Bad bios flash, MSI FM2-A75MA-E35

[goobee]

I did a bad flash to a MSI FM2-A75MA-E35. In the old days, you could restore the bios with a bootable floppy and batch file but this board has no floppy header.

Anyone know of a way to save this guy or is it toast?

 

[dawp]

look in the manual, you may be able to do it with a usb flash drive.

 

[goobee]

Unfortunately the manual makes no mention of any kind regarding bad flashes. The bios chip is soldered onto the board so I can't pop it out for reflashing.

 

[dawp]

contact MSI, they may know of a way. usually it a specific usb port and you have to name the file in a certain way to do it.

 

[Iron Woode]

should have used M Flash.

seems a new BIOS vers 1.6 had issues and has been pulled.

was that the BIOS you used or 1.7?

perhaps try contacting MSI about this issue and see what they say.

 

[goobee]

I was trying to flash the newest beta bios using the tool in the bios. I called MSI and they issued me a RMA number to send it back. Apparently they don't have a way to restore the bios after a bad flash.

This board has been unstable since the first bios release. It's getting better but still not stable with no overclock and recommended memory.

 

[victorperez]

I did a bad flash to a MSI FM2-A75MA-E35. In the old days, you could restore the bios with a bootable floppy and batch file but this board has no floppy header.

Anyone know of a way to save this guy or is it toast?

Managed to find a solution to your motherboard? I am desperately looking for solution. grateful.

 

[goobee]

Managed to find a solution to your motherboard? I am desperately looking for solution. grateful.

I had to RMA the board, MSI tech support didn't even offer any suggestions. They just said, "here's your RMA number."

I guess there are no other ways to restore the bios. On some boards, you can pop the bios chip off, hot swap it on a similar board and force the bios on it. Not with this one, they soldered the chip on.

Good luck with it.

 

[2timer]

You can also solder a new BIOS chip on yourself.

 

[dma0991]

I don't think there's an easy way to fix a bad flash on a single BIOS board. I even had difficulties with dual BIOS(one was a bad flash and only recoverable with an older BIOS revision on the secondary) but in a case of bad flash, there is 50% chance of recovery.

Sending it for RMA would be the easiest solution albeit time consuming.

 

[bryanl]

MSI's forum site has information about BIOS flash problems:

http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=119375.0

Essentially it says the BIOS update instructions given by MSI are wrong, and neither the Windows update method nor M-flash should be used.

In case of a bad flash, it may be possible to recover by following these instructions:

http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=65951.0

All BIOS updates should be made from a USB flash drive, not a CD, DVD, or floppy disk. It doesn't matter whether it's a normal BIOS update or an attempt at BIOS recovery.

 

[Bubbaleone]

Straightforward MSI tut for performing USB flash on a damaged AMI BIOS: How can I recover the BIOS on my MSI motherboard?


.

 

[goobee]

Son of a bitch, it was the m-flash that failed on me!

The damn thing just paused while flashing.

 

[bryanl]

Son of a bitch, it was the m-flash that failed on me!

The damn thing just paused while flashing.

Same here. It's funny how Biostar's very similar feature always works.

I've had no better luck with MSI's BIOS recovery procedure, which always just looped. I always had to resort to SPI programming with a cable between the JSPI1 header pins and a parallel printer port of a working computer. The software for this is called SPIPGM or SPIPGM2. MSI will do this free for motherboards in warranty, not too expensively if out of warranty.