Asus H170 Pro BIOS recovery

@plutomaniac
Thank you for your feed-back,
I hope you understand my concern; I am pretty new in this and I receive 2 opposite opinions. On the other hand Fernando said here:



Did you tested this on Asus Chips? As I’ve said, I am not interested in modding just to restore the Bios to the factory state.
Hope you don’t mind guys that I’ve made this discussion in such a long shape but I am interested to know the properly way to do this restore :slight_smile:

Did you tested this on Asus Chips?


Yes, but my statement was not valid for users, who are going to flash an original BIOS into a BIOS chip, whose content got already manipulated/corrupted.
So please follow plutomaniac’s advices. He knows much more about how to repair a currupted BIOS chip content than me.

Yea, I have the original BIOS chip that was bricked (so the content is not working anymore, the update process was blocked at 99% or something) and I am about to rewrite this chip using a version of the Bios file, downloaded from the Asus site. As I’ve said, I am not interested in modding.

Still, in this video made by @Margus for example he show us how to flash the bios without using the UEFITools.exe.

Digging deeper, I’ve found other conclusion on rog.asus forum that make sense somehow when we are talking about Original Bios chip, ID’s and restore using the programmer:

UEFITool is not needed if you are using FD44Editor, the UEFITool is only to remove the first 2KB the CAP files have to get to the core description(s) Gbe(Mac Address) / bios image, FD44Editor already does this for you.

In other words, I suppose that UEFITools will be necessarily when we are trying to use a new BIOS chip that obviously will have different ID’s and stuff than the original bios chip.
If @plutomaniac have a different argue will be nice to find it in order to know what is the properly way to do a regular Bios restore in the above mentioned conditions.

Also, I’ve found here an article made by @CodeRush that confirm the Margus technique shown in the above mentioned video.

9. Recovering from unbootable BIOS using FD44Editor and hardware SPI-flash programmer
Because of lack of descriptor and ME reflashing option in USB BIOS Flashback on modern boards, you must use hardware SPI-programmer to recover the BIOS, that is unable to boot at all.
You can use any programmer that supports your board, even another board with same BIOS size and unlocked BIOS regions (i.e using hot swap of BIOS chips).
1. Make a dump of current BIOS chip and open it in FD44Editor. If there is no errors and all the data are present - excellent. If not - use information in section 7 to restore data from stickers.
2. Save the data to the latest BIOS file downloaded from asus.com.
3. Write that modified file to BIOS chip as is. If you are using hot swap, power the PC off right after the end of writing.



I really don’t want to bother in any way, this subject it’s pretty interesting on other forums too, because it looks like the unsuccessful bios update it’s not so uncommon :slight_smile:
I appreciate it,

FD44EDITOR have to use to keep windows activation and network MAC adre othewise gbe is empty but system does post without data also. Since new asus boards have allmost impossible todo hotswap without mod a working chip data because FPT is blocked due security. You need full host acsess. Easyest way is use chip programmer instead messing too mutch.

To copy gbe from failed bios file with FPT can result unlimited loop or other issues if later you figure out. But you need allready modded bios in chip witch have enabled all host writes.

With chip procrammer you get file from chip so good luck with that i hope fd44editor can get data from gbe and yo can do copy paste to cap file without mutch efforts.

Since today i not figured out how its falied to flash 99% because bios recovers itself if failed usb flashback never fail to flash what ever i send to it same is ezflash its allmost fail free and its not flash if something wrong. Problems starting if users mess too mutch with FPT or ME
1 more thing are you sure you not have cutted off tracks on motherboard this can happen if installing videocard. Because bits not go by default wrong that mean something caused that.

Short version, I’ve managed and I am getting back in Windows.
I’ve followed the Margus’s video, without removing the AMI capsule, and everything is looking fine until now.

I don’t want to say that plutomaniac or Fernando was wrong, what they said could apply on other cases (e.g, other Bios chip than the original, etc).
Anyway, I am thanking you all for your interest and support.

hi @JJ1 , apologies as you did with the Ch341a programmer for Winbond W25Q128FVIQ, I have the same problem as you had. what program did you use and which chip did you select?