Hi All,
I’m having an issue flashing a modified BIOS for the MSI GE65 Raider. Specific model - 9SF
I performed the steps outlined in UFEIPach on GitHub along with steps found for NvStrapsReBar. Generated my own ffs as outlined in the instructions, inserted the said ffs into the BIOS as outlined in the instructions via UEFITool and ran UFEIPatch on the resulting modded BIOS.
Renamed the resulting BIOS to the original name as the stock BIOS, including file extension.
Tried flashing within the MSI BIOS and I’m getting “Invalid image format” error.
Where do I go from here? Does anyone know of any BIOS flashing tools that work on MSI laptops?
Also, in case of a bad flash, does anyone know if MSI laptops have any kind of fallback or BIOS flashback mode? Or just guaranteed brick unless I can de solder the BIOS chip and flash it?
Lastly, are there any issues using UBU on the modded ReBAR BIOS to update the microcode and other ROMs in the BIOS?
Based on my research, I should not mess with the VBIOS since UBU targets desktop platforms and I could experience issues.
Appreciate any input you guys could provide.
For reference, this is a 9th gen (i9-9880H) 8 core with 2070 non super GPU.
Edit by Fernando: Thread title customized and shortened
You could first flash the latest bios for your laptop, then you could use intel fpt to dump your bios, then modify that dump (make a copy of the dump and modify the copy), then after finishing everything else, use intel fpt to flash it. Make sure to read everything here to understand which ME is yours
To flash the modded bios, use cmd, if it is named fptw.exe then type fptw -d biosname.bin to dump, and use fptw -f modbiosname.bin to flash. make sure to save the dumped bios somewhere off the board in case you bricked your board, so that you could restore it as is using bios flasher like ch341a. Im pretty sure msi didnt lock writefw.
Thank you for the info, will read up on the ME situation.
In case of a bad flash, do you know if I can still flash the BIOS chip on the main board without having to de solder it?
I believe the ME series is 12. ME Analyzer spit this out on the latest ME update this laptop received. It was a separate, recent update from MSI, separate from BIOS.
Yes, you dont have to update your ME and PMC in order to use it, since intelfpt does is pure flashing the chip. You would need the CSME System Tools v12 r38 for it.
Unfortunately, if the bios chips is soldered (not using the legged ones), you need to desolder it in order to flash it. So make sure that your bios edit is clean and there is no new paddings created or original paddings deleted, just pure edit without updating anything. Always compare your pure dumped file with the edited ones, be precise.
Yep, there are no issues with it, just use the right fpt that matches with your current ME firmware.
You could use UEFI Tool to compare between the bios files, or if you want to be more detail, you could extract the dxe or pei or anything and observe it using HxD or any Hex Editor.
