How Do I Update My BIOS?

[yozzington]

Hopefully, i can get some help here as i am having serious issues here.
I have been building desktop pc's for years, but have not done so for about ten years, so you could say i am a little rusty.
I have a Gigabyte X79S-UP5-WiFi (rev. 1.0) motherboard which i brought at the beginning of 2013, and just recently i purchased myself an Intel 4930 Ivy Bridge E chip, unfortunately, i made the mistake of not checking whether the mb bios supported the ivy bridge architecture, so now i am stuck with a mb, that i need to update the bios on.
Is there anyway of doing so, without having to splash out on an older sandy bridge processor?, unfortunately no one i know has a 2011 pin sandy bridge chip i could borrow.
Hope this makes sense, rushing a bit as i am due to leave for work very soon.
Any help would be much appreciated.

[SamRondeau]

Hi,
So recently I bought a new PC, which includes a G1.SNIPER A88X mobo, and an A10-7850K. I have realised that i need to update my BIOS to at least F5 to support the FM2+ APU, luckily the PC I use now has an FM2 APU. So, I just switched the FM2+ APU with the older FM2 APU to update my BIOS, however I have come across a problem; when I go to Q-Flash, I select the right file ect, and i get an error message saying that my 'flash utility is outdated'.
Is there any way i can overcome this problem?
Note: I have tried updating to F5, F6 and F7 and i get the same message each time. Also the pen-drive is in the right format (FAT32).

Any help would be really appreciated.

[absic]

You need to create a bootable drive using a USB stick, then update the BIOS using the EFI Flash Tool through DOS. Once you have upgraded past F5 BIOS you can use QFlash as normal.

Check here for help in creating Bootable USB Pendrive: http://rufus.akeo.ie/

Download the BIOS File for your motherboard and save it to your desktop so that you can find it easily. Double click on the 7Zip file (it is self extracting) and it will put the 3 download files onto your desktop for you. You only need the EFI Flash Exe file and the BIOS File, the Autoexec file can be discarded. Make a note of the BIOS File name as you will need this information later in the process and if you don't get this part correctly you will not be able to update the BIOS.

Create the Bootable Pendrive using the Rufus program.

Copy the Efiflash exe and BIOS files onto the USB Pendrive

Reboot the PC and press F12 to go to the BOOT Menu.

Select the USB Pendrive  and press enter, this will take you into the DOS environment.

At the C:/ prompt type: Efiflash and press enter. This will start the Efiflash tool.

At the C:/ prompt type: efiflash xxxxxx.xx (replace the x's with the name of your BIOS File that you noted earlier) IMPORTANT: Make sure that you insert a space between the words efiflash and the BIOS name. Also make sure you enter the full point (.) before the BIOS version number. Press enter.

The BIOS Flashing process is now done and there is no further input required. The first stage you will see that the BIOS is being erased. The 2nd stage the BIOS is written and the 3rd stage the BIOS is verified. DO NOT power down or reset the PC whilst this process is happening. Once the BIOS update has been verified the PC will automatically go into a shutdown/restart/shutdown/restart sequence. DO NOT PANIC, this is normal.

Once this sequence has finished you can enter BIOS and make any changes you require, as you normally would.

[absic]

Just updated the BIOS on my GA-Z87-HD3 motherboard but ran into a small issue whilst using the EFI Flash tool that I had previously downloaded as it was out of date for the new BIOS version.

I have uploaded the latest version of the EFI Flash tool as a zip file which you can download from the link below.

This time, when I updated the BIOS using the EFI Flash tool however, I noticed that the Backup BIOS chip was automatically updated at the same time. This could be an issue for some users if you are hoping (as I was) to keep a known working version of an earlier BIOS in the Backup Chip in case of issues with the new version. It is worthwhile bearing this in mind, if you are planning on updating to one of the latest BIOS versions for your own motherboard.

[Karlsson]

I have board GA-H87-HD3 . If I got this, there was Bios F5. Now I upgraded main bios to F8 with Q-Flash.
How I can update backup Bios? I use PS/2 keyboard. If I turn PC power on, then ALT+F10 does nothing and ALT+F12 shows "boot sequence" menu.

[Kammerat]

Copy the Efiflash exe and BIOS files onto the USB Pendrive

Reboot the PC and press F12 to go to the BOOT Menu.

Select the USB Pendrive  and press enter, this will take you into the DOS environment.

At the C:/ prompt type: Efiflash and press enter. This will start the Efiflash tool.

At the C:/ prompt type: efiflash xxxxxx.xx (replace the x's with the name of your BIOS File that you noted earlier) IMPORTANT: Make sure that you insert a space between the words efiflash and the BIOS name. Also make sure you enter the full point (.) before the BIOS version number. Press enter.

Help! I need to update my GA-970A-DS3 mainboard, but I can't even perform this flash process!

When I boot up my USB drive with the copied BIOS update, and I come to the first DOS screen saying:
"GIGABYTE SPI Flash BIOS Update Utility v0.35
!!! SPI Flash initiate failure"
I type EFIFLASH in the C:\ line, and when I get to the "Usage: EFIFLASH" page right after, I type "Efiflash 970ads33.dc" (the name of my BIOS file) and then it just returns to the first screen!
I created this USB disk with Rufus.. Do I need to get another version of Efiflash or what in the world do I do?

