How do you update bios if you don't have a floppy drive?

[Red Squirrel]

I want to update the bios for my Z97MX-Gaming 5 motherboard to see if it fixes a boot loop issue but I don't have a floppy drive nor do I run Windows to create a boot disk from. Is there a way to emulate a dos environment using a USB stick or something? Been a long time since I've done this. Would be nice if they just provided an ISO that I can dd directly to a USB stick and ran a Linux based util instead of relying on dos, but guess they're still old school in their procedures. The download just comes with the dos utility, the flash file and an autoexec.bat file.

 

[UsandThem]

I looked at your manual, and on page 79 it says you should be able to just download the file to a flash drive, and use Q-Flash from inside the BIOS to do it.

With Q-Flash you can update the system BIOS without having to enter operating systems like MS-DOS or Window first. Embedded in the BIOS, the Q-Flash tool frees you from the hassles of going through complicated BIOS flashing process

1. From GIGABYTE's website, download the latest compressed BIOS update file that matches your motherboard mode

2. Extract the file and save the new BIOS file (e.g. Z97MXGAMING5.F1) to your USB flash drive, or hard drive. Note: The USB flash drive or hard drive must use FAT32/16/12 file system.

3. Restart the system. During the POST, press the key to enter Q-Flash. Note: You can access Q-Flash by either pressing the key during the POST or pressing the key in BIOS Setup. However, if the BIOS update file is saved to a hard drive in RAID/AHCI mode or a hard drive attached to an independent SATA controller, use the key during the POST to access Q-Flash.

Will this method not work for you?

 

[Red Squirrel]

Oh did not even realize there was an util within the bios itself, I'll have to check that. MUCH easier.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

Oh did not even realize there was an util within the bios itself, I'll have to check that. MUCH easier.

I had to smile at this, because you -- Red Squirrel -- are an Anandtech veteran. I used to take comfort in the "floppy" procedure. I think I've used the built-in feature of my ASUS BIOS's. The Gigabyte boards I've worked with are not "UEFI-BIOS" systems for their LGA-775 vintage, but I can't remember if I used a floppy or thumb drive.

It's always a prospect that causes me trepidation. I'd feel more comfortable with the "in-BIOS" solution. there was even a time when I was more inclined to order a PLCC chip flashed with the more current BIOS I wanted from either the board-maker or an online seller who offers the service. That of course means that the BIOS chip has a socket on the board. A person could pay $15 or $20 just to avoid any imagined troubles with flashing the BIOS himself.

 

[UsandThem]

I still do that when updating my BIOS. Back in the Windows 98 days, it was possible for your system to bluescreen doing just about anything, so I didn't want to use a utility within Windows to flash something so important. Honestly, from Windows 2000 on, Windows has [mostly] been better about issues like that, and even though I have had zero crashes with Windows 10, I still flash using Q Flash.

There is even a post today I replied to where the user warns against using the newest Gigabyte app center (and the apps within it) because of serious issues. I even had to uninstall it a few months back because after the app update in June, it would just constantly stop working, crash, and try to restart itself over and over. Before that June update, it worked great. Really the only thing I used it for was my custom fan profile, so it kind of sucks not having that available. I'm just glad I noticed the issues with my fan profile, instead of it crashing in the middle of a @Bios update.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I had to smile at this, because you -- Red Squirrel -- are an Anandtech veteran. I used to take comfort in the "floppy" procedure. I think I've used the built-in feature of my ASUS BIOS's. The Gigabyte boards I've worked with are not "UEFI-BIOS" systems for their LGA-775 vintage, but I can't remember if I used a floppy or thumb drive.

It's not really something I do often, I think the last time I did it was for an IBM raid card for my file server and it did in fact require a floppy. I even had to mess with himem386 and autoexec since there was not enough resident memory to run the utility. What a pain! I don't get why they can't just make USB boot images that run Linux for these things. I had to put the raid card in another machine that had the proper IDE port for the floppy drive. I guess old tech just never dies lol.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Well this sucks. I bricked it. Posting from my windows machine now.

Looks like I'm buying another motherboard. This motherboard has been giving me trouble since day 1 anyway. I was hoping updating bios would fix it but it only made it worse. It gets stuck in this stupid mode where it gets super slow (I can literally watch each pixel getting drawn in the bios screen) and it won't boot the OS. The screen does this weird flicker thing where it goes on/off/standby/on etc. Eventually I can coax it into booting the OS with many ctrl+alt+dels,... but now nothing.

 

[Burpo]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/BIOS-CHIP-G...182071?hash=item5d5e5e12f7:g:ZAIAAOSw~bFWLarY

 

[Red Squirrel]

The motherboard was giving me issues anyway, so I'm just going to replace it. I have a feeling this would not fix the issue.

