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

Special Topics NVMe Support for old Systems
7952

@yesuha
Thanks for the BIOS dump. Interestingly your HP BIOS contains a lot of “combined SMM/DXE” modules within the DXE Driver Volume, which is rather unusual. I haven’t yet seen a mainboard BIOS from any other mainboard manufacturer with a “combined SMM/DXE” NVMe module within the DXE Driver Volume.

Did you send a report about this issue to the HP Support? If not, I recommend to do it before trying to solve the problem yourself.

7953

plz i need ASUS B85-A R2.0 mod bios for nvme support

7954

@chriskenzy
Welcome to the Win-Raid Forum!
For users like you I have written within the first post of this thread an easy to understand step-by-step Guide. Please follow the instructions. If you should run into a problem or are unsure regarding the result of your BIOS modification, please attach the original and your modded BIOS. Then we will do a look into them and let you know the result of our evaluation.
Good luck!

7955

B85-A-R2-ASUS-2107 mod.rar (4.6 MB)
B85-A-R2-ASUS-2107.rar (4.5 MB)

7956

i found a way bypass verification failed error using Ai suite EZ update, by loading the original bios file through the verification and then rename the original. Then name the mod bios with the original name. After it finish flashing notification came to restart but the pc started lagging which made me restart the pc and it shows up in bios recovery mode. So plz check the original and my mod bios to see what i did wrong.

7957

@chriskenzy
The BIOS modification seems to be done correctly (apart from that you have inserted a meanwhile outdated NVMe module, which is not listed anymore within the Guide).
I suspect, that you made a mistake while trying to flash the modded ASUS *.CAP file. Please read and follow the ASUS related advices within the start post of >this< thread.

7958

I have the same HP Zbook 15 G2. I want to boot from NVME drive and add support for it
i already tried to insert the DXE module after the SataDriver with the UEFITool. After that i flashed the new bin file back with the CH341 tool and i got an error: the bios is trying to recover from that but doesn’t post.
Can someone create a working modded bios for this laptop?

i added the 10mb clean UEFI bios
HPZBOOK15G2_bios.zip (6.8 MB).
I also have done a bios dump, that bin file is 16mb, if you want i can add it also.

7959

It should be broken HP rsa/security with latest bios version… i guess.
If you have FD read/write access to bios_region, try to flash with FPT.
Suggestion only with unpredictable results, but do it only if the system can be recovered.

7960

wait aint there 2 tool to update bios in AI Suite: EZ Update + Asus Update, you need to use Asus Update not the EZ Update, load the original cap (after it loaded dont click next) → rename/delete/move it then change modded file to original cap name → click next and flash (if there an option to change logo choose not to change the logo)
to make sure it work you wanna downgrade to 2104 before flash modded 2107

7961

Hey @Fernando and @MeatWar, I am attempting to automate the process to automatically add the NVMe driver to any ASUS BIOS. At the moment, I can see how I can write the script in Python to do all this, and there is a better way for part of it that I’d like to ask help on if you all, or anyone else, would like to put your two cents in!

Process (Python script [GUI]):

  1. Programmatically detect the current motherboard on a system or provide the option to allow users to search for the motherboard if using a different system at the time. Since the revision must be entered as well, I’ve got to investigate and see if there is a way to get the revision of the BIOS from a running OS programmatically without needing user interaction. Worst comes to worst the user enters in the revision too and we cross-reference the selected motherboard on ASUS’s website using their API to validate the revision number is correct.
  2. Automate the download of the BIOS with correct revision number. It’s not that hard when you can see ASUS’s standardized support helpdesk link, query the motherboard with their API and see the ‘BIOS & Firmware’ section of the webpage which will have structured data containing each BIOS revision and then seeing the corresponding download link.
  3. a) This project will come packaged with the NVMe drivers, ASUS renaming tool, and UEFITool. As of right now, I can perform GUI automation in Python without user intervention to open up the BIOS in UEFITool, search for DXE drivers, gather where most of the DXE drivers are, correlate it with the CSMCORE module if applicable, and then perform an insert of the NVMe driver into the BIOS where needed and finally saving the modded BIOS with the correct name using the ASUS renaming tool.
    b) I found a Python project which implements FMMT in Python developed by Microsoft that allows you to view, modify, and save BIOS files programmatically with no GUI needed, which is a big plus here. I was able to perform the NVMe driver addition to the correct Firmware Volume (for me it was listed as FV2), but noticed that the difference between the successful modded BIOS file I had created myself following this post versus the modified BIOS file that was created using this tool does the same seems to show that the only difference is the ‘State’ property of the driver is different when I viewed the two CAP files in UEFITool, but everything else seemed to be the same. I’ll dive into this in my own time, and if I y’all can give advice on this part or point me in the right direction at the very least, maybe it would make troubleshooting the code easier for me so this prototype can get off the ground! For now though, I know 100% I can perform GUI automation and control the UEFITool application programmatically in Python in order to achieve getting a successfully modded BIOS with the NVMe driver added, but this is definitely just a workaround for the time being.

