Updating BIOS via USB Key..

[DarkRogue]

Hello,

It's been quite a while since I've touched anything related to this, and my system's been long overdue for an update anyway. My board suffered from a minor/mild case of the DPC Latency problem reported a while back. Gigabyte supposedly fixed it with an F4 BIOS a couple months ago (which was promptly removed for some reason and replaced with F5 instead.) Anyway, since I am currently doing some maintenance/cleaning up of my system, I figured now was a good time to get to it.

Only one problem though - I have no idea how to do it safely, lol.
I've flashed BIOS's before, but that was on my old PC with a floppy drive. I've since gotten rid of the floppy drive, so the alternatives for me are to flash from Windows (yikes) or do it with a USB key.

First off, how do I make the USB key bootable? I've googled, but I can't say I've found any trustworthy steps. I have an old 1GB flash drive I've relegated to this stuff.

Next, after I get a bootable USB key, and I assume place the new BIOS file on it, how do I flash from it? Also, would it wipe out my current overclock settings?

Thanks in advance.
Mobo and related info is in my sig for reference.

 

[Gillbot]

use the HP USB boot utility

 

[DarkRogue]

Umm, the HP DriveKey thing?
I'm not quite sure how to proceed, as I've never made a USB key bootable before.

I assume I just use it to format my key, and then.. anything else?
I read somewhere I also needed a Win98 boot disk or something too. :/

 

[vailr]

http://www.xtremesystems.org/f...2397392&postcount=2023
Adjust for your board's flash utility and bios file.

 

[DarkRogue]

Okay, thanks for the help guys.

That was a tense 20 minutes, but I finally managed to get the damn motherboard to boot off the USB key. Flashed just fine, almost too quickly. Running F5 now, no more DPC latency spikes, yay. Toughest part was probably me trying to remember what all my BIOS settings were before the update, lol. PC still feels a bit sluggish, but I guess it just needs a good defrag or something.

Thanks again and Merry Christmas, you two.

 

[vailr]

http://www.station-drivers.com...gabyte/ga-p35-ds3p.htm
F6 & F7beta versions for "GA-P35-DS3P" are listed.

 

[SilentRunning]

Why do you need the USB drive to be bootable. Why not just use the flash utility built in the bios?

 

[DarkRogue]

Vailr, that is true for the P35-DS3P, but I have the EP35-DS3P, which I guess is a different motherboard (or at least revision, since my E series is Rev 2.1). At least according to the Gigabyte site, F5 is the latest stable and F6 is a beta.

SilentRunning, if you mean Q-flash, it seemed to only work with a floppy.. unless I read the documentation incorrectly. I actually did try going into Q-flash first, and I tried to save my current BIOS somewhere to back it up, but it asked for a filename and none of my keys would work for some reason (save for the arrow keys, enter and escape, go figure) and I panicked out of that. Either that, or whatever I was typing became invisible for some reason. Either way, it didn't look like things were going well there, so I fell back on something bootable.

 

[SilentRunning]

Originally posted by: DarkRogue
SilentRunning, if you mean Q-flash, it seemed to only work with a floppy.. unless I read the documentation incorrectly. I actually did try going into Q-flash first, and I tried to save my current BIOS somewhere to back it up, but it asked for a filename and none of my keys would work for some reason (save for the arrow keys, enter and escape, go figure) and I panicked out of that. Either that, or whatever I was typing became invisible for some reason. Either way, it didn't look like things were going well there, so I fell back on something bootable.

Yes I meant Q-Flash. You need to have the USB key formatted in FAT format for it to be able to read or write to it.

Q-flash pdf

Q-Flash only supports USB flash drive or hard drives using FAT32/16/12 file system.

I am guessing you had NTFS or ext FAT on the USB key.

 

[DarkRogue]

Hmm, that's odd.. My key was/is formatted with FAT32. Not sure what the problem there was, unless the presence of the DOS files had any effect.