So yes, the follow up is to download the modded Z87A.ROM and flash using method 3 in the post cited above.
Presumably, you are going to buy an PCIe adapter & mount an M.2 SSD drive to take advantage of the the mod. Otherwise, it would be a pointless exercise.
The fun for me would be successfully updating the BIOS in my rather old Z87A board to accept the PCIe adapter and M2.SSD drive which I have yet to purchase. But since I can’t figure what I am doing wrong, I am just banging my head against the wall.
Yes, yes, that is exactly what I did. And both steps complete with no issues or errors. But when I shutdown/restart the system, the BIOS complains immediately that I need to restore. There is no option to proceed, I am forced to restore. I guess it is something unique about my system I will try again later. Thanks for your help.
“A note for other users though: if AFUWIN fails for you for some reason, the method of using AI Suite’s EZ Update as described by @Wishbringer worked for me. (Well, I assume it did, since InSpectre now lists my device as protected).”
Thanks. I will look at that as well. If I do get it working will it show a different BIOS version or date? If not, will there be some other way that I can verify the new firmware has in place?
Is the microcode version listed in the CPU pane on the left of HWINFO? If so, I do see a MCU of 28.
I had some success last night where upon reboot the BIOS presented two buttons, one to restore firmware, and a 2nd new button to go to Setup (I chose setup). So, I think I might be good, I have the M.2 drive and PCIe adapter on order, so fingers crossed.
Drive and adapter arrived (thanks Amazon) and are installed and running! The BIOS sees it as PATA SM, and both the OS and HWINFO see it and are reporting it out correctly. So now I am having fun!
Tomorrow I will follow the instructions to make it bootable. thanks again for your patience and helping on through my tantrum. - Eric
At the end of the day, it really took three simple steps to get my drive running on my Z87A. I will repeat these here in case some else is still running one of these dinosaur MBs
From the command line with administrator privileges in Win10/Win11 run the successive commands:
(in my case Win7, as the commands would not work on Win11 for me and I had a Win7 drive laying around):
With the BIOS UEFI v2103 from the manufacturers website: afuwinx64.exe Z87A.CAP
With the BIOS UEFI which you download from post #1 (must use version 3.05.04 to support /GAN) afuwinx64.exe Z87A.ROM /GAN
The BIOS found my drive right away as PATA SM. I used Rufus to create a bootable USB Windows install with TPM turned off, booted and installed from the USB and all was complete.
Rather simple now, but I can say that after enduring the learning curve. Thank you again Hans for a great mod and great support!
OK for the life of me I can’t figure out how to re-encapsulate the provided ROM file. It seems most people here are flashing the bios in the OS on the machine that they’re trying to modify. The machine I need modded has no drive in it at all, so no OS, meaning no AMI tool. I need to flash through EZ flash in the bios itself. I read through every guide listed here to try and figure this out.
Better take a revision read on the guide…i bet you’ll find out.
EZ-Flash is a NO GO on Asus mod files from CAP generation… this also in the guide.
Offline mod flash only with USB BFB that your board doesn’t have.