MSI 990XA GD55 BIOS mode for PCI-e M.2 Nvme SSD support (applicable to others)

[ilkerzeki]

Hi,
If you experience, an old bios not supporting  Nvme ssd in the PCI-e data way then this can be usefull..

My hardware: msi 990xa gd55 motherboard, samsung evo 970 plus 500 GB M.2-nvme and Msi nvme-pci card adapter.

The way is simple, if your motherboard brand has a nvme support in the newer version as the same chipset of your old motherboard, then the nvme drivers in the bios dxe can be pull out and inserted to your old motherboards bios ...

requirements
1-Copy of your old motherboard bios
2-Nvme supporting new bios copy
3-An old flash usb disk
4-Lastest ver of UEFI tool program
5-AFUDE238 for flashing your moded bios back (can be changed acording to your brand)
6-Rufus for to prepare a bootable usb


The work:

1-Enter into bios and copy your existing ROM: as the MSI bios has a bios flash tool and have the option of bios backup, just insert a FAT32 formatted usb with just one primary patition and boot into bios, choose utilities option and get a copy of your orginal bios.

2-Exit bios and enter your OS, download UEFI tool prog

3-For MSI, 990xa dg55 board have the same chipset with 990fxa but while fxa has the nvme support xa do not.  so the goal is to extract nvme support from 990fxa and just implement to 990xa

4-Open the new bios file of 990fxa and old one of yours side to side in two seperate UEFI tool prog and compare them by opening the file tree. There are DXE driver type entries for the system drives in the subtype colum. The newer one has Nvme, NVMEINT13 and NvmeSmm drivers in this dxe section but 990xa-old one do not...

5-Choose the drivers one by one Nvme, NVMEINT13 and NvmeSmm, and right click, choose extract as is option and save the files as .ffs format

6-In your old bios file, where is the last dxe entry, there must be pad file.

.... DO NOT TRY TO INSERT FILE TO ANOTHER PLACE.....

choose the last DXE entry, rightclik, and choose insert after. Insert three of the extracted files one by one as to be the same order with orginal bios. Action colon will hold ''insert''. After then just save as a new file and exit UEFI toolkit.

The total file sizes must be exact the same before and after insertion of the drives. If not it means samething go wrong and just make it again....

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IMPORTANT : If your motherboard do not have same chipset nvme support or u can not find bios file, there are avaible Nvme support drivers in the form of bios insertable *.ffs files. But the drives you find may not be compatable with your system and you have to try more than one to find the suitable one....

https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21ABsFwc0otsoLx3k&id=5014229B9E752333%2128813&cid=5014229B9E752333
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7-With rufus prepare a bootable FAT32  free dos based usb, then copy new modded bios file and afude238.exe

8-insert the usb and boot, .....DO NOT USE THE INTEGRATED FLASH UPDATE UTILITY IN THE BIOS... When booted  usb must get the control and Dos enviroment will come...

9-flash the bios from the command prompt of dos and reboot

10-Boot into bios and make sata option AHCI or raid (it may change acording to pci card type or Nvme ssd i do not know but i have a raid system sata raid works for me) as M.2 Nvme  ssd will be an UEFI system with GPT if u plan to install Win 10, raid rom must not be legacy, menu differs along motherboards...

11-For win 7 you must load the needed nvme and sata ahci raid drivers during win install, but win 10 do not need.
 

thats all....