MSI BIOS flash problem - warning!

mellon · Post by **mellon** » Sun Sep 20, 2009 12:42 am

I recently bought an MSI K9A2GM-FIH motherboard for my PhenomII X3 home server/HTPC (running Linux). The MB did not recognize the new CPU correctly, so I thought I'd update the BIOS, which has never been much of a hassle with my Asus or Gigabyte MBs.

With MSI it was a different story however. The official flashing instructions assumed I had a floppy drive and a Win98/ME startup floppy. Well what do you know, I had neither! To console me the official instructions said that "if you don't have a Win98/ME startup disk you can make one at your friends place." This being year 2009 none of my friends have floppy drives or Win98/ME systems either.

Some googling pointed me to MSI forum with the friendly subject "Are you a moron BIOS flasher?" http://forum.msi.com.tw/index.php?topic=103441.0. At this point I was feeling like a moron for buying MSI, but wanted to give their "Forum USB flash tool" a try nonetheless. The tool is supposed set up a bootable USB stick with the right flashing executable and flash content. The tool itself seems to be developed by some random members of the public and is approved by MSI.

To begin with the tool runs only on Windows (pretty normal, though) and for some reason requires an MSI MB on the computer where it is ran to work. Luckily the tool considered my ~6 year old WinXP laptop to contain an MSI MB and didn't leave me out in the cold right on startup.

Running the tool was a somewhat surreal experience as it started up with the soundbite "It's my style, it's my style inside" and it had no actual user interface to speak of. Sometimes selections in popup windows resulted in the console window saying "DO NOT SHUT DOWN THIS WINDOW" with absolutely nothing happening for 10 minutes. After a few runs (the ones that didn't just freeze spontaneously) I got the general idea about the functionality of the program.

Setting up the USB stick to be bootable resulted in the stick becoming unformatted (total data loss, luckily at this point I was well prepared) and it didn't become bootable either. Selecting a previously downloaded BIOS package froze and didn't do anything even when I got to the selection window.

To top this all of the MSI-recommended "USB Flash Tool" screwed up my laptop's keymap so that about half of the keys outputted numbers. The laptop was also outputting dots on it's own with no keys pressed. I suppose this was caused by the unsigned windows driver that the tool wanted to install for formatting the USB stick. Otherwise I'm at a loss about how it's possible to mess up a system that bad.

At this point I came to the conclusion that the the tool was not only ineffective but also dangerous. Happily System Restore restored the keyboard where reboots and keymap changes didn't.

Eventually I managed to flash the BIOS by throwing away all advice given by MSI, setting up a FreeDOS bootable USB stick and running the flash application from there.

To sum this all up I feel that MSI is either totally incompetent or just plain evil in their utter failure to provide a reasonable BIOS flashing method. For my part I'll be avoiding MSI products for the foreseeable future.

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Sun Sep 20, 2009 1:08 am

I'd assume there's a Windows flash utility available. Maybe not an option for your particular situation, but seems kind of unfair to say that MSI doesn't provide reasonable methods of flashing the BIOS just because you couldn't use other methods available. Also, I know MSIs new 785G board has a flashing utility built into the BIOS, you just run this and then you can load the BIOS file from a USB drive, no need to mess around with booting from USB. This must be a newer feature of theirs if it wasn't available on your 780G board, though.

mellon · Post by **mellon** » Sun Sep 20, 2009 1:37 am

frostedflakes wrote:I'd assume there's a Windows flash utility available. Maybe not an option for your particular situation, but seems kind of unfair to say that MSI doesn't provide reasonable methods of flashing the BIOS just because you couldn't use other methods available. Also, I know MSIs new 785G board has a flashing utility built into the BIOS, you just run this and then you can load the BIOS file from a USB drive, no need to mess around with booting from USB. This must be a newer feature of theirs if it wasn't available on your 780G board, though.

Sure, they've got some Windows flash utility. This is however not described in the BIOS update instruction nor in the MB manual. The forum thread about BIOS flashing (by official MSI forum administrators and moderators) also says that "If you are really absolutely sure that you need a BIOS Update and that your system is stable, please do not pick a Windows based flashing method. >>Use the MSI HQ Forum USB flasher<< instead." In another post someone speaks about "how the Windows tool is not to be used of course".