It sorta booted after many many tries and lots of waiting, but now the OS is screwed too so I have to reinstall anyway. Getting a bunch of graphic errors and it won't load. At this point it's an OS issue, but the boot issue still exists because each time I reboot I need to deal with the stupid boot loop and screen going on/off for like 10 minutes. It was a crappy motherboard from the get go. In fact my other machine sometimes does the exact same thing. it pretty much sums my experience with UFI boards in general. There's even a machine at Church that started doing it. It seems UFI boards don't like add on video cards. If I take the card out it stops doing it. Have not tried it again after the update though but I presume it will work. But I need the card to have triple monitors. I took a video but I kind of need access to THAT machine to unload it as that is the machine that was setup for my camera stuff.

 

[UsandThem]

Did you try recovering from the dual BIOS feature?

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/...-Forcing-backup-BIOS-on-Gigabyte-motherboards

 

[Red Squirrel]

I took out the video card and now it POSTS fast and boots the OS fine. But there is definitely something with this motherboard because it acts all screwy when there is an add-on card. (I've tried different cards with same result). I suppose I could revert the bios as the new one only made the problem worse, but it's almost pointless, I'm almost thinking of just going with single monitor and trying to get synergy to work again. My original plan was single monitor with two Raspberry PI + Synergy but that was super unstable, and I can't get the newer version to install because of all the dependencies. It wants very specific versions of dependencies not whatever is included in package manager, so it's a very hard one to install.

Is there any chance of running a 4k monitor off built on video? My other option is to just screw multi monitor altogether, and going with a single 4k monitor. I just don't imagine built on video would support that, or would it? What about it going through a KVM, would that be a problem?

 

[UsandThem]

I wasn't sure on 4k on integrated graphics, but I read through a few threads, and people say it works:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-2200385/integrated-graphics-intel-4600-cpu-4970k.html

But hopefully someone else with hands-on experience will confirm this. I'm still on a lowly 1080p monitor, so my opinion is only from what I read.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Trying to find info as well and not finding much. There is not much info on what the actual built in card is, basically it's "VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 4th Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 06)".

I'm starting to think if 4k does in fact work this is my best solution and will kill two birds with one stone. Been fighting with getting a proper multi monitor environment working, a standard spanned environment has the issue of apps/dialogs opening all over the place which is irritating. So I was trying to get separate X sessions going and what not but that was not proving to work well. If I can just go 4k I solve the real estate problem while keeping single monitor, and if it works without an ad-on video card I fix the boot up issue too, not to mention cut out like 200w+ of power usage out of my machine, which is a bonus. Video cards now days are huge power hogs so it's kinda a waste to use one if not gaming.

Worse case I think I'll just keep fighting trying to get Synergy to work. I'm even toying with the idea of trying to make a hardware version of Synergy, basically some kind of box that I plug my keyboard/mouse in and it has 3 ports that plug into each system and emulates a HID device, keyboard/mouse specifically. Then when I move my mouse the device just translates that info to whatever port I select. I could write a program that can track the cursor in the OS and switch, or have buttons to switch manually. I'm noob at electronics but could make an interesting project. A KVM would technically work but those are super slow at switching since they just electrically plug/unplug the device.

Edit: According to this review it might actually do 4k if I use the HDMI port:

http://www.modders-inc.com/gigabyte-ga-z97mx-gaming-5-review/

 

[UsandThem]

Most video cards now are a lot more energy effecient than past cards (both at idle and especially at load). Both the RX 470/480 and the Geforce 10 series cards are pretty impressive.

For example, the new GTX 1050 is a 75w card, so it should get powered directly from the PCIe slot. It's MSRP is reportedly at $109, so it seems like a good budget card for non/casual gamers. There's also the RX 460 that is about the same price and same power usage, but for the same amount the GTX 1050 seems like a better buy.

If you find 4k video playback not satisfactory with Intel's IGP, that could be something worth looking at.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah I have found some cards that don't require an external power connector so I imagine that is a good idea that it uses less power. The one that's in there does.

As a side note here's a quick video I threw together of what happens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxdBbEGc8Ps

That boot issue is completely eliminated by removing the add on card. I have tried different cards and all had the same issue, and the PSU is 600w so it should be enough to run a single card.

For now I will run with one screen and try to see if I can get Synergy or some other form of cross system multi monitor going - that was actually my original goal as I hate how OSes (mis)handle multi monitor and dialogs/windows tend to open all over the place. I can't afford to buy a 4k monitor right now, but should be able to by Christmas time so I'll probably just wait for the deals to come out, if I can't figure out Synergy or an alternative.

 

[Sheep221]

First sign of lacking possibility to do floppy reflash is missing floppy header, if board does not have one, bios won't be asking you to use something you can't connect physically. If you would use external USB floppy drive, computer would see it as USB mass storage rather than floppy. I guess floppy flashing has been dumped long ago, even some late boards for LGA 1156 and 1155 which did feature floppy header did not support flashing via floppy. Another thing is, every installed component can prevent POST or cause any failure. Addon cards are electrically attached to your system very much same way as on-die or SMD parts so if they are somewhat faulty they can bring whole system down.

