remember 2 weeks ago since I got my new laptop there was an update that I didn't realize it has to do with the UEFI, it was too late to go back, I was so terrified if it was interrupted by something the I cant use it, but it finished without being interrupted & its a really good laptop & has all the hardware it needs to run Windows 11 :)
Very nice and informative video, may i add that on AMD Ryzen CPU's a UEFI Update can actually make a difference in Performance and/or Power-Consumption because of the AMD AGESA. The difference can be none at worst but game-changing on some motherboards with very early UEFI's.
That's my pc all the time because the sensors are dead and I manually ramped the fans to 100% to make sure my pc doesn't liquify itself. Yet somehow I can sleep through the Jet engine noises it makes
I disagree with not updating the BIOS. Stability, security fixes and feature updates will be pushed by BIOS updates. It would be great if they could offer more recovery issues though, like Dual BIOS.
CRAP ADVISE! i used to update bios every release. stopped updating bios because of this video. then one day my pc failed to boot. i bought parts one by one to find the problem turns out the bios needs to be updated. ended up with 2 PCs and costed me over $400 because of this video. WAY TO GO MAN!
Nothing too relevant to corruption but i just find it fascinating that our GPUs became so complex that they have their own bios and even startup screens. Great content btw, nice flow of information without being overwhelming.
Video cards had their own BIOS for a very long time. I remember back in 1996 my S3 Trio64 1 MB VGA had their own POST screen pop up before the motherboard's.
I always update my BIOS when I can just so I don’t have to worry about what was fixed later, even though it rarely fixes things that effect me. I find the risk to be the rather minimal. I’ve never bricked a machine a machine, but, yeah, that’s what the failure case would be. If you’re not comfortable doing it, don’t.
Got myself a Gigabyte X470 motherboard around 2018. Never really tried to use bluetooth until 2021, and discovered it was faulty. Saw on their website a much newer BIOS than the stock one could possibly fix it. There were some warnings, possibly poorly translated into English from Chinese, that if you wanted to update past a certain version, you'd need another inbetween version first. Flashed to that inbetween version, machine would no longer boot. Motherboard had dual-BIOS, loaded the backup BIOS, got it to boot, but the backup BIOS was an ever older version than what I'd started with, and caused new stability problems. Spent a day or two researching, and found someone had a video on youtube with my exact motherboard model and the exact problem I had. Watched what they did to fix it, wrote myself detailed step-by-step instructions... and proceeded to wreck both the backup BIOS and the main BIOS. Found a later video where the same guy demonstrated how to desolder and replace the physical chip, decided to throw in the towel and buy myself a much cheaper Asus B450M motherboard to replace the bricked one. Vowed never to buy Gigabyte again.
I've been setting up new laptops a lot recently as I work in IT, and these days, BIOS updates can get pushed out over Windows Update as a driver update. Even some refurbished ones from 2016 are working like this, and sometimes they have a visible UI after rebooting (HP & Acer being the main ones I've seen. HP's is rather scary and doesn't check if the charger is connected, Acer's will stop you unless you plug it into power) but others are unnoticeable, like Dell and Lenovo, where the update installs whilst Windows is still booted, presumably on a Dual-BIOS setup.
I updated my BIOS and when my PC restarted, for a few moments it made strange noises and screenshots and I was very scared. Fortunately everything went well xd
Well, I have a very weird experience on updating BIOS, yet it's kinda surprising on how my laptop BIOS survived from HP's Windows BIOS update. So, my laptop didn't recognize a USB stick that I plugged inside a USB port, and I tried any device that uses USB type-A, and it didn't worked at all. After that, I decided to update my BIOS _(because I am assuming the BIOS didn't recognize the USB port, but turns out it's missing USB port drives, dumb me lol)._ I do all the steps to install the update, and I simply wait for a while. After the progress bar _almost_ reached at its end, my laptop hanged up for unknown reason. I waited around an hour, nothing. I decided to want another hour, still nothing. I was afraid doing hard reset because HP BIOS Update is still doing its job. Because I was being too desperate, I decided to do hard reset, and _well, it does update the BIOS at start_ , and then it powers down by itself, and it starts again, booting to windows, meaning that I've successfully updated the BIOS. That was the scariest and the weirdest moment that I have experienced. Thanks for coming to my ted talk
Battery is not for "BIOS" settings, but rather for timekeeping. That's it. Reseting settings after "CMOS" battery removal is just feature to keep it more convinient (if theres not directly button to reset "CMOS").
same thing happened with me on HP pavilion 20 ,I was shifting the partition on linux and corrupted it so, i tried to open bios few times restarting and the pc just don't start no beep . I tried methods from jumper clip cmos ... nothing works . So i have to give to the local service center.. took 2 weeks .They updated the bios but i think its not the version exact for my pc cause linux does shows warning missing firmware of modules .Anyways it works now but bios corrupt hurts :(
Modern BIOSes can store something on a dedicated partition (EFI) on the harddrive. Did you delete it when working with the partitions? Or could it be that after changes with other partitions the BIOS doesn't correctly recognize the EFI partition? I would imagine BIOS not having access to the partition it expects to have could disable some features.
My main laptop had a BIOS update a few days ago, I installed it inside windows from Windows Update, and I did what it said: "Do not shut down or remove external power from your computer during the process." So I kept it on and plugged in. And since I didn't interrupt the process by turning off my computer, the update had finished installing, and I can use my computer like normal. So, from what I can confirm, it is safe to update your BIOS, as long as you don't either accidentally or purposely shut down your computer.
You should do a video about how some computer manufacturers are pushing BIOS updates through the normal Windows update and how to prevent this. I'm with you that I find it's almost never necessary to update your BIOS, BUT if I was going to, I would certainly not let Windows Update do it. Dell does this and it's really horrible that they continue to do so. My Uncle's PC was getting BIOS updates about once a month and while it never destroyed his computer it has always been a bit wonky since.
16:57 how do you access that screen? I have been trying to get to my BIOS but I am not 100% sure of the key to press and I do not feel like trying every possible button.
Awesome video! I do disagree regarding "It's not important to update the BIOS". There are vulnerabilities that are discovered for BIOS'. Therefore, it's important.
Me updating the bios on every computer in my house during a Florida Hurricane: *Interesting*
Lmfao
Get a ups, it’s saved my life many times before
/laughs in laptop/
@@danielquintero2339 or a laptop, it has a built-in UPS and is more portable. If you have a system with thunderbolt, you can even have an external GPU
Haha I updated mine and never knew about the risks 💀💀
A Note: Some have mentioned that it's possible the reason the recovery tool failed was because it didn't support large flash drives like the 32GB one I was using, and this is an issue that has come up in the past. Unfortunately I had already trashed the laptop so I'm unable to test that, but if you are having that issue, it might be worth trying a flash drive that is USB 2.0 and 4GB or less, and ensuring it's formatted as FAT32.
My ASUS laptop requires the flash drive to be FAT32 to be recognized by the bios. Maybe that was the problem.
dam if i would somehow destroy my only laptops bios than i might try but it's a lenovo so it might not work
@@strangepizza7019 That applies to the majority of hardware systems. Most people format USB sticks to NTFS (especially those using Windows for which it'll be the default option), but FAT32 should always be the go-to for this sort of thing. Motherboards very rarely will have built-in support for NTFS, as it really requires Windows to work (or Linux which can read and write NTFS without issues), but the low-level hardware isn't going to work with anything other than FAT32 in most cases
You don’t need a smaller usb drive. You just need a smaller partition on it. FAT32 and 200mb is more than enough for the task.
