Official GIGABYTE Forum
Questions about GIGABYTE products => Motherboards with Intel processors => Topic started by: psycho on March 28, 2014, 02:43:27 pm
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I've recently upgraded my GA-Z87X-UD3H to latest F9 BIOS but unfortunately it still has some stability issues and I wanted to downgrade to my previous stable version F8j but now I cannot.
Any ways to force the BIOS downgrade or am I stuck with this version for one of the BIOSes [from DualBios] ?
How "safe" is it to switch to the 2nd BIOS and flash that one to the version I am interested in ?
Thank you.
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100% safe, that's what its made for.
Keep the bios that is working and stable (in your case F8j) in one of the bios chips (either one, makes no difference).
Use the other bios chip to install any bios you want to try, if you don't like it install another one over it or go back to
F8j with a flip of the switch.
Dual bios is a awesome feature!
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That's true, but unfortunately on one of them I'm now stuck on the F9, from which I cannot downgrade.
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One thing you can try is email support. They might be able to help you with the downgrade. They have done this in the past with other people that have posted on this forum.
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Alright. Thank you, I will try that.
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Hi psycho,
what is the exact problem with your BIOS that is stopping you from flashing back to your previous version?
If I remember correctly, this motherboard has a switch that allows you to swap between BIOS chips. If, for example, you have re-flashed the MAIN BIOS chip successfully, shutdown the PC, disconnect the power, and move the switch to the backup BIOS chip. Start the PC and go into BIOS then flash the backup chip using QFlash. Once the BIOS is updated or rolled back and completed its shutdown/restart process, shutdown the PC again and switch back to the Main BIOS.
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Hey absic,
The main reason I cannot downgrade is because the Qflash or @BIOS does not allow me to do that anymore. [I can't remember by hearth the messages]
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Have you tried to flash the BIOS using the EFI Flash tool?
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Yes but unfortunately it sais the same thing as the QFlash : Current BIOS image is outdated [the one I want to flash with]
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OK, which BIOS chip is running the BIOS version that you want to use?
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The main one is F9 [the one I want to roll back], the second I haven't flashed but it's F5.
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Ok I did this with a Evga board and I don't if this will work. The Evga board had a switch too. It had 3 bios and the first one I couldn't boot from.
But the other two I could. So I did it with in windows. I start the computer on bios 2 and when I got ready to flash the bios I switch it to bios 1.
That did the trick and now all 3 bios work fine. Like I said I don't if you can do the same thing on a Gigabyte board.
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Re-download latest BIOS.....F9, as inside is updated EFI Flash tool.
If didn't work again, use my link with ftp tool...here:
http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/28441-gigabyte-latest-beta-bios-904.html#post479419
Btw,
you have BIOS switch........(2 BIOS chips)
so keep this BIOS on one BIOS chip and flash whatever you want from second chip.
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Here are two posts from two different forums by a wise poster that might work to go back to an older bios:
"The newer round of bios' have to be flashed with @bios.
The problem is, if you don't like it or it causes problems like it did for me you have to take steps to get rid of it. For some reason after a while I was unable to boot into Windows on the new bios so I could not use @bios to change it.
I had flashed the new F9 to the main bios on my UD5H, and I left F8 on my backup. So what I did was boot up with the backup bios and hit Ctrl + F10, and this "swapped" the main and backup bios. Then all I had to do was throw the bios switch back to the main bios, boot up, and hit Alt + F10 and this overwrote the "bad" F9 bios with a copy of the F8 bios. Now if the system needs a fresh copy of a known good bios the F9 will no longer be there.
Make sense? lol.
It's strange that the F9 worked well for a few days but suddenly it went south. Oh well, F8 works fine for me."
"Actually, I had to revert all the way back to F8 mod BIOS on my Z87 UD5H. Suddenly I could not boot all the way into Windows no matter what I did. I've been a few rounds with this in the past so I knew the easiest fix was to just not use the F9 bios.