[Kammerat]

Help! I need to update my GA-970A-DS3 mainboard, but I can't even perform this flash process!

When I boot up my USB drive with the copied BIOS update, and I come to the first DOS screen saying:
"GIGABYTE SPI Flash BIOS Update Utility v0.35
!!! SPI Flash initiate failure"
I type EFIFLASH in the C:\ line, and when I get to the "Usage: EFIFLASH" page right after, I type "Efiflash 970ads33.dc" (the name of my BIOS file) and then it just returns to the screen!
I created this USB disk with Rufus.. Do I need to get another version of Efiflash or what in the world do I do?

This has been driving me nuts all day. I can't get into my Windows, and I started out with using Q-Flash, which only gave me the "BIOS ID Check Error" when I tried to update from the fc-file. It's like no matter what I do, sh** just stucks. I really hope someone can help me at this point.

UPDATE: I figured out an error message that is only shown in a millisecond as I enter the second string, by filming the screen.
It says: "DOS/32A warning (9004): mouse initialization failed" at the bottom.
OK, so I can't flash/update my BIOS because of my mouse, or what?

I compiled the boot USB on my Win7 laptop, as I can't use my stationary.

[Kammerat]

Okay.. The problem seemed unsolvable, but I managed to figure it out.
The BIOS updates I took was for the wrong revision of my motherboard - rev 3.0, not rev. 1.0 which I have.
And these BIOS updates came with FLASHSPI, which worked so much better. Thank god.

[saucebandit]

You need to create a bootable drive using a USB stick, then update the BIOS using the EFI Flash Tool through DOS. Once you have upgraded past F5 BIOS you can use QFlash as normal.

Check here for help in creating Bootable USB Pendrive: http://rufus.akeo.ie/

Download the BIOS File for your motherboard and save it to your desktop so that you can find it easily. Double click on the 7Zip file (it is self extracting) and it will put the 3 download files onto your desktop for you. You only need the EFI Flash Exe file and the BIOS File, the Autoexec file can be discarded. Make a note of the BIOS File name as you will need this information later in the process and if you don't get this part correctly you will not be able to update the BIOS.

Create the Bootable Pendrive using the Rufus program.

Copy the Efiflash exe and BIOS files onto the USB Pendrive

Reboot the PC and press F12 to go to the BOOT Menu.

Select the USB Pendrive  and press enter, this will take you into the DOS environment.

At the C:/ prompt type: Efiflash and press enter. This will start the Efiflash tool.

At the C:/ prompt type: efiflash xxxxxx.xx (replace the x's with the name of your BIOS File that you noted earlier) IMPORTANT: Make sure that you insert a space between the words efiflash and the BIOS name. Also make sure you enter the full point (.) before the BIOS version number. Press enter.

The BIOS Flashing process is now done and there is no further input required. The first stage you will see that the BIOS is being erased. The 2nd stage the BIOS is written and the 3rd stage the BIOS is verified. DO NOT power down or reset the PC whilst this process is happening. Once the BIOS update has been verified the PC will automatically go into a shutdown/restart/shutdown/restart sequence. DO NOT PANIC, this is normal.

Once this sequence has finished you can enter BIOS and make any changes you require, as you normally would.

I followed these steps to flash my Z97X Gaming 3 from F4 to F5 and the Bios rebooted and seemed to be installing, but now I am at a what looks like a freedos advertisement in the Doc window with a C: prompt again.  I tried the efiflash commands again.  The efi flash commands of course dont work now as the 1st stage of the bios being removed has been completed.  I have no idea what to do here can anyone tell me what I should be entering in DOS? The screen I am stuck on is attached.  This is the screen I recieved after re-entering the efiflash commands at the Freedos advertisment.

[cyberangel22k]

Question?

I'm currently locked out of my mobo now for some weird reason.
You can read how it happened here in this thread

Will reflashing BIOS remove the CMOS password? Yes I did cleared the CMOS several times but still asks for my password.

[cyberangel22k]

Question?

I'm currently locked out of my mobo now for some weird reason.
You can read how it happened here in this thread

Will reflashing BIOS remove the CMOS password? Yes I did cleared the CMOS several times but still asks for my password.

Resolved:
http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php?topic=15913.0

[rebus_forever]

Hey folks, im using a ga z68 ud5 b3 and im on the f10 bios currently dealing with gigabyte e support but thought it might be wise to post here also after A user directed me here, Im trying to update from the F10 bios to the eufi bios, esupport have given me a bios file and flashefi which I have installed on a bootable usb drive running freedos with the instruction to type C>:flashefi.exeU1b when in freedos, this throws up the "CAN NOT REDIRECT OUTPUT TO FILE" reply and nothing happens, any advice.

Thanks a bunch in advance, sorry if we arnt supposed to post on the end of this thread but after being recommended to it I assumed itd be fine.

[rebus_forever]

I actually worked out how to flash the bios in the end, it has unfortunately left me with a computer that wont boot, just a loop of turning on. then off, then on forever...
If anyone has any advice id take it.