It's really great that with the most recent AM3 boards they've got the same functionality that their competitors have had for several years. It would be even better if they managed to produce a functional application (cross-platform would be extra good) that would set up a bootable flash drive with the right BIOS for the majority of MSI customers that have slightly older mainboards. Doesn't sound that complicated?

frostedflakes · Post by **frostedflakes** » Sun Sep 20, 2009 11:19 am

I can understand your frustration, the advice in that thread on the official MSI forums is just horrible IMO. I've done it many times and never had any issues with flashing a motherboard BIOS from Windows, as long as you weren't getting random lockups or restarts in Windows you probably should have just done that from the beginning instead of messing around with their USB flash tool. Live and learn I suppose.

mellon · Post by **mellon** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 6:34 am

frostedflakes wrote:as long as you weren't getting random lockups or restarts in Windows you probably should have just done that from the beginning instead of messing around with their USB flash tool. Live and learn I suppose.

Still the issue remains for quite a few users who don't have the option (or will) to run Windows on their system that happens to have an MSI MB.

The approach MSI has chosen as a corporate entity towards this issue shows that their company does not care about their customers. Documenting and distributing the BIOS flashing procedure (for instance the FreeDOS USB stick way) properly would require a couple of days of work and some extra bandwidth for a ready-made flash boot image. Instead their customers lose countless working hours fighting with their instructions and software that are misguided, wrong or just plain dangerous before giving up or working it out on their own.

I find this unacceptable, though naturally your view may differ.

Vicotnik · Post by **Vicotnik** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 8:14 pm

I think you are overreacting a little bit. I have owned a few MSI boards and with modern boards I have always used a USB stick to flash the BIOS. I have never flashed a BIOS from within Windows.

I have an old 64MB USB stick that acts as a Win98 bootdisk that I mainly use for flashing both MBs and graphics cards etc. Just put all the stuff on there, boot it and flash. Easy as pie as long as the system supports booting from an USB stick. Bootdisk image files are available from places like http://www.bootdisk.com/

Ksanderash · Post by **Ksanderash** » Mon Sep 21, 2009 11:59 pm

I'm updating BIOSes from the year 2000 via DOS, and there was some incompatibility issues between the board and new firmware that threw the compie into a dead state, so I had to reprogram BIOS on a different board, but that was just 2 or 3 times from about 60-80 flashing attempts. And not a one failure from ~10 updates via Award/AMI Win32 flashing utility. "Shit happens"(c), even if you do the thing very safe as recommended by the vendor.

mellon · Post by **mellon** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 2:21 pm

Vicotnik wrote:I think you are overreacting a little bit. I have owned a few MSI boards and with modern boards I have always used a USB stick to flash the BIOS. I have never flashed a BIOS from within Windows.

I have an old 64MB USB stick that acts as a Win98 bootdisk that I mainly use for flashing both MBs and graphics cards etc. Just put all the stuff on there, boot it and flash. Easy as pie as long as the system supports booting from an USB stick. Bootdisk image files are available from places like http://www.bootdisk.com/

I don't mean there's anything intrinsically wrong in flashing the BIOS by booting to an OS from a USB stick. The same applies to flashing from Windows or Linux or whatever: if it works like the manufacturer says it does and the manufacturer actively supports their chosen methdod(s) then I'm fine with it.

The issue here, however, is that the support provided by MSI is nearly nonexistent, and much of it is misguiding. Getting bad guidance is easily worse than getting no guidance at all, and I expect a decent level of commitment to customers from the manufacturers that get some money from me purchasing their products.

I'm tempted to present you with a car analogy here, but I think I'll resist the urge for now

bonestonne · Post by **bonestonne** » Tue Sep 22, 2009 3:17 pm

I've only used MSI motherboards for the past couple years, and I haven't had any problems...i just use a spare drive with vista installed, and use their silly BIOS flashing utility through that. it's big risky business, and I only do it during the day, on a nice clear day when the chances of something going wrong are slim to none, but it's always worked for me.

Foxhound21 · Post by **Foxhound21** » Sat Apr 03, 2010 4:24 pm

The USB Flash Utility from the MSI forum HQ is in fact a dangerous program like you have said. It updated successfully, however it physically destroyed my MSI motherboard. I was getting Blue Screen Fatal Hardware errors and the only solution was to buy a new motherboard. DON'T use the MSI Forum HQ USB Flash Utility, it is dangerous and worthless.

CX23882-19 · Post by **CX23882-19** » Tue Apr 06, 2010 10:36 am

I've updated my MSI board with 2 methods - first was using my old laptop to create a boot floppy and then burning that to a bootable CD-RW. Second was via the live update from within Windows. No problems. I dislike the MSI community forums, and the incredible amount of arrogance certain prominent members display. As I understand it, they are run by somebody outside of MSI, but using MSI's domain, but it presents a very unprofessional image of the company.

If anyone wants to see a BIOS update disaster - check out the mess Dell managed to make with their Dimension E521 updates in 2007:
Soldered BIOS chips and unreliable flashing procedure = lots of dead unrepairable motherboards.
I held off for 2 years before flashing mine, and believe me I crossed everything whilst it was writing the update!