I had that problem with an old Dell laptop I was trying to update the BIOS. I tried a 1gig USB drive and it just refused to boot from it. I then setup it up on a 256 meg drive. No problem.
UEFI does a lot more than just tell your computer where to find the bootloader. It also acts as an abstraction layer between the OS and the physical hardware. It usually handles stuff like wake-on-lan, virtualization extensions, hardware RAID and full-disk encryption, too. It's why it's generally a good idea to keep on top of EFI releases for your PC/motherboard. That said, never go bleeding-edge with them. Wait a month or two after any new firmware release to see if the forums light up with posts about problems being introduced by that new release. I learned this the hard way once.
it's ok just delete your uefi and start from scratch kiddo😘
This. This is literally why it’s still called a BIOS in the first place. It’s a BIOS that got a Master’s
yup. nice & sexy.
Never go bleeding edge on any update . Take for instance me bricking my iMac on an Apple update . I usually wait months before I get around to allowing Mac to do it's update thing but just this one time I updated as soon as the red update available checkmark notified me and what a mess that unleashed . OMG . Now I realize that Apple Support is just a bunch of Chat Bots that don't achieve anything and that Real info is scattered willy nilly all over the internet , but , yeah , I got it to recover after almost taking a sledge hammer to my iMac , not to mention a few hours of desperate online searching .
god help the noobs . Apple must make tons of money off them as they truck their precious bricked Mac to the nearest Apple store so the GENIUSES can rip them off thoroughly .
"I bought a laptop as a sacrifice"
TECH FOR THE TECH GOD. TECH FOR THE TECH GOD
TECH FOR THE TECH THRONE
is this a game of thrones reference if so gods be good
@@dadjokes8963 think it's Warhammer 40k
@@emiliskog damn it
@@dadjokes8963 Its a Warhammer 40k Khorne reference
who remembers the old days of thiojoe where he would make videos like "How to triple wifi speed for free" where he would tell you to wrap your router in aluminium foil
Weren’t those based on an old comedy show
Well if you're wrapping the right stuff, that could get you some gain, but c'mon 3x speed is latency not throughput, and while I'ma not familiar with the videos or channel as it may have been; based on the interferences on your area, it could be feasible to get a 3x ms latency improvement by wrapping the body to separate the internal from externally pervasive radiation... If it was bad to begin with, and for said reasons.
Yeah and I thought those were real lol
That was infinite solutions
Yes it worked
Had no idea updating BIOS was risky. I updated mines last week because i was upgrading from a R5 2600 to an R7 5800x. It was actually super easy to do.
Yeah... It can be dangerous. I took a recommendation online to update my BIOS because I had some interesting crashing with my overclock, i accidently left my overclock settings on while updating the bios and it crashed... i was fucked for 2 days
@@anemoia-pixie 😬
its spelled mine /j
Yeah you definitely want stable settings when doing it.
@@aboveaveragebayleaf9216 And you DEFINITELY want to have access to another computer in case you need to download a file to fix a corrupt BIOS
As an electronics repair technician I've seen this happen more often than you'd think. For most motherboards we simply flash the chip with it's respective firmware using a similar tool you showed. Except its SPI to USB A. In rare cases we get a non standard cmos chip, then we use leads we souldered to a USB A male with tiny alligator clips on the other end. The software isn't that difficult. We have a dumbed down GUI based CMOS flashing tool that handles the complex stuff on the backend. Essentially it's like copying a file to a USB drive.
I just use a floppy disk 🤷
Can you share some tips for me.I have an old motherboard i tried to update bios and it bricked my motherboard.I cant find any new motherboard bcs my pc is old but i have no money to buy new pc.Any tools to reset the bios chip?
I got a virus on my laptop which corrupted the bios, causing a cmos error on boot and sometimes it would get stuck on a black screen. I gave it to a 3rd party store that somehow managed to fix it after failing the first time, I assume they also flashed the bios and cmos chip since they got corrupted.
The vast majority of bios updates is done successfully in most cases. As long as you follow all instructions for that pc or motherboard. If your not confident in that than you should let someone else update the bios. In my case all bios updates I have performed was successful. It really isn't hard at all. It may be scary the first time you do it because of all the scary language used about updating the bios. Just ignore all of that, follow all instructions and away you go. Be confident but make sure you follow all instructions.
reprogramming chips: i got one, and you can clip them on the chip directly (with special extension grips)... not all chips needs desoldering
Good to know
I bought those grips but for some reason they didnt have stable connection and after hours of trying I decided to buy a Eeprom programmer and do the desoldering and soldering thing.
Depends on hoe exposed pins are. Sometimes I get someone else to hold pressed down (hard to do it if you on your own) ...
they even work for various devices like television
Thye're EPROM chips, which are always removable
Interesting side note: During a BIOS update the downloaded file is usually verified to prevent flashing of broken or manipulated images. BIOS flashback in some cases skips this step entirely. This allows for flashing of custom images, ie adding NVME boot support to older mainboards and other hacky stuff.
Hi, is it possible to reinstall an older BIOS on the motherboard? I have an Aorus x399 Gaming 7 which I updated the BIOS from an F2 to an F13a BIOS out of ignorance but I have read in some forums and TH-cam channels that it was not advisable to do so because GIGABYTE motherboards must be updated in a staggered manner.
And I'm afraid that something affected the PC by doing it that way because after updating the BIOS my 16GB (2X8GB) PC only recognizes 8GB installed as instructed in DIMM_2_2A and DIMM_4_2B.
I really needed this video. Thank you.
EDIT : Man im serious, cant find any good tech channels that have made a video on this subject, and its been bugging me for a while. Love you man.
CareyHolzman made one i think.
Linus tech tips: am I a joke to you?
@@SuQmEdIc69 Linus didn't make a video on how bios gets corrupted and how to fix it. He has just made videos on settings about the bios.
@@SuQmEdIc69 one would think he or one member of his team would cover that.
Me: Updating the BIOS
PC: *remains unbootable*
Me: Let’s see what we can do
This video’s thumbnail:
bios *B R I C K E D*
Did you get it working?
@@tdrg_ nice
@Harsh Playz what happened
@Harsh Playz you lost your pc computer
Well, I had the worst case scenario. My cousin was updating the bios with a slightly different variant version. Bios did not recognise it before installation so it bricked. Long story short, i had to use an spi flasher, find a compatible program, desolder the chip, find the correct model and manually flash the .bin into it. The satisfaction was huge after all!
Hi..can I please get your contact so that you can help me with mine...
My just broke down
Help me out bruh
@@richardaduampomah2698 If you don’t know how to fix it yourself take it to a computer store
Hi, is it possible to reinstall an older BIOS on the motherboard? I have an Aorus x399 Gaming 7 which I updated the BIOS from an F2 to an F13a BIOS out of ignorance but I have read in some forums and TH-cam channels that it was not advisable to do so because GIGABYTE motherboards must be updated in a staggered manner.
And I'm afraid that something affected the PC by doing it that way because after updating the BIOS my 16GB (2X8GB) PC only recognizes 8GB installed as instructed in DIMM_2_2A and DIMM_4_2B.
I have a story.
A friend came in to give a laptop that shut down randomly and displayed overheating. So, I opened it up and cleaned it. Didn't check if it would randomly shut down, I just checked if it would boot and then I returned it. Then a few minutes later he calls me and says it randomly shutting down again. So I said, wait, Ill come over to your place and check it out. When I arrived, the laptop's BIOS WAS BEING UPDATED!. Apparently he turned it back on several times and the old problem of shutting down randomly still continued, and one time when it shut off, it recommended a bios update, and my friend clicked YES. Dude almost bricked his laptop. Had me screaming on him for a while for doing that on a lappy that randomly crashes.