I would like to keep diving into this and learning how to make this a robust solution so we can take the human error element out of it if we can. Literally we could release this tool to perform automated modification of any ASUS BIOS programmatically (sure, we may have to find the way to achieve the modification by hand but then programming this to be done thereafter could be a breeze)!

2 Likes
7962

The behaviour of the tools/versions used, UEFI tool and “leaked” old AMI MMtool is not consistent in their final results across all bios structures and motherboards models, when producing/saving the work. I think it will work on some bioses but not on all.
Why stating this? Read all the notes and verification methods/warnings/tips on Fernando’s guide, specially the cases in witch original/new pad files are removed/generated.
My POV only, good luck.

1 Like
7964

Hi,

I was using modded bios on Asus P8Z77-M PRO succesfully.

But few days ago after windows update I am no longer able to boot from NVME drive.
Booting just gets stuck and reboot is needed.
Initially I thought that windows NVME driver got corrupted (windows repair options does not look to see the NVME drive, same from windows reinstaller using USB created with rufus - NVME not seen).
But then I got into the windows 10 login screen from n th reboot - which crashed with blue screen, and I was not able to get to windows login screen anymore (boot gets stuck).

Bios was not reconfigured prior this issue, bios shows PATA SS and Windows Boot Manager (Samsung SSD 970 Evo Plus) boot options. The NVME drive is accesible and I was able to copy it’s data from same machine using other OS - so IMO NVME is not dead.

Any ideas?

7965

@Lari
Which OS version are you using ?

7966

Windows 10 enterprise (was always it when it worked).

I do not recall how I installed it originally, but likely following the guide with Rufus. I do not recall adding any optional NVME drivers to installation media, as I can not find them in my backups where I have all files related to that matter.

P.S. I’ve checked windows logs from that NVME drive - nothing after the last boot with successful login leading to bluescreen - as if boot process is not reaching logger initialisation state or NVME media access issue.

P.P.S. The bluescreen also has shown smth like “Gathering crash data: 0%” without ever proceeding further - again potentially indicating issues to NVME media access.

I am mostly confused why my attempt to reinstall the same OS (and any other Win 10) does not see the NVME media.

7967

@Lari
You must not forget, that your mainboard natively doesn’t support booting off an NVMe SSD at all.
My advice: Take a backup of your important data and retry a clean installation of the OS according “Step 4” of my Guide.

1 Like
7968

Update:
I have just decided to try unpluging all SATA drives (had 5). It booted normaly, I was able to install latest updates without issues onto Win 10 on NVME - looks stable so far. I assume one of my older SATA drives started misbehaving somehow which affected the boot from NVME.

2 Likes
7969

@Lari:
Thanks for your update, which verifies, that the “Windows Boot Manager” of your NVMe was not the reason for your problem.
So you will be able to solve your boot problem by finding out and removing the faulty SATA drive.

2 Likes
7970

Can anyone help me with modded bios for Supermicro X10DRi-T to boot from NVMe? I saw a lot of links and HowTo but it is very confusing for me, as I am old. I have the latest 3.4a bios for this motherboard. Thanks in advance.

7971

Can someone double check this modded bios for my Supermicro X10DRi-T. Also, can I use IPMI to flash the bios here?

X10DRI1.816.zip (4.4 MB)

7972

@servernoob
Seems correctly inserted in the right volume and original pad-files are in place as the original one.
Using IPMI to flash i can’t answer that, as i don’t have/had such boards to test its feature regarding mod files and flash them. You may wait for a SuperMicro board user.
Before flashing attempts, please consider making backups using any methods avaiable to you. Good luck.