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martyfelker said:

So when the going gets boring what else can you do. Flash the BIOS of course. Used AMD @BIIOS to flash the BIOS from a server (a first for me) and lived to tell the tail - after 2 cold starts (whew). Save me from doing this stuff M$

I'm very reluctant to flash BIOS from software and windows.

- it is pretty scary, and you need to do some considerable research to make sure that not only have you selected the correct BIOS, but also that you follow the procedural steps to the letter..

there's a list of tried and tested GPU BIOS versions here - it's where I got my upgrade from:
VGA Bios Collection | TechPowerUp

don't attempt it if you're not 100% sure that you are proceeding correctly..

Well. @BIIOS said the update succeeded but in fact it did not and it looks like the UEFI firmware itself may have been trashed. I say may because I am faced with this interesting situation. Warm restart will only bring up the AORUS menu but the the PF keys do not work. Thus I cannot enable software virtualization. However if I do a cold start TWICE the machine will go past the AORUS screen and boot Windows (NOT GRUB mind you). I am not even close to any kind of panic because I have many,many option. Aoccording to System Information I did in fact update to a BIO which is only 2 months or so old. And in fact the machine seems snappier in Windows than before the flash. I have used control userpasswords2 to bypass. Rawhide completely bombed before the update but as I said I have two seperate ssds for windows and linux. So I can install grub on my windows disk I believe but Linux seems in a bit of flux since Linux decided to upgrade the kernel to ver 5. Versions 5.0 and 5.1 seemed find for 5.2 is problematic for both Ubuntu and Fedora Rawhide. I will be interesting to see how that shkaes. I'd be very grateful if anybody can think of a way I might be able to bypass the BIOS to enable virtualization. Wouldn't surprise me if some clever chap in Russia or China has done this. But I have an extremely large amount of software I can be installing in Windows - thousands of shekels worth. I'll be using the resources of this forum as much as I can. Thanks to the people who warned me but I was getting extremely bored. I can blame it all on MS not releasing a new build of 20H1 but that would probably not be fair. And my wife has an identical system plus she bought an external floppy disk we might get to work for flashing bios's from files. Sisutations like this keep my mind young at least. Cheers.

martyfelker said:

Well. @BIIOS said the update succeeded but in fact it did not and it looks like the UEFI firmware itself may have been trashed. I say may because I am faced with this interesting situation. Warm restart will only bring up the AORUS menu but the the PF keys do not work. Thus I cannot enable software virtualization. However if I do a cold start TWICE the machine will go past the AORUS screen and boot Windows (NOT GRUB mind you). I am not even close to any kind of panic because I have many,many option. Aoccording to System Information I did in fact update to a BIO which is only 2 months or so old. And in fact the machine seems snappier in Windows than before the flash. I have used control userpasswords2 to bypass. Rawhide completely bombed before the update but as I said I have two seperate ssds for windows and linux. So I can install grub on my windows disk I believe but Linux seems in a bit of flux since Linux decided to upgrade the kernel to ver 5. Versions 5.0 and 5.1 seemed find for 5.2 is problematic for both Ubuntu and Fedora Rawhide. I will be interesting to see how that shkaes. I'd be very grateful if anybody can think of a way I might be able to bypass the BIOS to enable virtualization. Wouldn't surprise me if some clever chap in Russia or China has done this. But I have an extremely large amount of software I can be installing in Windows - thousands of shekels worth. I'll be using the resources of this forum as much as I can. Thanks to the people who warned me but I was getting extremely bored. I can blame it all on MS not releasing a new build of 20H1 but that would probably not be fair. And my wife has an identical system plus she bought an external floppy disk we might get to work for flashing bios's from files. Sisutations like this keep my mind young at least. Cheers.

Now I'm confused, which BIOS are you flashing,GPU or MB ?

It was a MB BIOS and I have now found the original BIOS online and successfully installed that. There are quite a few MB BIOS's out there but I haven't yet found that link to the master list. Just haven't figured out which Linux distro to install. Maybe we will get an upgrade today.

martyfelker said:

It was a MB BIOS and I have now found the original BIOS online and successfully installed that. There are quite a few MB BIOS's out there but I haven't yet found that link to the master list. Just haven't figured out which Linux distro to install. Maybe we will get an upgrade today.

Ah for Gigabyte ? F41b came out just few days ago. Looks like it's ready for 3rd gen.

OK, here's the thing - yes, BIOS flashing can lead to issues - but I've performed several hundred BIOS flashes in my lifetime and not once lost a computer - and a small (very small) percentage of those flashes were actually to help revive seemingly dead computers.

1) Flash offline. Don't do it from the OS, unless you've flashed several hundred BIOSs like I have. (And, truth be told, I've only done this a handful of times, when I've found absolutely no other option to flash - thankfully, all of those were of the type where the executable starts in Windows, then reboots the machine and proceeds "offline" anyway.)