In any case, the silicon was faulty, and I installed a new processor and it worked out fine. 👍
What processor?
@@bentley187 it was i3 3110m i believe. Swtiched it to a i5 3230m i had laying around. It was socketed, so no need for soldering, i just put in an new one and everything turned out fine.
@Bruh Bruh yea, i5 3230m is better than i3 3110m, so you can call it an updgrade. Just removed the old one from the socket and plugged in the new one. This was possible in all laptops before but now almost all are soldered and you cant remove them.
@@nonowords7857 I miss the days of upgradeable/replaceable laptop CPUs. :(
That friend is so lucky his laptop didn’t succumb to a corrupted BIOS. There were so many risks that came with that decision. Mainly, the laptop kept shutting down randomly which could’ve interrupted the BIOS update entirely. The other risk is the person’s decision making overall. He should’ve just did nothing else with his laptop and waited for you to arrive. Plus, it seemed that he clicked “YES” instantly. I’m not sure of the entire story, but I can definitely guarantee that it could’ve ended a lot worse.
My computer has dual UEFI chips. There’s a backup chip that can take over to reflash the main one if something goes wrong.
Oops. Just came here to suggest this.
congratulations
I have too, it's called UEFI DualBIOS (mine is an old B75 chipset PC, although I have a ROG Zenith II Extreme)
I have it on my current fm2 Asus motherboard
He mentions it at 9:34
Sir, this is what I call a professional and well documented informative tutorial. Well done 👍
It's not a tutorial lol
@@xXVibrantSnowXx 🤓
This happened to a friend of mine, but I was there watching it happen. Back during Y2K, there was a rash of BIOS updating going on. I personally thought that it was mostly unnecessary to do, as Y2K was not really about modern computers like PC's, it was more about ancient computers from the 70's or earlier which were still running in businesses at the time. Anyways, we were part of an IT team, and were applying Y2K patches for servers, so we had to come in after midnight and work through into the early morning, while no one else was using the computers. My friend's boss asked him to update the BIOS of the Dell desktop that he was using for his personal work PC, while we were in there for the servers. I told my buddy not to do that, as there was more danger upgrading the BIOS than there was in not upgrading it. But he didn't listen, and sure enough the BIOS upgrade screwed everything up. The BIOS didn't fail its installation, it installed correctly, but for some reason Dell had changed the hard drive mapping routine between the two versions of the BIOS, and the new BIOS could no longer read the hard drive partition, even though nothing had changed on the hard drive. Then later we found out that Dell didn't even make the previous version of the BIOS available for downgrade! The only solution was to reformat the hard drive to the new partition scheme, and reinstall Windows. All previous data on the drive was lost, obviously! Thanks Dell.
You express it in such a way that I am seriously thinking that you are the friend.
Can't you connect the hard disk to another similar dell model and recover the data lost
@@ravindraakula6560 There were no other similar Dell models available.
@«tutacat» sounds more like it's about CHS mapping, which is even weirder given that CHS was essentially extinct by the time of Y2K.
Dell is hell.
What a coincidence, I was at work yesterday and a computer didn't recognize a headphone connected in the front jack 3.5, so I updated the BIOS and it worked after that.
In that case it was due to a bad driver
@@TheExileFox There are driver version that expect a certain BIOS/Firmware version and wont work if not used.
If you are updating your bios from a USB port in BIOS mode, do not use a USB3 port as there is no support for that in the BIOS. More recent MBs do provide basic support for it but it is better to use an old USB2 port to update the bios.
some boards have a dedicated port labled BIOS, and always a USB2 so I agree.
ty
I disagree, my mainboard doesn’t even have a USB2.0 port
@@viperdemonz-jenkins False.
@@cdoe3395 what is false?
"I bought a laptop as a sacrifice."
**hawaiian drums intensify**
A Mayan flute begins to sound
It's an EEPROM using a SPI interface 😀
Older ones back in the day would've been EEPROM or EPROM using 8/16bit parallel data IO.
SPI is a protocol like USB is protocol
EEPROM is like the medium.
Enjoy your videos 👍😀
Super Powerful Injector Eeproms . jk i have no clue
As u said it's a simple EEPROM that can be write using a simple arduino or any microcontroller, this computer isn't so hard to fix it.
I think i could give a try on this, there is a lot of tutorials on internet how to use external EEPROM or SPI on Arduino and soo u could use it to fix.
Tip: only think u need to see is if the BIOS file downloaded is a simple RAW or if is compacted.
yeah u can program bios with Eeprom programmers that are used in arduinos. Hardest part is desoldering and soldering of the chip from the motherboard
@@tobiwonkanogy2975 EEPROM is a type of programmable read only memory. It's magical because you can rewrite it, and all that is needed to write is a carefully controlled overvoltage (typically the circuitry for that is internal to the IC). EPROM was rewritable, but you had to expose the EPROM IC's memory section to UV light for a period to erase the old program first.
SPI is magical because it is much easier to do the signal integrity stuff for a data/clock pair than for 8 or 16 parallel lines, and it's still very fast.
@@victorlacerda9659 There is a little more to flashing the bios memory than just talking at it over SPI. You would have to read through the specific IC's datasheet to figure out the process and write a driver to handle the flashing process. It's a little work, but it isn't too bad once you are going... Chances are if you know enough to do that quickly, your time is worth enough that you are better off paying the manufacturer a little to fix it for you instead... unless you are just doing it for the fun/challenge.
As an Eletrical Engineer I would say as a rule of thumb: update your BIOS only if you want a specifc function of the update if you don't know what you are doing. If you know what are you doing, you can update it and it will hardly go wrong unless you get power issues or the wrong version of the BIOS. And if that happens it is easy enough to re-record it but you will need a special hardware-device to do this
Haha, how very true, but that reminds me of my own experience with a bricked BIOS and how I went about fixing it.
The thing was that I wanted to change my boot logo, so I picked up the manufacturer's utility to modify the resources. Piss poor translation of instructions mind you, but things made enough sense, I thought...
Well there were actually 3 different images, the main image, the manufacturer's logo, and the chip logo. I wanted to replace all 3 in a way to display as if it was one single image, so I had a fun round going back and forth with Paint Shop Pro, but that's besides the point.
Where things went wrong for me was the very first time I tried my modified BIOS file, I replaced all 3 images in one single editing session before I saved it. BIG MISTAKE!
The file seemed to save correctly without issue, so I flashed it. Yay brick! I ended up figuring out that the resource editor itself was apparently a bit buggy, and I needed to replace only one image at a time, save that, then restart the utility to replace the next image. Then wash, rinse and repeat for the third image of course.
Anyways, I was working at a computer repair shop at the time I bricked my own system, and we didn't have any such hardware to reflash a BIOS chip, so I got creative...
I looked in our junk parts bin for any laptop motherboard I could find with the same capacity BIOS chip. Didn't matter to me what model at this point, it only mattered to me that the board marginally functioned.
I found one, a different model but by the same manufacturer, so I figured the utility should work if I gave it the force wrong updates command. The particular board I picked was a good spare parts candidate as it had been damaged by electrostatic discharge which caused permanent color banding on screen coming from a damaged GPU, but otherwise worked fine.