So.....I found out something.
Bear in mind that the newest F9 BIOS had to be flashed with @bios -since Qflash wouldn't work for the "new" bios- and in my case I had flashed F9 as the main bios.
So happens I had F8 as the back up bios.
With the bios switch in the backup position, I booted up and hit Ctrl + F10, and this swapped the main bios to the backup, and the backup to the main. Yep, didn't know it worked that way with Z87.
Then all I had to do to flash over the new F9 -remember I had to use @bios to flash it- was boot up in the main bios and hit Alt + F10, and that copied the F8 main bios to the backup and overwrote the "bad" F9 bios.
Clear as mud? lol. "
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Not the most straight forward approach but, in a weird way, the steps do make sense. Thanks for the posts.
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Yeah that was my posts on OCN. ;)
Actually all you have to do is force the bios to overwrite the main from the backup....for some boards you can just hold the start button in, for others you can turn off the psu with it's switch, then push the start button and flip the psu back on until the mobo gets juice then flip the psu off again.
Then just do a normal startup and the bios should load the backup and overwrite the main.
Clear as mud?
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Re-download latest BIOS.....F9, as inside is updated EFI Flash tool.
If didn't work again, use my link with ftp tool...here:
http://forums.tweaktown.com/gigabyte/28441-gigabyte-latest-beta-bios-904.html#post479419
Btw,
you have BIOS switch........(2 BIOS chips)
so keep this BIOS on one BIOS chip and flash whatever you want from second chip.
I've just registered only to write big THANKS to You. :D
Today, I updated my z78x-ud3h to test F9 BIOS and couldn't downgrade to any previous BIOS. ???
(If You update to F9 with EFIFLASH, as pointed in the description, it flashes main and backup BIOS together with F9!!!) >:(
EFIFLASH stated that any BIOS lower than f9 is outdated, same with QFLASH. @BIOS stated that my mobo is "protected" from any BIOS older than f9.
FPT program worked like charm.
I've used Caldera MS-DOS bootCD and FPT -f BIOS.BIN command.
THX :)
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I can also confirm that the downgrade worked from F9 using the method above. Only thing is to remember to write in the BIOS you are about to flash to, the MAC address of your current Intel NIC.
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Hi everyone,
like all the other members who contributed to this discussion, I would also like to get rid of F9 bios to try to solve the sleep issues affecting my Mavericks installation.
Unfortunately, although I contacted twice the Gigabyte support asking them a crystal clear question on how to downgrade from F9, arguing that its double instalation in both the bios chips has merely vanished the advantage of having a dual bios MB, I only received very useless entry-level replies like "the F9 bios is not known to create problems with the Operating Systems (MS only) supported by Gigabyte" or "the downgrade is not possible to ensure compatibility with new processors blablabla" >:(.
No need to say that I feel very frustrasted by the useless replies and very disappointed as a returning customer who built three systems purchasing their boards in the last 12 months.
Searching on the web I found this discussion and I would love to try the fpt method described here.
My only issue is how to make sure I'm correctly inserting in the bios I'd like to flash my MAC address.
Indeed, I found some links witrhin some posts pointing to some explalations, but I'm not sure I fully understood them.
Is there anyone willing to kindly summarize again in this discussion the steps for MAC insertion in the bios?
Thanks for your patient reading of this long post.
Marco
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^
Just flash back with FPT tools,as described earlier.....your MAC address will be same as in the BIOS....so you no need to change anything.
"How to do" is included in .zip file.
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^
Just flash back with FPT tools,as described earlier.....your MAC address will be same as in the BIOS....so you no need to change anything.
"How to do" is included in .zip file.
Hello, Im trying you method to downgrade and when I select USB stick with files it does not do anything - just continue to load Yosemite OSX. How do I run the flash? I have a GIGABYTE Z87X-UD3H motherboard and by my stupidity updated to 10b bios version....can you help? Thanks, Jakub