880GM-USB3 Bios update not working

[Squirly]

I am a computer tech. I have a customer with a Gigabyte 880GM-USB3  mobo and F6 Bios. He's had a few issues that may or may not be related but I can't boot from the optical drive to run Hitach's drive fitness test utility. I have been in the bios and set crdom as the first boot device and ven disabled the hdd and floppy but the computer always goes straight to the hdd to boot.
  I checked and F8 is the only bios listed for this board so I thought I'd give that whirl but the Q-Flash utility ONLY sees the floppy drive and even with the bios file on a floppy it says there are no files on the disk. Oddly enough it also says there is 394k free space so mu bios file is aking up the other megabyte but Q-Flash can't see it. I even tried renaming the bios file with .bin at the end intead of .F* but that rendered the same results.
  The floppy disk has been formatted in FAT a couple of times. I see the file on the floppy in Windows explorer. Yes I unzipped the file I downloaded and did NOT just copy that downloaded file to the floppy.
  The board is just a year old. The machine has one floppy drive, one Hitachi hdd (SATA) and one Optical cd/dvd(SATA) drive that are the same age as the mobo. I also tried resetting CMOS by using the jumper pins and then loading optimal default and then going back in and settin cdrom to first boot device. No love at all.

So my questions are, what else could be preventing the cd/dvd from being a boot-able device and why can't Q-flash see the newer bios I want to load? Also, is there another way to flash the bios?

Squirly

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome.

A bit confused there but I think I get the general idea.

Firstly make sure that the file you have downloaded has been unzipped otherwise the utility won't be able to see it.

Secondly try pressing F12 when booting to bring up the boot menu and you should be able which drive to boot from.

[teknology9]

Hi,

You might find this link useful also:

http://forum.giga-byte.co.uk/index.php/topic,2441.0.html

Teknology9

[Squirly]

Dark, you will see in my post that the archive had been unzipped. And although I failed to post it, I did try f12 and got no love from the optical drive that way either. But this still doesn't explain why Q-flash could not see the bios file on the floppy. I think the problem may be the formatting now that I think about it. The machine in question runs Windows 7 and it formatted the floppy in FAT, not FAT32 so that might be it. FAT32 was not an option for formatting the floppy in Windows 7 but is for a usb drive I just tried at home. But if I put the bios file on a usb device, formatted in FAT32 and have that device plugged in before the machine boots, you're saying that will show up in Q-flash? As it stood yesterday only the floppy drive showed up. The hdd did not. Perhaps because it wasn't formatted in FAT32 but then I have to ask why the floppy showed up if it was also not formatted in FAT32.....?

[Dark Mantis]

FAT, FAT16, FAT32 all work as far as QFlash and the BIOS update goes. I don't know if you formatted the disk in this machine but if not try doing that first and make sure there is nothing apart from the BIOS file on it when you have finished. Have you looked to see if the floppy drive is in the list of drives that can be booted from in the BIOS ?

[Squirly]

Yes it was formatted in the machine with the issues. Q-flash sees the floppy and even sees that there are only 345k or so of free space. The other 1MB being the bios file but it says there are 0 files on the drive. The bios has a file name like 880GMUSB3.F8 I can't remember exactly but it's the right and only bios for this board available at the Gigabyte site. I even tried renaming it to 880GMUSB3.bin but the reult was exactly the same. It sys 0 files yet only 345k free space.

[Dark Mantis]

Squirly I am confused here because I have just checked on the BIOS update list and there are no F6 or F8 versions listed at all. They are only FA to FD available and these are the newer style BIOSes anyway. Maybe I am missing something here but it just doesn't make sense. This is the listing for the board's BIOSes according to your original post.

http://uk.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3809&dl=1#bios

Please clarify.

[Squirly]

Your link goes to board revision 3.1  The board in question is Revision 1 as seen here..  http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3412#bios    I thought it odd that only 1 bios was shown there but F6 is what's on that board right now.

Modified to add:  Another oddity is that in the hard disk priority section the Hitachi SATA drive (the only hdd) shows up as SCSI. Another reason I thought a bios flash might help.

[Dark Mantis]

The board and revision(3.1) is the only one that comes up on our server here in the UK. Therefore I assumed it was the only one available.

The link you posted is to the .com server.

[Squirly]

I assure you the board is rev 1. While I can't physically check the board at this moment, the sata headers give it away. The board in question has the same configuration as rev 1 does. This board was purchased in Australia a year ago, by me from Umart. They apparently satill sell the board but probably have the newer revision now based on the comment there. http://www.umart.com.au/pro/products_listnew.phtml?id=10&id2=105&bid=2&sid=57523

[absic]

Hi Squirly,

It seems strange that there is no easy link to the Rev1.0 board as I too had the same problem as DM when trying to find your board initially.

Have you tried running the @BIOS utility to update the BIOS? Usually I wouldn't recommend doing that but sometimes it is the only option and is  necessary on occasions, especially if the size of the update is different to the BIOS currently installed.

[Squirly]

Absic,
  no I haven't. In my OP I had asked for alternate ways to flash the bios so I'll look up the @bios and give that a whirl when I see this customer next.

[absic]

Hi again,

@BIOS is software based and runs through the Windows OS. You will need ot download it from here: http://uk.gigabyte.com/support-downloads/Utility.aspx item 16 in the list.

When you use @BIOS there is an option that allows you to disable the "Keep DMI Data" optton and I would advise you to dp this before running the update. If you still can't update the BIOS using this utility then the best advice I can offer is that you contact Tech Support and see what they have to say.

[Dark Mantis]

There is also the option to use FLASHSPI too. It to will handle differing size BIOS updates. It should be included with the download.

[absic]

Hi again,

just been re-reading your post and I wondered if you had tried a USB pendirve when using QFlash rather than a Floppy Disk? It's so long ago that I last used a Floppy drive I hadn't considered this to be the problem but it might well be.

As DM has said there is also the FLASH.SPI method of updating BIOS but you still need to access the files, either via Floppy drive or USB pendrive.

If you do try a USB Pendrive make sure it is formatted in FAT32 and also try to use a small capacity one. It is also better to plug the
 USB pendrive into one of the USB sockets on the back of the PC rather than using the Front Panel headers.