2) When you use an optical disc (and nowadays a UFD) to flash the BIOS after powering off the system you're still using software to flash it. But, you need to be absolutely sure that you're not going to lose power when doing this. TBH, and I've only done this a handful of times myself, but the best practice is to disconnect all peripherals except the optical drive (if you are using an optical disc), the monitor, KB, and have the computer plugged into a good UPS. Everything else should be unplugged. (Again, this is a best practice concept, to give you as much assurance as anyone can give when flashing the BIOS).

3) Even if you're on a laptop, have the charger cable plugged into a UPS - just in case. I've read stories where flashing a BIOS onto a laptop crashed because the laptop battery abruptly failed (and the user swore up and down it was fully charged).

Now, the stigma with flashing the BIOS really shouldn't exist, because it is absolutely no different than flashing firmware onto a router, or flashing a newer version of the OS on your mobile device. You're (inherently) doing the exact same thing in all three devices. With routers, it is more extensive, as you're flashing not only the bootloader firmware but also the actual OS which resides in the embedded (or SoC these days), and the same for your mobile device - but, with Android, for example, when it flashes an OTA, more often than not the first thing it flashes is the bootloader itself, then reboots into the newly flashed bootloader, and then continues to flash other things (boot.img, radio firmware, etc.) and finally flashes the actual system - last.

I always have my systems on a UPS, but I'd say that I've easily flashed more than half the total BIOSs I've flashed without disconnecting peripherals - if you do it correctly, it's flashed and done in less than 5 minutes, even on old 486 machines. First BIOS I flashed was after my Tandy 1000 EX BIOS went stupid, and I had to buy a new BIOS chip - then flash it,. That was ... 1982. Or around there.

And I've never had a BIOS flash Failure that I couldn't recover from.

johngalt said:

OK, here's the thing - yes, BIOS flashing can lead to issues - but I've performed several hundred BIOS flashes in my lifetime and not once lost a computer - and a small (very small) percentage of those flashes were actually to help revive seemingly dead computers.

1) Flash offline. Don't do it from the OS, unless you've flashed several hundred BIOSs like I have. (And, truth be told, I've only done this a handful of times, when I've found absolutely no other option to flash - thankfully, all of those were of the type where the executable starts in Windows, then reboots the machine and proceeds "offline" anyway.)

2) When you use an optical disc (and nowadays a UFD) to flash the BIOS after powering off the system you're still using software to flash it. But, you need to be absolutely sure that you're not going to lose power when doing this. TBH, and I've only done this a handful of times myself, but the best practice is to disconnect all peripherals except the optical drive (if you are using an optical disc), the monitor, KB, and have the computer plugged into a good UPS. Everything else should be unplugged. (Again, this is a best practice concept, to give you as much assurance as anyone can give when flashing the BIOS).

3) Even if you're on a laptop, have the charger cable plugged into a UPS - just in case. I've read stories where flashing a BIOS onto a laptop crashed because the laptop battery abruptly failed (and the user swore up and down it was fully charged).

Now, the stigma with flashing the BIOS really shouldn't exist, because it is absolutely no different than flashing firmware onto a router, or flashing a newer version of the OS on your mobile device. You're (inherently) doing the exact same thing in all three devices. With routers, it is more extensive, as you're flashing not only the bootloader firmware but also the actual OS which resides in the embedded (or SoC these days), and the same for your mobile device - but, with Android, for example, when it flashes an OTA, more often than not the first thing it flashes is the bootloader itself, then reboots into the newly flashed bootloader, and then continues to flash other things (boot.img, radio firmware, etc.) and finally flashes the actual system - last.

I always have my systems on a UPS, but I'd say that I've easily flashed more than half the total BIOSs I've flashed without disconnecting peripherals - if you do it correctly, it's flashed and done in less than 5 minutes, even on old 486 machines. First BIOS I flashed was after my Tandy 1000 EX BIOS went stupid, and I had to buy a new BIOS chip - then flash it,. That was ... 1982. Or around there.

And I've never had a BIOS flash Failure that I couldn't recover from.

There was a time when you had to take BIOS chip out and use EEPROM writer to flash it. If you remember even further back, older EPROMs had to be exposed to ultra violet light to erase it after taking sticker off center window. Now you have all kinds of features like a button to flash BIOS without any CPU or RAM, dual BIOS so if one screws up just have switch and even like on my MB contacts to flash BIOS from a 10 dollar machine.
On this MB I have one problem, can't flash back BIOS that has earlier AGESA code the usual way but would have to use @Bios software from a bootable USB and pretty complicated set of commands.
List of BIOS versions I flashed on this x470 MB just in last few months


And BIOS versions flashed on my older x370 MB last year.