Hi Fernando and community,
I’ve been lurking in the background not saying much since the days of your nForce packs back in the day on your old site. I thought I would share a recent catastrophe I thought not possible in the hope someone can shed some light and also because I was so careless and stupid I deserve to be shamed, even if it is by me…
I recently used UBU to mod a ROG Hero VIII bios 3504. My good (patient) woman distracted me while on the CPU Microde bit and added an update (despite the warning) to both Skylake and Kaby Lake. I immediately realised my problem and setup a new bios/UBU folder to redo after returning from the supermarket. I redid the bios and pasted it to the USB for flashback but had so many windows open I didn’t notice the delete/copy paste/overwrite confirmation until windows shutdown and didn’t twig it related to the bios until after I flashed and retraced my stupid clumsy steps.
I must have flashed the bios with the one with both microde’s as the PC would not post, or load the bios or do anything. 00 on the error code, red light (CPU warning) by the power cable on the mobo. I could reflash using flashback, which I tried with numerous versions, even attached a DVD player and tried to use the crash free feature. That would not run, although every flashback seemed to work. I even tried removing the CPU, memory and all extra devices and connections. My PC is water cooled (EK X360) so space inside is non existent and to put the cherry on the cake I bent a few pins on the mobo.
To cut a long story short I ended up buying a new mobo and all is well after a massive rebuild faff and with windows activation. I’ve used UBU loads of times and never had a problem, all the forums were saying (to problems similar to mine to) just do a flashback so any suggestions to why this didn’t work? Could I just get a replacement bios for my old mobo (assuming I was successful straightening the pins)? I meant to physically swap the bios’s before swapping the mobo’s over but forgot in my haste to get my PC working again.
I totally put my hands up so feel free to point and laugh, but believe it or not I’m fairly experienced lol!! If nothing else this goes as a warning to those thinking of bios modding when you promised the mrs you would go shopping…
@Boggy :
Welcome to the Win-RAID Forum!
I am very sorry about what happened to your system by missing the required attention while modifying the BIOS and hope, that you will get some tips about how to reanimate your bricked mainboard.
Good luck!
Dieter (alias Fernando)
As far as flashback is concerned, for the Hero 8 you need to have a fat32 USB plugged into the lowest USB port below the PS2 Header. The file needs to be named M8H.CAP It takes about 5 minutes until the flashback button stops flashing. Also make sure the CPU pins are straight (Perfectly straight), use a toothpick or similar. Apart from that you could try reprogramming the BIOS using an arduino or similar. You should pull the board out, discharge all capacitors and remove the CMOS battery. Not really sure what else can be done.
Good luck mate.
I know I must come across as a total noob but I’ve been tinkering with PC’s for years. I tried at least 5 different bios versions on three different USB sticks and every time it appeared to flash normally, but difficult to tell. I even disconnected/removed everything so it was just the mobo and PSU and flashed it via flashback. Tried with onboard graphics, one stick of memory in every bank, no memory because that should throw up an error code, I even tried all that again at the weekend in Halloween costume! I managed to straighten the pins on the socket after removing the mobo (again) on account of the triple radiator leaving no room to work. It was definitely easier straightening pins on my old AMD…
I’ve bought a replacement motherboard and my PC is running great again, but it’s bugging the hell out of me. Think I may look into reprogramming the bios as you suggest coldwove… Despite pushing 50 I’m still making school boy errors (usually after a beer) and I have way too much time on my hands. Staring at socket pins for long periods of time has also made me accept that I’m a blind old barsteward and have some prescription glasses heading my way in a week. £550 down, I probably should have just upgraded…
Hey,
Have you tried swapping the bios chip from one board to the other? It is possible that some other firmware chip on the board was damaged and that is what is giving the 00 code. The Hero 8 has a socketed bios if I remember correctly so it should be fairly straight forward. If it is the bios chip, put the dead one in the board that works and try to use flashback, should that fail, dead bios. If it isn’t the bios chip ¯_(ツ)_/¯ could be anything, you could start checking voltages but not sure that would be worth it.
Cheers.
One extra thing, I don’t remember if flashback erases the entire BIOS, it might only do some chunks so as a last resort this is another option: Boot the board up and extract the working bios to a rom file, swap out the bios chips whilst the system is on (Should not cause any issues as they are only used for starting the system up) and then flash all sectors of the bios using afuwin or whatever is needed.
That sounds like a good plan, Ill read up on it. The thought of removing the bios from my working pc and inserting the borked one is making my guts churn a bit, particularly as my PC was out of action for 10 days. It was the pin straightening that halted things. I’m pondering a programmer but think that will encourage me to be reckless with every bit of kit with a bios in the house.
Thanks mate I appreciate your help 
Think I’ll leave that till later in the week I’m a bit game starved at the moment…