Hello, I am stumped at trying to recover the bios of this specific board.
I use A CH341A Bios programmer for this task. However, I am a bit stumped.
I copied the motherboard specific data to the new bios file using FD44Editor, however it still does not boot. The motherboard does not even respond when I try to turn it on when I Press the power button. It does turn on (but does not boot still) When I re-flash the bios chip with the broken bios dump.
I open up the broken bios file in Uefitool, and it says ME Region is corrupted/missing.
What is the most advisable thing to do going forward? I am a bit of a beginner in this matter and will appreciate all of your suggestions and help.
Your a beginner… but “I am stumped at trying”… so you’re a beginner or not???
Do you get it right at all things first time in your life…damm sir i really like your positive attitude.
This boards are very easy to program, the soic8 comes of to the programmer, Asus files have ME on it and no capsule.
The catch is the software used and correct verification of the written content.
The broken dump indeed has not ME FW image and if it was made with the programmer…theres the cause, if it reads bad cant write it good of course, if the corruption on bios the exact problem of the motherboard…
In reference to the software used, I used the Version 1.18 of the CH341A Bios Programmer software programmer as it works best with my CH341A based USB mini-programmer.
It works well enough, and I tested it on another Asus Board that is a pre-uefi motherboard.
If my memory serves me well, The P8P67 Rev 3.1’s cause of death was it failing to update it’s ME firmware using FTKtools for some reason.
So it is a bit logical to expect to see that the ME region is missing from the Bios dump that I made.
Theoretically, the probable solution would be finding a way to copy a well working ME-Region back to the broken bios and flash it, but I have not yet found solutions for it yet. Searching for ME corruption fixes on the internet only yields steps that are only possible when the said target can boot.
The MW FW image can be pasted in old image with UEFItool, but in this case its the same as an empty Asus bios file with motherboard data transferred (FD44) and later an ME update with ME8 tools (FWUpdLcl).
Ur problem is the use of correct tools and knowledge, in this case the FTK package…version… and not knowing wot u’re doing as it was a manual update thats doesnt need a full flash that the package does, the ME flash was enough but wot is done is done, recover it as one way or another.
To contextualize the motherboard’s death, I must tell proper information.
As this board belongs to a friend of mine, I shall tell what he did before I got there.
He told me that one day his pc using this specific board suddenly turned itself off and after several attempts to reboot, only 2 out of 4 dimm slots were being read by the motherboard and processor. The processor multiplier was stuck at max. All the problems highlighted describe a corrupted ME region in the bios.
I told him to reflash the bios using the EZFlash 2 utility in the BIOS. But he tells me that it repeatedly refuses to flash even if it satisfies all the flashing conditions required by the said utility. I did some searches for him and found this guide. This was probably the root cause of this problem.
If it does not sound a bit too much on my end, can you name some methods on how can I recover from this corundum? Sorry if I sound a bit too annoying on my tone.
Users always tend to hide some details… and who helps has to guess the steps and mistakes done…
Methods…??? Again??? U already know wot to do to recovery it, and the use of the programmer is a must since the dump, if correctly dumped/read has not ME on it.
Do u think tis can done in without failing…no my friend, it fails a lot, thats how TI guys earn their living and why they take money for the job, go for it, learn and good luck.
Well, if you open the bios you find something beginning with an UEFI volume header flashed into the ME region. That was definitely not the way to do a ME reflash.
The board mentioned has a socketed bios DIP 8 chip. It should be easy to program.
Take the stock ASUS bios without any modifications,
Flash it into the chip.
Don’t rely on the verify:
Read the chip after programming, save the content into a file with a different name
Compare the read-out content of the newly written chip with the original file in HxD, they have to be a 100% identical!
Try to start the board.
If the board doesn’t start with the properly programmed(!) stock bios it’s not the bios firmware but hardware.
Thank you all for the guidance, and I’ll get working to it right away. Sorry if I’m a bit of a dunce on reading some of the more obvious things described in this thread. I’ll just do it tomorrow or so because it is already 12:05 am here in UTC+8.