So, I hooked the thing up and did a quick Windows install on a spare drive, then took my modified BIOS and force flashed it onto the spare parts motherboard. The instant the flash completed, the system bricked. Okay, whatever...
Then I desoldered the chip from the donor board and soldered it onto my motherboard. Success! It was a happy day for me, but I also learned just how tricky it can be to modify a BIOS, especially with a utility with a piss poor Chinese to English translation.
@Will Hike I actually was adding a new feature, I was changing my BIOS boot logo image to be an identity photo and return information if found stolen.
Aside from that, there was also another reason to update my BIOS anyways. Some particular issue with a certain brand of LCD's caused the BIOS to falsely get reflashed to garbage data if the screen brightness was turned below 50%, something to do with piss poor voltage management on the particular brand LCD end somehow sending a high enough residual current to the BIOS chip to falsely trigger reflashing mode.
So yeah, update your BIOS if you need new features, but also update your BIOS if it fixes known issues which might turn your equipment into a brick just from changing backlight brightness or some other random everyday activity.
@Will Hike Hah, now I wish I could on my old Dell B130, but I can't. The battery is shot and it won't allow a BIOS update with a faulty battery, and I ain't about to buy a battery for that old thing now. Hey, as long as it still works at least, not like I take it anywhere anyways. 🤷♂️
I should've come to this video sooner. I've upgraded my BIOS through holding down Windows+B on startup. It booted up but nothing is responding. The taskbar isn't working, Windows startup isn't working. I've forcefully restarted it but no luck. I'm an idiot for not doing proper research on it.
@@SoggySage Some boards/BIOSes have what they call a 'boot block protection' feature, where it can reflash the BIOS from a specially made USB flash drive with the BIOS file having a particular exact filename, specific to each board though.
That particular failsafe mode doesn't even turn on the display though, and it only works if the flash drive is prepared EXACTLY right and also must be plugged into USB port number 0, whichever port the manufacturer decided to designate as USB 0 anyways.
With the screen not even turned on, you can't do squat nor can you see the status.
For older boards with this feature, the flash drive is basically supposed to be configured as an automatic bootable DOS compatible flash drive with the BIOS installer utility and BIOS file, preconfigured to run the utility silently from the AUTOEXEC.BAT file.
Newer boards might be happy with just the BIOS file itself and may contain its own reflashing utility built in.
Any which way you go with that method can be a pure headache as you can't see what the system is even doing, and it takes some time too. Also the hotkey for that mode varies from one manufacturer to another.
Me: updated bios in every single device.
Next minute: ThioJoe's video is posted 😂😂
Cap
*"Bro that's cap"*
_I love when you comment Big Cappa_
_Throw your hands in the air if you's a true player_
(Original song: The Notorious B.I.G - Big Poppa)
Cap
R/thathappened
Flashed dozens on BIOSes. Never had any problem. Its next to impossible to mess up if you do everything properly so reading readme files is a must.
So u in other words u have no experience in fixing stuff like that
@@kerryfreudenthaler2986 Lol
Hi, is it possible to reinstall an older BIOS on the motherboard? I have an Aorus x399 Gaming 7 which I updated the BIOS from an F2 to an F13a BIOS out of ignorance but I have read in some forums and TH-cam channels that it was not advisable to do so because GIGABYTE motherboards must be updated in a staggered manner.
And I'm afraid that something affected the PC by doing it that way because after updating the BIOS my 16GB (2X8GB) PC only recognizes 8GB installed as instructed in DIMM_2_2A and DIMM_4_2B.
You absolutely need to update your bios. If you are on AMD the bios update contains important cpu microcode update, too which highly recommended to install for performance and optimizations. All modern motherboards and laptops have a way too recover from a corrupted bios so it is not that of a big deal. Plus, you can actually install updates from the bios itself which reduces crash possibilities.
except when your bios update starts rebooting your pc for no reason and getting old bios update doesn't help for some reason (no bsod, no minidump). happened to some guy on newest lenovo laptop JUCN59WW update for Legion 5 15ARH7H/Legion R7000P ARH7H/Legion R7000 ARH7H/Legion 5 15ARH7/Legion R7000P ARH7/Legion R7000 ARH7/Legion 5 Pro 16ARH7H/Legion R9000P ARH7H/Legion 5 Pro 16ARH7/Legion R9000P ARH7.
I'm not updating bios for some 5% processor gains or whatever.
In bringing my journey one step closer to getting a 5000 series AMD CPU, I had to update my BIOS... Except that it was on such old firmware that I couldn't just update it, I had to do about two updates before it would finally install the update that I needed. I'm pretty sure the combined stress from watching the progress bar slowly go up multiple times has taken at least a year away from my life.
The introduction of dual BIOS really put my mind at ease during these tense minutes.
I flashed many many times because I worked as a technician for a while and only one something happened and it was recoverable.
As basic as BIOS was and UEFI is, it probably is one of the most stable pieces of code inside your machine.
But ever since two chips are common it really feels so much better to update them, I cannot understate it enough.
Maybe it's an irrational fear, just like meteorites and the sun burning out, but as long as there is a solution like this, I'm happy.
Great video btw!
Don't always rely on that. I remember buying an Aorus motherboard with a few years ago and I had to update it. The update failed and the feature was worthless because the stupid thing wrote the update to BOTH chips, with no option to change the behaviour. Fortunately I got a refund.
this person is having a unique sense of humor which not everyone can understand. *"NOICE"*
BIOS update: *Exists*
HP support that comes preinstalled: Update?
that happened to me and i updated
@@binku09 nothing
I KNOW REALLY I had a bios update for like months but the update is like a few mb and I'm like you want me to update my BIOS for only a few mb? Yea if it ain't broke don't mess with it and I'm not gunna do it!
This is from hp support xD
I've been lucky so far with HP BIOS updates and their UEFI diagnostics updates on my laptop.
I'd like to give a shoutout to Toshiba, though. Delivered a BIOS update, update tool seemed to hang while install and I foolishly cut the power and hard restarted. Had to convince the owner that the laptop (early Win 7 era, so 1st gen core i processor) couldn't handle Windows 8 and seemingly went no display in the process.
One of the worst bios experiences I had was my first HP Pavilion. Wiped it to give to my brother and the bloatware decided to do a bios update (and general driver installs). While the bios is being written a Windows update restart Countdown appears in the bottom right... And it refused to let me click cancel. HP were amazing as the device was 3 years old and they still serviced it to recover the bios. Learned JTAGs because of this. 😂 EDIT: this was 2010.
What, how were you even updating the bios from within windows in the first place?
Usually you put the bios update on USB and then boot into the bios directly and flash it, I've never heard of being able to do it while the computer is booted into the operating system
@@whirlwind872 the HP Pavilion used a bios updator tool from within windows. It's been years since I had that laptop but my works laptop has a similar bios updating tool. It's just a ROM chip at the end of the day, providing the hardware is setup to allow flashing the right software can do it from the operating system level.
I have a hp laptop, it literally decided to update bios from windows update randomly without asking me, so stupid.
Next time you don't want windows to reboot itself after an update because you are doing important work or whatever, just use this command: "shutdown -a"
@@kalestra4198 SAME!!! I did not know it was a bad thing, because now my laptop screen is black 😔
So far I had not 'bricked' any BIOS and what you missed is that there are usually options to save the current BIOS. A really good tip is (especially for Modem Firmware/BIOS) that you reset to the default settings and then flash the BIOS/Firmware and after flashing resetting again to the default settings. Some programmers haven't tested the setting or introduced new settings and if there was a change in the configuration or some situation not tested that may lead to problems with the BIOS!
