[HowTo] Get full NVMe Support for all Systems with an AMI UEFI BIOS

Hi Forum,

Maybe someone can help to track down a boot issue…
My NVMe-enabled system was set up according to the guide posted here by @Fernando and was running fine for months - until today.

The issue: I can no longer boot. I’m seeing two entries in my boot menu (1: PATA and the other 2: UEFI:NAME_OF_MY_SSD). Both entries are not bootable. The working entry I had before (Windows Boot Manager) is no longer there.

What did I do? I patched my existing NVMe-enabled BIOS with Intel’s latest uCode using UBU tool. the patching process and the BIOS file itself looked fine to me so I went ahead and flashed it.

What could have lead to the issue? Is there anything specific to consider when updating and re-flashing an NVMe-modded BIOS in an otherwise running Windows 10 system?

Thanks a lot and best regards!
Christoph

EDIT: Attaching my current BIOS file…

Z68EXT42_patched_with_uCode_21h_and_NVMe.zip (4.19 MB)

You can easily verify, whether the modded BIOS has been successfully flash or not. If you see a device named "PATA" within the "BOOT" section of the BIOS, everything is fine.

@kybernaut_01 :
Your current problem has not much to do with the topic of this thread.

Not really, but after the flashing of a new/updated BIOS the user should generally redo the previous BIOS settings.
I suspect, that only the boot sector, which is within the small EFI partition, got somehow corrupted. You can try to repair it by booting in UEFI mode off the Win10 installation medium and to choose the "Repair" option.

Hi @Fernando and others,

I would like to point out only one thing. I was and still am sure that this BIOS mod method is kind of limited to some of BIOS including mine to boot only from a specifically path given in BIOS, like on my case just from Windows (if ssd0), and I will explain why. I tried almost everything to boot from different OS and other bootloaders, but always only windows booted. UNTIL I renamed other boot files from other OS and replaced windows boot files! (This renaming method is nice BUT it is valid until Windows has any update, it then recreates and so corrects the bootfiles again.)

I now searched in Hex Editor within my BIOS rom image, I have the following occurences, as I was quite sure there was no other way to explain this phenomena. And here we go what I found eg:

Boot0000����t�W�i�n�d�o�w�s� �B�o�o�t� �M�a�n�a�g�e�r���*����� ������ �����ÉzZ=aK»zeù{N¤ÁF��E�F�I��M�i�c�r�o�s�o�f�t��B�o�o�t��b�o�o�t�m�g�f�w�.�e�f�i���ÿ�WINDOWS����ˆ���x���B�C�D�O�B�J�E�C�T�=�{�9�d�e�a�8

there are 111 (!) occurences in the BIOS rom file pointing to \EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi

this cannot be a coincidence. so just FYI.

Does anyone know whether I can safely replace this path&file name string in the hexeditor, and keep the string as same long as it is (in order to avoid size/delimiting problems)? I would like to point e.g. to a grub or refind bootloader file and adapt the folder naming string size accordingly.

Or any other suggestions?

Obviously, this is what happend! I still don’t know why it got corrupted. For sure I didn’t change anything in the file system.

BTW: The automatic repair option and also "bootrec /fixbboot" didn’t help. What finally fixed it was reformatting the EFI partition and freshly copying the EFI files to it from C: drive. This brought back the "Windows Boot Manager" entry in the BIOS. In case someone needs it, I used this guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_I4K2-Rr_Y

Hi guys,

Got a Dell XPS 13 notebook model 9343 and wondering if it can be NVME modded considering it only has a NGFF SATA socket and bootguard. Not familiar with flashing Dell bios files and unlocking them and not sure it would work considering the age of the notebook.

Edit: I do own a usb flash programmer if necessary.

Thank you

@davidm71 - is bootguard active/properly enabled? You can tell by MEInfoWin - verbose
check the bottom of the report on left side (FPF side), do you see Measured & Verified Boot both enabled at left/FPF Side?
If it is enabled there, then high chance you cannot modify proper section of BIOS that we’d insert NVME Mod into, it’s in Cyan region of BIOS so protected by bootguard if that’s setup properly

@exiopat :
Thanks for your efforts to find out the relationship between certain BIOSes resp. their code and the ability to boot off an NVMe SSD by using different Operating Systems.
Unfortunately I cannot help you myself, but I hope, that you will get support by anyone among our BIOS Gurus.