 

[UsandThem]

Yeah I have found some cards that don't require an external power connector so I imagine that is a good idea that it uses less power. The one that's in there does.

As a side note here's a quick video I threw together of what happens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxdBbEGc8Ps

That boot issue is completely eliminated by removing the add on card. I have tried different cards and all had the same issue, and the PSU is 600w so it should be enough to run a single card.

For now I will run with one screen and try to see if I can get Synergy or some other form of cross system multi monitor going - that was actually my original goal as I hate how OSes (mis)handle multi monitor and dialogs/windows tend to open all over the place. I can't afford to buy a 4k monitor right now, but should be able to by Christmas time so I'll probably just wait for the deals to come out, if I can't figure out Synergy or an alternative.

Something is going on there. I saw you trying to update the BIOS and upon restart it hangs, but did the updated BIOS actually stick? If not, I'd remove the video card and try updating the BIOS without it installed to see if the BIOS update works. If it does, make sure to load optimized defaults.

So it could be the motherboard that is the issue, or it could be the video card. The only way I can think of to know for sure is to install a different card in the system, and see if the issues persist. If they do, you know it's the motherboard. I upgraded my oldest son's computer this past winter, and bought a H97 Gigabyte Ultra Durable line motherboard from a retailer. The first one arrived poorly packaged (flat-rate box, no padding), and the box was was crushed. I didn't see any damage to the motherboard, so I tried it out. I couldn't get the system to be stable, so I returned it and got another one. The second one came with good packaging, but it was unstable. Weird crashes, hangs, and there was something obviously wrong. I keep extra components, so I ended up trying different RAM, CPU, video card, PSU, and a hard drive. It still was unstable. No dump files, but it would just crash and reboot.

So I looked online, and found the TonyMac computer forum (building computers with using the Mac OS), and that was a board that could be used to build the Mac clone. There I saw user after user complaints about system instability, and nobody could figure it out. Most said screw it and replaced it with another brand of motherboard that would work for them. After seeing those posts, I boxed it up, sent it back, and bought an Asus Z97 motherboard, and I never had one issue with it.

I have used Gigabyte boards on many builds over the years, and that was the only time outside of one Abit motherboard I bought in 2000, that I could not get it to work properly. So like all manufacturers, they all occasionally produce a turd. Maybe that motherboard is in the same category as the one I couldn't get to work.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah the update took. Though I was only able to put F4 and they're at F6. It won't take F6 (even after putting F4) and F5 leads to a 404 error on their site.

I had previously tried a different GPU as well with same results. For some reason this motherboard does not like having an external GPU. Right now it boots very fast, well as fast as UFI can boot... I've always found UFI to be slower than traditional BIOSes, but this one is actually what I'd call acceptable compared to others that I've seen. I have another system that's UFI and it takes about 30 seconds just for the splash screen to come up. Oddly it's a Gigabyte board too...

Traditionally I've always gone with Asus, but at the time I was building those two machines I heard bad things about Asus... may have been FUD, but I figured I'd play it safe and go Gigabyte, and it's also what showed up when I was searching for a board that fit my needs at that price point. Perhaps I should have gone Asus.

For now I'm going to stick without the video card, and I'm going to try to figure out how to get my two monitors working with the raspberry Pis as a seamless experience. I was doing Synergy for a while but that program is too unstable, so I'll try to find an alternative or even look into what it would take to write my own. I can't imagine it being that complicated, essentially need to find a way to programatically know where the cursor is, and also a way to programatically set it. Then the rest is just going to be some basic code logic and network code.

 

[vailr]

F7c (beta) is the latest version for the GA-Z97MX-Gaming 5 board:
http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/28441-gigabyte-beta-bios.html
Gigabyte's "@ bios" utility should be able to flash the bios from within Windows.
However, different Intel chipsets require different @ Bios versions for correct operation.
Version @ Bios B15.0630.1 is correct for Intel 9 series boards.
http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyt...ng-stability-tools-post284763.html#post284763

Rufus (free software) can be used to create a bootable USB drive "boot to DOS prompt":
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/rufus.html
Also: force booting from the secondary (backup) bios: Ctl-F10

 

[BonzaiDuck]

It's not really something I do often, I think the last time I did it was for an IBM raid card for my file server and it did in fact require a floppy. I even had to mess with himem386 and autoexec since there was not enough resident memory to run the utility. What a pain! I don't get why they can't just make USB boot images that run Linux for these things. I had to put the raid card in another machine that had the proper IDE port for the floppy drive. I guess old tech just never dies lol.

An old brain cell just lit up. Nothing peculiar about "autoexec" -- we still use batch files. But the other program reminds me of a software package that was produced by an outfit named "Quarterdeck Software." Is that correct? That was a great memory manager, if I remember correctly. But what did they call it? I can't remember. [Help, I've fallen and I can't get up . . . ]

 

[Burpo]

QEMM-386 (Quarterdeck Expanded Memory Manager 386