Also always have your laptop etc on full loaded battery and per cable to power connected. If on PC if possible, plug in the PC to an UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply).
In your case with the USB not functioning that may be due the BIOS not in the expected (maybe even specific named) directory or put into the root of the BIOS and thus not find and stops.
In some cases, what could help is use the procedure for 'resetting the BIOS' to the 'default setting'.
Furthermore, in some cases a BIOS update is as well needed for newer drivers. I had in cases of HP with Windows Updates that the BIOS needed to be on a certain version or else it wouldn't update the new Feature Update.
What's pretty common is that for newer CPUs there is a BIOS update needed or not even boot with the newer CPU.
Some newer drivers expect a newer Firmware/BIOS and if not get, not functions.
some models Joe have the CMOS battery intergraded into the battery pack that you normally use to run the laptop or just run off the laptop its self
integrated* itself*
In that case a capacitor on the MB can be used to continue providing power to the CMOS. Really though, the CMOS power should only be needed for the clock. Everything else should be non-volatile, with the jumper doing an explicit clear.
For some strange reason, if I unplug the battery from my old Dell laptop, the CMOS battery will become fully drained in a few days and I have to replace it and re-update the BIOS settings again so I just always leave it plugged in and charged. Strange. It acts like the CMOS battery is the backup for the main one. You would think it should be the opposite. 🤔
@@arthurmann578 some laptops need the second battery isa there a round spot on the laptop big battery if so a second builtin battery is needed which is the big battery which second ceos in it
@@arthurmann578 no. In this case it would be one chip that permanently holds a default version and any updates and settings are stored on this other chip, which is volatile. So this second chip always needs power to remember anything.
14:54 It may seem somewhat daunting at first glance, but the flashrom command via the linux commandline works great with these USB-based BIOS flashing devices. No de-soldering when using the SOP8 clip and little to lose when a motherboard bricked anyways. A very satisfying experience when a previously dead system springs back to life with minimal cost involved. Good that you mentioned this method in your video.
one important thing to note about the cpu vulnerabilities fixes would be that some would chose not to do it because of potential performance impacts some have had on systems. which is indeed a worthy consideration if a person knows they will never be put in the position to be vulnerable anyway.
Assuming the user is keeping their OS up to date, those vulnerability updates will be forced on them anyway. Windows and Linux can load CPU microcode at run-time.
6:40 except when it does.
Especially recently on Ryzen systems, there's been a lot of important updates delivered on BIOS updates, like better memory compatibility, tuning of frequency scaling, the recent USB dropping out issue on last gen Zen. Hell, even support for newer gen CPUs on older chipsets.
Some security patches have also been delivered on BIOS updates.
_Windows Denfender Is Good Though_
_eeeeeeeee ksjsisisueuejeiwjejej_
_My pc Disk GB is 10000000000000000000000000_
@ImNotBooboobear That's a fat lie and you know it.
@ImNotBooboobear Maybe in 2009. Defender is leaps and bounds better than it was a decade ago, when it gained its bad reputation. It's more than enough for most users, and even faster than third-party solutions nowadays.
Had to update my BIOS because my cpu wasn't supported . I have to say it was pretty smooth and had no problem with post or anything. I feel kinda lucky now that I know that BIOS updates could be potentially harmful
by chance was it a 13th gen intel cpu? I'm using a 13700k with a ASUS TUFF gaming wifi plus z690 d4 motherboard and XMP doesnt work so I can put ram to the right speed or overclock the cpu and I need a BIOs update but I'm scared to do it because of the risks
@@sebastianb5997 shouldn't be. Bios updates for compatibility aren't that bad. Also, you can always send it back to the manufacturer and ask them update the BIOS for you.
**this is why I always keep my laptop battery at 100% while updating the BIOS**
why keep it on 100% if you can plug it in permanently?
@@NotAriieFluffie it’s a laptop...
@@SpaceSysZ Woah, your laptop ejects the power cable if it's fully charged?
Battery could still do a random failure just because you have bad luck
My laptop refused to BIOS update UNLESS it was plugged into AC.
@@JustYourAverageBronyaEnjoyer old Dell latitude will refuse to update the BIOS if the laptop NOT plugged in to AC and have at least 20% of charge in the battery
Updating bios today is much safer compared to back in the day. I just updated my bios for the first time and i could feel the increase of stability right away mostly in my games and fps
@Bob Thompson It improved the efficiency of how your components communicate with each other and could have also improved the power delivery to your CPU.
@vipex Does it have flashback?What motherboard brand and model is it?
@vipex That's sad.. then the only way to fix it is by flashing the bin file to the chip.
Also known as placebo.
What you talking about, the BIOS isn't running your games lol , after the windows is initialized the BIOS chip is turned off.
Wow! Your the best Ive ever heard. Im a total Noob at 40 years old. Just trying to tinker a little as a hobby but. I want to learn everything you know. So thoughtful and thorough liked and subscribed. You’re the man keep it up!
How to double your bios for free.
Lol
I miss the old satire videos
first type in a credit card number
Then password
Then otp
GREAT video, really well made. Thank you for all the excellent info. Glad you take the time (no matter how long it takes to explain) to really cover everything about what you are talking about. Seems like other youtubers are so focused on " THIS VIDEO HAS TO BE 10 MINUTES, OR 5 MINUTES E.T.C" . Your videos never feel rushed, and by the end i am usually always surprised how long the video was lol.
Had to Update the BIOS of my Asus rog strix b450-f gaming ii yesterday so i can put in my 5600g and i have to say it was quite easy. Just put the recent Version on a USB Stick and then use the EZ BIOS Flash Tool that Asus offers in the BIOS itself. It may not be that easy on every MB just wanted to leave that here 👍
Did it run fine afterwards?
@@thekidmanny377 yes, it runs perfectly fine. Had no Problems so far.
@@beaumartinmusic USB should be atleast 1GB, but the most important one is that IT SHOULD BE MBR FORMAT (google or youtube on how to reformat it into mbr).
@@beaumartinmusic MBR or GPT is the next level to FAT32. It branches out.
@@beaumartinmusic 32GB or Lower from a known Brand
I find that with old flash drives, like 256MB FAT, with a read/write led I have more chances of success on recovering from corrupt bioses. Also, it may be that you have to use a specific USB port for it to work. I was successful with quite a few desktops and laptops that had a built it recovery quite easily. My favourite fix is a compaq laptop though, with corrupt bios. It would go into bios settings but could not see any drives (it could not recognise the drives properly- it would display junk data there), nor did usb work to boot. I couldn't use DOS to flash, even tried a usb floppy drive-sometimes that works btw. With no other visual recovery mode, it had a key combo (ctrl alt esc and B?) that low level turned it on, no display, and looked for a specific BIOS filename on a FAT partitioned USB drive. If it found the correct filename, it would beep *loudly* several times and flash it. That worked. Generally if the boot block (the "slow portion flashing" on your video is intact, there's hope. Some flash programs do that writing at the very end, after the main block is flashed successfully. It depends on the bios.
Try another usb stick configuration and different bios images! I'd suggest the one it initially had, if possible.
for sure
Just don’t update the bios if you live in Texas and it’s snowing
not anymore
True Words
Live Free to flash not in Texas!
Or too hot.
For me, I always keep my bios/UEFI updated as security vulnerabilities aren’t unheard of, nor are bugs or missing hardware support. While I like to live dangerously, I’d still probably only recommend doing it if you have a reason to. Those reasons are generally given in the release notes.