Bought a CH341a programmer, and flashed the modded bios to Asus M5A97 LE R2.0 EPROM (winbond 25Q64FVAIG). Now the NVMe ssd works great in booting windows 10. Thanks alot for your suggestion.

Hi there,
Thank you for an amazing guide.
However, I still can’t make my NVMe works :frowning:

My laptop is ASUS UX501JW with HM87 chipset. My new NVMe SSD is Silicon Power P34A80 1TB (https://www.silicon-power.com/web/product-P34A80)

Here is what I did:
1. I dumped the stock BIOS with AFUWINx64.
2. Then I inserted NvmExpressDxe_4 with UEFItool.
3. I flashed the modded BIOS with AFUWINx64 then reboot.
4. I dumped again and the NVMe DXE module is there.

My NVMe SSD doesn’t show in the BIOS or in the Windows 10 setup. I have AHCI on and disabled CMS, secure boot, fast boot but still no luck.

Please help me :frowning:

@doublex :
Welcome to the Win-RAID Forum!

Please attach your modded BIOS and answer the following questions:
1. How did you connect the NVMe SSD?
2. Do you see a device named "PATA" within the BIOS?

Regards
Dieter (alias Fernando)

Thank you for your quick response Fernando.

1. How did you connect the NVMe SSD?
Into the M.2 SSD slot (My laptop only has this one slot for hard drive).
2. Do you see a device named “PATA” within the BIOS?
I don’t see it. My BIOS interface looks the same, nothing’s new.

MODDED.rar (2.18 MB)

Zitat von doublex im Beitrag #4606

Into the M.2 SSD slot (My laptop only has this one slot for hard drive).



Are you sure, that this M.2 port supports non-SATA M.2 SSD?

I’m not sure about that. My current drive is M.2 SSD SATA.
However, I see this user (Gnomuz) successfully made his NVMe SSD works, that’s why I give it a try.
He is on this site: https://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-A…-support?page=3

[[File:60559712_358091138153197_7144146603283054592_n[1].jpg|none|auto]]
[[File:60537191_1125502127661031_7109269660658302976_n[1].jpg|none|auto]]

60559712_358091138153197_7144146603283054592_n[1].jpg

60537191_1125502127661031_7109269660658302976_n[1].jpg

@doublex :
Your modded BIOS seems to be fine.
Are you sure, that it has been properly flashed?

I used AFUWIN64 to dump the bios after I flashed the modded file, then I see the module inside the dumpped file. Does it mean it’s properly flashed? Or should I flash via USB again?
The NVMe drive says NVMe 1.3. I’m not sure if it’s matter.

I don’t see that, his stock M.2 disk is SATA
"As for the stock SSD, you were right. After further investigations the stock SSD is the CM871 / MZ-NLF1280. It is very likely (can’t find any official spec sheet from Samsung) a M.2 /SATA III SSD, which explains how it can be used with the official BIOS without any built-in NVMe support."
The last thing he writes:
"I think I will give it a try, but I’m not very confident." No confirmation whatsoever…

The only ‘confirmation’ that this might really be an PCIe slot is the ASUS webpage which states "… the ultra-fast up to 512GB PCIe® x4 SSD storage with its transfer speeds of 1400MB/s …" (Would be PCIe 2.0 x4) [Link]

On the other hand you can find some information regarding different subtypes, too:
"Which version of the ux501jw? 4k display with only a SSD or FHD display with SSD + HDD? If you have the version with SSD + HDD, then it does not support PCIe x4 SSD, only SATA SSD." [Link]

Then again you find the ASUS UX501VW which has the ‘normal’ NVME modules in BIOS (makes it even more unlikely that they used a very special trick for the UX501JW that even Lost_N_BIOS wasn’t able to find out about… [Link]

Mine is FHD display with only one SSD. I guess I will have to return the NVMe drive then.

Thank you everyone :smiley:

Hi all users . Please add me bios from Dell 5610 nvme support .

Sucessfully :slight_smile: used hardware metod : read external programmer 25l3206e and 25l6406e and split file without otp area " last 64 byte " and use small NVMe module .

Hi Fernando.

May you check whether correctly I made additions to BIOS?

Thanks.

p67xud3_nvme.zip (2.81 MB)

z68pds32_nvme.zip (2.77 MB)