I have a basic FPT flashing question. I’m 99% sure I’ve got a solid modded bios that’s ready to flash. My Intel ME version is 12, so I’ll be using the Flash Programming Tool under CSME System Tools v12 r38. My Dell has a physical service mode pin that will allow for an FPT flash.
Is it problematic or potentially problematic to simply flash over the current bios with the command FPTW64.exe -f bios.bin (and this assumes the modded bios is named bios.bin)?
Or, is it safer or required to erase the bios first, and then flash?
Type FPTW64 -REWRITE -F moddedbios.rom (for example) and press enter.
turn off your pc and reboot.
When I mis-flashed my bios, there’s no question that the replacement bios was broken. But I did simply overwrite with FPTW64.exe -f bios.bin, and am now considering proper FPT flashing to finish this off. Thanks
-REWRITE Rewrite the SPI with file data even if flash is identical.
fpt -h will get you the CMD switches
The rewrite switch usually is not needed but its useful to write if the system has the same bios version and ensure the block override, when for ex.: some tiny adjustments were made in previous flashed mod file and tool still complains about it, being identical data.
the hey the Flashrom v1.2 utilities link doesnt seem to work anymore, i was trying to help a friend get rid of a cyberpowerpc bios from his ASRock b450m, and for some reason the link either says that it doesnt have a app associated with it to open it and errors out, or for his pc it just turns into a notepad file. is there something im missing? (i’m a mega noob and usually solve issues via reddit and google)
As I just have tested >this< link is still working fine and doesn’t need an associated App to get the *.rar archive downloaded. Nevertheless you need an up-to-date unzip tool like 7-Zip (currently latest: v2408) or WinRAR (currently latest: v7.01) to get the compressed Flashrom Utilities extracted.
My old p8b75-v asus motherboard (.CAP Bios) don’t have USB Flashback features and i’m not buying pcie to nvme adapter before ensure bios is modable so i can’t use AMI AFU method.
AI Suite is not available for Windows 10 so i had to install Windows 8.1 and use it to flash and voila it worked
Use UEFITool load BiosOgirinal.CAP, search text “CSMCORE”, scroll down to the last entry before “Volume free space” and insert after NvmExpressDxe final save to file Modded.CAP
Open Ai Suite → Asus Update → Update BIOS from file → Choose BiosOgirinal.CAP → after it loaded don’t click next → Delete BiosOgirinal.CAP and rename Modded.Cap to BiosOgirinal.CAP → now you can click next and flash it
@Gregory_Tumanyan
Thank you very much for your short guide about how to get a modded MSI BIOS properly flashed by using the Intel FPT tool.
To make it easier for the MSI mainboard users, your guide has been quoted by me within the first post of this thread.
I managed to successfully flash modified bios to ASRock x570 phantom gaming 4 using flashrom. Original board bios version was 2.20 ( notice that it’s before AGESA 1.2 update came ) and I flashed newest version with mod applied.
My personal experience of this guide. Thanks for this guide first. It helped me to flash an Asus H87i-Plus board and an Asus P8Z77-V-Pro board with modded UEFI BIOS to support boot from NVMe M.2 SSD on a PCIe to M.2 NVMe adapter. My experience has slightly different part from the guide. See below:
Use UEFITool 0.28.0 to extract the BIOS body as .rom file.
I found out that the H87i-Plus .cap file missing the PcieLaneDxe.ffs driver. So I downloaded a Asus Z87 .cap bios and extracted it from the bios file. Use the “Extract as is…” command.
Use the same UEFITOOL 0.28.0 to open the H87iP.rom extracted before. Find the CSMCORE part and scroll down to the last line of the DXE driver region, insert the previously extracted PcieLaneDxe.ffs and the downloaded NvmExpressDxe_5.ffs, then save the image. Then open it again and compare it with the original .rom file to make sure there is no errors.
Flash the modded BIOS. This part is a bit hard. I have read many guides and tried many different methods and finally flashed it. Couple of things first: The Asus flashback method is easy, I used it to flash my modded Z77VP.cap easily. But for the H87i-Plus there is no flashback method. I tried AMI AFU for DOS core8, Aptio 4 and Aptio 5 in Freedos 1.3. All not working. The Aptio 5 and Core8 just crashed. The Aptio 4 just saying the BIOS is write protected so it even can’t read the BIOS. Tried different AFUWinx64 versions on Windows 11 and they never worked. So I have to install Windows 10 on the H87i-Plus machine and finally use the AFUWINx64 3.05.04 with GAN option to flash it. It worked. The only thing different from this guide is that you don’t need to flash the original .cap BIOS first. Just flash the modded .rom file as below:
AFUWINX64.EXE MODDED_ROM.ROM /GAN
And It was successful. After reboot I can boot Windows 10 from the NVMe disk.
But there is one issue with my H87i-Plus board. I use this board to build a NAS using TrueNas-Scale 24.10.0.2. The TrueNas Scale can be installed onto the NVMe disk, But it can’t boot. No options in the BIOS. Windows 10 and 11 can boot correctly from the NVMe disk. So some further digging needed.