It depends on the operating systems. There are operating systems, that chelc for these (known) vulnerabilitys at install time, and if found, will apply a software fix to prevent it. (May not the most efficient method, but easier)
I have 7 bios updates available for my motherboard, can I install latest one?
or I need to install all of them in order?
(msi A320-A pro max)
I've been looking for a video like this for SO long! And now one of my fav tech youtubers made one! Thank you so much!
Great video
I remember watching Mr bean on your you channel lmao
@@V-for-Vendetta01 lol, it got removed due to copyrights
@@KhaledAlfaris yea F
@Ojas ok, thanks.
There could have been no better argument for not needlessly updating your BIOS than bricking a laptop in the video. Good job, ThioJoe!
19:37 lesson: never buy a laptop with an eMMC drive (they are also slow and often (like in this case) very small) and if, do regular backups (in the case of a small drive like that, you could just clone the partition). The backups should be stored on an external HDD or on optical discs, as SSDs are not reliable enough to be suitable for backups.
though I think this is a great video that really goes into detail how much engineering and delicacy goes into the BIOS/UEFI system, I still think it's fear mongering a bit. yes, the wisdom is "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and it's still possible to brick a bios if you're not careful, but this isn't the early 2000s (back when BIOS was actually used) where if your bios updated breaks you're SOL, manufactures have a bunch of safeguards in place (and even the manufactures of like the psu and what not) if your power cuts out during an update, if the power comes back on quickly it's fine (capacitor buffer commonly found in the PSU) as mentioned there's a dual bios mode. However I think the real MVP of BIOS recovery options is the cold flash features. this will be different dependent on company but my motherboard (Gigabyte B550 Aorus Master) as a feature where a single USB port can flash the BIOS, it doesn't matter if the bios itself is working, as long as the computer is powered off and plugged in it'll reflash the BIOS (i've had other motherboards from the likes of asrock and asus, and they seem to also have similar features when it comes to recovery)
tl;dr: it's still possible to brick a BIOS but the possibility of it happening is so small it's negligible
Your recovery tool was most likely crashing because you were using too big of a usb drive, regardless if you formated it in the required partition . Anything larger than 4 GB is usually gonna be problematic. Try to use a USB stick 4 GB or smaller and I'm pretty confident it will work.
That make sense. Maybe the recovery tool is written in 32 bit and a drive larger that 4 GB cause an overflow or a memory leak and the tool crashes
Wtf that was super bad. Who even has 4GB stick these day. Even mine is at least 8GB. It will be harder to find 4GB in the future too
@@Vysair technically you can low level format a stick of large capacity to look like a small capacity one for the host system. The thing is that in time most hosts will support modern large capacity drives, but till that time comes, you either use a small capacity drive (4 Gb max), or format a large one to look like a 4 Gb drive.
And also format it as FAT.
The tool itself wrote to the pendrive. You'd think they at least would show an error in that case.
as we say in Brazil "don't mess around with what's working" if it's functional let it be
"if it ain't broke, don't fix it"
@@Turhan-Bey Nope, the exact quote is: If it ain't broken, mess with it until it breaks.
That's a pretty much planetary-wide proverb. It may vary in its wording from place to place, but the gist is to let working things THE HELL ALONE.
That's the reason why I'm still running Windows 7 on my 12 year old gaming pc and Windows Updates turned OFF since the first week I got it. I don't see any reason to turn them on since my system is still working fine without any updates for 12 years.
@@powerpc6037 What a coincidence. Me too.
I bought this PC with a G1840 Celeron and 4Gb DDR3 RAM at more or less the time Win 8 got out, but insisted to get Win 7 32bit instead. In time I've upgraded this rig to i5 and 16Gb Ram, but Win 7 has remained, still rock solid.
It is not that I don't want to go to Win 10 or 11, it's I don't need to go over there, for the moment.
Even if the computer/motherboard have a recovery tool, it still have a great chance to fail as demonstrated in the video. The most "safe" recovery tool is the Dual Bios system, where if somehow anything goes wrong you can switch to the backup bios, boot, switch again to the corrupted bios and reflash that bios. DO NOT TRY TO FLASH THE BACKUP BIOS, if you do this you are in risk of having 2 corrupted BIOS.
That USB flash program tool (ch341a) is actually super easy to use, and you don't need to de-solder anything.
Also, I'm 90% sure you could fix that laptop with it.
5:20
SPI is just the interface. Those chips are typically EEPROMs (or flash, it's kinda the same) and are using SPI for communication
Flash is a kind of EEPROM. Flash is faster, but unlike "conventional" EEPROM it can only be erased in blocks, if you want to erase just a single bit, you need to store the whole block memory or a dedicated cache, erase the whole block and then rewrite it. Erasing in this case means changing an altered bit to it's out-of-the-box state (usually this is defined as a 1, so 0 -> 1 is erasing while 1 -> 0 is writing).
I remember my dad used a software on windows that changed some settings of the bios(UEFI actually) and basically corrupted it. Luckly the motherboard has dual bios on it and had an built in auto recovery program that resseted everything back to factory settings.
I did the same to my y
Ya'll are lucky
Bricked a bios once, back in the old days of removable EEPROM. I took it out, booted another similar mobo, took out its bios whilst it was on windows, installed the corrupted one and flashed it within windows and it worked
10:21 the recovery tool is usually not stored on a separate chip, but on a block of the main EEPROM, which doesn't get rewritten if you flash the BIOS.
When I first updated my bios a few hours after building my pc I used gigabyte's bios update app. It didn't restarted the pc properly so it got stuck on a black screen. After a few hours I hit the restart button on my case and it rebooted normally. It was very scary almost bricking my new motherboard. Now I learned my lesson, never update bios on windows.
Yeah.
I know a couple of examples when newer OS were giving BSOD or kernel panic, and only Windows 7 SP1 worked well. The reason was outdated BIOS. Also, updates are usually good for security (not only for stability). I don't think updating BIOS on a laptop could be a problem even if power supply is not stable. 5 minutes on battery power is not too risky. For desktops, it is also good to use UPS (or borrow for the time of update). So I would not really agree. Normally it is better to update, and follow the instructions coming with an update
I had an HP laptop, purchased c2010, which had this curious problem of turning off when it got too warm. Depending on conditions, it sometimes happened only a couple minutes after startup. Using a cooling desk (USB-powered) mitigated this in many cases, but not all, like when heavily using production software or following several boots in a row (making it a vicious cycle). I found upon research that this was a cooling configuration problem with the BIOS, which an update fixed. The update utility (which I used within Windows) was incredibly janky-looking, as if they didn't expect the average user to have to do it. Nothing like the slick, branded update tool you showed, so I'm glad to see the progress. What I found most intriguing about this is that a BIOS problem actually affected normal computer use, not just the startup procedure.
I needed this video because i was going to do it, thx
5:13 is incorrect. SPI is a communication protocol. The actual storage ICs are called an EEPROM.
I'm a non-native English speaker and thought when i was reading the titel of corruption = criminality :)) I've a question: I will upgrade my old Laptops with Wifi 6 Intel AX200 WLAN-Cards and maybe I will need patched BIOS' because of Lenovos Whitelist. I found a forum where some programmers fixing BIOS for "unlocking". this whitelist. Is it possible that they can spy my online banking data etc. if I install the patched BIOS from them? Sorry for my english.
Ok
100% Recommend a UPS. A battery that activates as soon as mains power is lost. Saves even your windows being slightly corrupted because of it being shut off when doing something important. Also saves work.
The bios chip is an eprom and spi is the communication interface, very common chips. They can be reprogrammed with those tools shown in the video, the clamp is designed to connect to the chip without desoldering it but it need a proper programmer.
Manual reprogramming is not that daunting it's just that searching for 'bios programing tool' will return odd results.
Also bonus fun fact, emmc chips have the same interface as that of a micro sd card, it's faster than a sd card just because it uses two at the same time but it's slower than a ssd. If files from a emmc chip needs to be recovered in a pinch, soldering it's corresponding pins to an sd card reader will in fact work most of the times, will depend on the reader.
bruh just get a raspberry pi, dupont wires and a Panoma 2250 test clip
i got a bios update in windows update lol. I updated it but everything is fine
🤣
Hm surprising
Lol once my bios updated automatically on my very expensive dell gaming pc and it gave me an heart attack luckily everything went fine
dont say you got free Minecraft while updating window because Microsoft had an offer.
Wth? Windows actually does that?
What kind of special computer do you have. Never heard of that before. Sounds super risky.
Can we all just appreciate how clearly he tells us about all these stuff? He knows better than my ICT textbooks 🤣 But really, I appreciate it.
I truly do appreciate the videos you make, they've helped me rediscover my love for computers and how they work
If it works, I don't touch it, unless there is a huge security flaw to be patched.
"uGh, bUt iT'S nEwEr & BeTteR!" - Most of the tech YTbers.
Meltdown and Spectre?
Or fixing bsod
I made a bios update yesterday on my MSI gaming PC and my pc didn't turn on so I took out my Gpu my cpu cooler and took out cmos battery, popped it back in and then I cleaned my whole PC and put on my new Thermal paste I bought but never used. And now everything is clean and it works again like a charm
I remember back in the early Days of ryzen, if your CPU wasn't supported in the current BIOS version, you'd have to get a loaner CPU from one of the companies to flash. these days though, most competent motherboards allow you to flash the BIOS without a CPU installed.
Well typically I got a BIOS update (a while ago) when I was checking for a windows update. I think it's better to have an update installed in the system settings. Instead of having to download it from the manufacturers website.
Because if there is an update in the systen settings. Then it might mean that is safe to the device,and you need to update it. So it wouldn't feel risky doing it.
If you're like me who feels like doing something risky to a device would ruin it. Just be like me and don't do it.
Only do if you have to
Windows update is getting the files for bios updates from the manufacturer, most of the time being the same update that is being offered from the company website itself, so not really a difference there, then you have to factor that doing a bios update even through windows update means that windows is still running so all of the same crashes that bring down windows would brick the computer in the same manner. windows update is fine and passable for installing windows updates because even if a feature update or security update fails and the computer does not boot you can still access recovery partitions and use system restore to bring the machine back, but if the bios update gets clocked then all of those options are screwed anyway, honestly doing the update through windows update is just as much of a nail biter as selecting the update file from the manufacturer directly. also just because windows recommends the update doesnt mean its safe, there have been windows updates to windows itself that have caused instability to the operating system, yes in theory using the service should be safer, but thats a theory for a perfect world which well we dont live in.
@@compzac Yeah. Anyway I tend to not update things that can be risky, like one is of course is the bios, system drivers, and this may not be really risky but I don't like installing optional updates because those optional updates can be buggy.
Fun fact: Asus does have Boards where the BIOS chip is replaceable without soldering - like it just sits in a socket and replacements are available for ~ 9 USD.
Being a newer pc builder I'd never updated bios before and because of these risks sort of dreaded doing it but I felt like I had to. Reason being was I upgraded to a B550 motherboard and a Ryzen 9 5900X and in some games, while playing randomly the computer would just restart and in some more rarer scenarios I'd get a blue screen WHEA error related to cpu core issues. Turned out the bios was over 11 months old and after upgrading I played the couple of games where it would happen and it's been rock solid so a bios update can be quite important.
I got a lot of game crashes and blue screens related to driver issues and I legit couldn’t figure out what was wrong, I cleaned all my GPU drivers with DDU, re-installed Windows and did all kinds of troubleshooting with no good results.
I updated my BIOS as a last resort and it wasn’t even an old copy (december 2021) and I wasn’t sure that this was the issue but I went for it… I put the correct latest BIOS update on a USB and did it, I was shitting myself and it restarted multiple times.
I tried playing some games and really pushed my PC to it’s limits and I got no crashes or any BSoD, I fucking did it and my PC has worked ever since, this was today and tonorrow it might start crashing again. Tomorrow is another chapter and if it starts crashing again I will personally throw myself in the local river.
@@xsweetse Nice! I've been running an Asus X670E-A motherboard with a 7800X 3D so I did like 4 bios updates on it due to the whole overvolting fiasco.
It's not that bad updating bios.
I was searching for this video just now 😅
Very fair evaluation of the risks. I have had to update BIOS a couple of times in decades I have used these beasts. Normally, I just leave it be. As you say, ONLY if you need to for a security issue or new hardware you can't use without updating.
FOR ANYONE OUT THERE WHO IS SCARED OF UPDADEING THERE BIOS:
if you just recently got your computer or if part of your physical system isn't working UPDATE YOUR BIOS it could fix your problems
also u should always update your bios if you dont feel like it will go wrong (its just the right thing to do)
That last line directly contradicts what he said in the video.
@@Sparkette ya ik but honestly Joes wrong this time. It's not that likely. Honestly it's like 200x less likely then the average 200 GB SSD (idk if that's true or not)
The biggest downside about the Dell recovery thing is that you need to own a Dell.
i mean you aren't wrong
Anything wrong with that?
@@Connie_TinuityError Yea the majority of Dell's computers are trash.
@@FatheredPuma81 Do you mean the Optiplex line?
@@xanderplayz3446 I mean all of the lines with proprietary trash hardware.
As a computer repair tech with a two-year degree I would take some time and invest in something like this to repair and rebuild surface mount chips in case of accidental complications arising from flashing the bios chip. Now it's time to invest in a hot air desolder/soldering station. They were relatively inexpensive as well as being pretty reliable just a few years ago. Precision tweezers are going to be a big help too. Don't forget copper desoldering wicks to bleed off excess solder as well as plenty of flux and the type of wire solder that works best for you. Create a filtered computer fan fume hood for your workstation so you don't have to breathe in the fumes from the tin/lead solder mix. If you can spare the expense, a good camera setup would help clarify things. Do you have it in you as a technician to actually fix that problem on your laptop by desoldering the physical chip and rewriting it back to normal? Honestly, if I could get some of the equipment you featured here I could make some extra money. In addition to normal computer repair. A repair tech can always undercut the dealership to make money if he has the proper tools. The only thing I would need would be the programs to access and flash the chip properly. If the customer's computer is fixed and I can undercut an RMA price in half, this is a no-brainer. It's just another skill in a successful repair technician's toolbelt. You are being paid to use that knowledge as a repair tech. If the customer flat out said they lost power to a desktop while flashing the bios, I could get that computer back to him in a day instead of a month without the cost of RMA. I honestly have run across a few computers in my life that, had I had the proper equipment and software to do such a repair, I could have saved a few laptops that were deemed unrepairable unless dealership prices were involved. Skills make the repairman if he has the right software and equipment.
I just fineshed uptating my BIOS and went on TH-cam and this is the first video that in my recomendations bruh
I remember 2 weeks ago since I got my new laptop there was an update that I didn't realize it has to do with the UEFI, it was too late to go back, I was so terrified if it was interrupted by something the I cant use it, but it finished without being interrupted & its a really good laptop & has all the hardware it needs to run Windows 11 :)
Very nice and informative video, may i add that on AMD Ryzen CPU's a UEFI Update can actually make a difference in Performance and/or Power-Consumption because of the AMD AGESA. The difference can be none at worst but game-changing on some motherboards with very early UEFI's.
My computer sounds like a tornado when it does a bios update.
i suppose is because when updating, the bios is not running, so is incapable of sense temperatures, so it ramp up the fans to be safe
That's my pc all the time because the sensors are dead and I manually ramped the fans to 100% to make sure my pc doesn't liquify itself. Yet somehow I can sleep through the Jet engine noises it makes
my laptop sounds like a boeing 747 during a bios update
yeah my computer when a bios update is happing it is like a hurcane
@@ProtoV33MK1 thanks
I disagree with not updating the BIOS. Stability, security fixes and feature updates will be pushed by BIOS updates. It would be great if they could offer more recovery issues though, like Dual BIOS.
everyone disagrees not updating bios, until their laptop gets bios update which starts restarting your laptop for no reason or similar
@@Redmanticore well, I bricked my laptop and I still disagree not updating BIOS.
CRAP ADVISE!
i used to update bios every release. stopped updating bios because of this video. then one day my pc failed to boot. i bought parts one by one to find the problem turns out the bios needs to be updated.
ended up with 2 PCs and costed me over $400 because of this video. WAY TO GO MAN!
Nothing too relevant to corruption but i just find it fascinating that our GPUs became so complex that they have their own bios and even startup screens. Great content btw, nice flow of information without being overwhelming.
Video cards had their own BIOS for a very long time. I remember back in 1996 my S3 Trio64 1 MB VGA had their own POST screen pop up before the motherboard's.
@@Havoccus Oh neato... i had no idea that they had this back then. My first GPUs (2006 or so) never had it... only noticed it with my 1070.
I always update my BIOS when I can just so I don’t have to worry about what was fixed later, even though it rarely fixes things that effect me. I find the risk to be the rather minimal. I’ve never bricked a machine a machine, but, yeah, that’s what the failure case would be. If you’re not comfortable doing it, don’t.
I do this to
Got myself a Gigabyte X470 motherboard around 2018. Never really tried to use bluetooth until 2021, and discovered it was faulty. Saw on their website a much newer BIOS than the stock one could possibly fix it. There were some warnings, possibly poorly translated into English from Chinese, that if you wanted to update past a certain version, you'd need another inbetween version first. Flashed to that inbetween version, machine would no longer boot. Motherboard had dual-BIOS, loaded the backup BIOS, got it to boot, but the backup BIOS was an ever older version than what I'd started with, and caused new stability problems. Spent a day or two researching, and found someone had a video on youtube with my exact motherboard model and the exact problem I had. Watched what they did to fix it, wrote myself detailed step-by-step instructions... and proceeded to wreck both the backup BIOS and the main BIOS. Found a later video where the same guy demonstrated how to desolder and replace the physical chip, decided to throw in the towel and buy myself a much cheaper Asus B450M motherboard to replace the bricked one. Vowed never to buy Gigabyte again.
I've been setting up new laptops a lot recently as I work in IT, and these days, BIOS updates can get pushed out over Windows Update as a driver update. Even some refurbished ones from 2016 are working like this, and sometimes they have a visible UI after rebooting (HP & Acer being the main ones I've seen. HP's is rather scary and doesn't check if the charger is connected, Acer's will stop you unless you plug it into power) but others are unnoticeable, like Dell and Lenovo, where the update installs whilst Windows is still booted, presumably on a Dual-BIOS setup.
Why does HP not checking for a charger not even surprise me in the slightest?
I updated my BIOS and when my PC restarted, for a few moments it made strange noises and screenshots and I was very scared. Fortunately everything went well xd
And I thought my laptop is gonna explode during a bios update because the fans were on full speed (I mean they were loud as hell)
Well prepared and presented 🎉🎉 love it
Well, I have a very weird experience on updating BIOS, yet it's kinda surprising on how my laptop BIOS survived from HP's Windows BIOS update.
So, my laptop didn't recognize a USB stick that I plugged inside a USB port, and I tried any device that uses USB type-A, and it didn't worked at all. After that, I decided to update my BIOS _(because I am assuming the BIOS didn't recognize the USB port, but turns out it's missing USB port drives, dumb me lol)._ I do all the steps to install the update, and I simply wait for a while. After the progress bar _almost_ reached at its end, my laptop hanged up for unknown reason. I waited around an hour, nothing. I decided to want another hour, still nothing. I was afraid doing hard reset because HP BIOS Update is still doing its job. Because I was being too desperate, I decided to do hard reset, and _well, it does update the BIOS at start_ , and then it powers down by itself, and it starts again, booting to windows, meaning that I've successfully updated the BIOS.
That was the scariest and the weirdest moment that I have experienced. Thanks for coming to my ted talk
2:16
Some motherboards use the old legacy BIOS interface but they are still UEFI.
Battery is not for "BIOS" settings, but rather for timekeeping. That's it.
Reseting settings after "CMOS" battery removal is just feature to keep it more convinient (if theres not directly button to reset "CMOS").
same thing happened with me on HP pavilion 20 ,I was shifting the partition on linux and corrupted it so, i tried to open bios few times restarting and the pc just don't start no beep . I tried methods from jumper clip cmos ... nothing works . So i have to give to the local service center.. took 2 weeks .They updated the bios but i think its not the version exact for my pc cause linux does shows warning missing firmware of modules .Anyways it works now but bios corrupt hurts :(
try updating it
Modern BIOSes can store something on a dedicated partition (EFI) on the harddrive. Did you delete it when working with the partitions? Or could it be that after changes with other partitions the BIOS doesn't correctly recognize the EFI partition? I would imagine BIOS not having access to the partition it expects to have could disable some features.
Install the linux-firmware package
Damn. Nice video I never realized you can recover the BIOS itself, the very core of the computer that starts everything up
My main laptop had a BIOS update a few days ago, I installed it inside windows from Windows Update, and I did what it said: "Do not shut down or remove external power from your computer during the process." So I kept it on and plugged in. And since I didn't interrupt the process by turning off my computer, the update had finished installing, and I can use my computer like normal. So, from what I can confirm, it is safe to update your BIOS, as long as you don't either accidentally or purposely shut down your computer.
my father once scolded me for updating bios after assembling my new pc myself
Hmm
@@ThioJoe Hmm
@@ThioJoe Hmm
@@ThioJoe Hmm
@@ThioJoe Hmm
You should do a video about how some computer manufacturers are pushing BIOS updates through the normal Windows update and how to prevent this. I'm with you that I find it's almost never necessary to update your BIOS, BUT if I was going to, I would certainly not let Windows Update do it. Dell does this and it's really horrible that they continue to do so. My Uncle's PC was getting BIOS updates about once a month and while it never destroyed his computer it has always been a bit wonky since.
Truth!
16:57 how do you access that screen? I have been trying to get to my BIOS but I am not 100% sure of the key to press and I do not feel like trying every possible button.
Awesome video!
I do disagree regarding "It's not important to update the BIOS".
There are vulnerabilities that are discovered for BIOS'. Therefore, it's important.
Literally first time in my life i hear that updating bios is a thing :D
My brain: Here's how you spell uefi faster: *"O i f i"*
Edit: Not thanks I already got much more likes than this
French people be like:
@@skelebro9999 lmfao
yufhai
idk why but I have read that in Australian accent in my head
Ooyefiy