MSI MS-6378X-L Bad Bios Flash

[sebholz]

I need help, the motherboard was working without trouble but it didnt have a hard drive after all, Ive managed to find a old HDD PATA W. Digital 250 Gb but thats when it started the problems.
The motherboard only managed to identify 136 Gb out of the 250 Gb on the drive, so Ive looked for a BIOS update before trying to modd the BIOS, I found out that it was realy unupdated so I downloaded the new BIOses looking for resolve this issue about the hard drive limit, since there is no longer floppy disks arround I decide to flash the BIOS through AWDWinFlash on Windows XP SP2.
I made a backup of the old BIOS then started the procedure to flash the new one (update the all BIOS including boot block), it didnt took that mutch time but the program said "Verify Error!" so I got scared on this problem and flashed back the old BIOS but the program said again the error, after dealing with this error Ive flashed back the new updated BIOS and pray that it worked restarting the machine.
After the restart it happend what I was specting, a bad BIOS, the motherboard made 1 long beep followed by 2 short beeps then stops and them starts out with constantly short high beeps and no video.
I managed to find a old floppy disk and made a Windows 98 bootdisk, deleted config.sys and a bunch of unneed files and place the DOS flasher that cames with the BIOS update compressed file and also the BIOS file, and created a AUTOEXEC.BAT with the following line in it:

@ECHO OFF
@AWFL823 W6378VMS.350 /cc /py /sn /r

Putting this bootdisk on the machine, made the exact symptoms that Ive described earlyer put down a PS/2 keyboard and pressed Enter praying that these will work but the machine didnt don anything.

After some hours Ive though why a simple BIOS update of the board failed, and looked down and it was clear that Ive miss flashed a different BIOS, Ive flashed down a MS-6378 BIOS from MSI oficial site and not the MS-6378X-L.

Anyone chance of trying to get back alive this board?

[BDMaster]

I need help, the motherboard was working without trouble but it didnt have a hard drive after all, Ive managed to find a old HDD PATA W. Digital 250 Gb but thats when it started the problems.
The motherboard only managed to identify 136 Gb out of the 250 Gb on the drive, so Ive looked for a BIOS update before trying to modd the BIOS, I found out that it was realy unupdated so I downloaded the new BIOses looking for resolve this issue about the hard drive limit, since there is no longer floppy disks arround I decide to flash the BIOS through AWDWinFlash on Windows XP SP2.
I made a backup of the old BIOS then started the procedure to flash the new one (update the all BIOS including boot block), it didnt took that mutch time but the program said "Verify Error!" so I got scared on this problem and flashed back the old BIOS but the program said again the error, after dealing with this error Ive flashed back the new updated BIOS and pray that it worked restarting the machine.
After the restart it happend what I was specting, a bad BIOS, the motherboard made 1 long beep followed by 2 short beeps then stops and them starts out with constantly short high beeps and no video.
I managed to find a old floppy disk and made a Windows 98 bootdisk, deleted config.sys and a bunch of unneed files and place the DOS flasher that cames with the BIOS update compressed file and also the BIOS file, and created a AUTOEXEC.BAT with the following line in it:

@ECHO OFF
@AWFL823 W6378VMS.350 /cc /py /sn /r

Putting this bootdisk on the machine, made the exact symptoms that Ive described earlyer put down a PS/2 keyboard and pressed Enter praying that these will work but the machine didnt don anything.

After some hours Ive though why a simple BIOS update of the board failed, and looked down and it was clear that Ive miss flashed a different BIOS, Ive flashed down a MS-6378 BIOS from MSI oficial site and not the MS-6378X-L.

Anyone chance of trying to get back alive this board?

Try this :

https://www.bios-mods.com/bios-recovery/...-recovery/

https://forum-en.msi.com/faq/article/pri...r-the-bios

Regards

[sebholz]

Try this :

https://www.bios-mods.com/bios-recovery/...-recovery/

https://forum-en.msi.com/faq/article/pri...r-the-bios

Regards

Hi there, thanks for the reply.

The procedure in the MSI site is the same but with a slight change that are explained on the BIOS Recovry -> AWARD section of this site, anyways, tryed that out and it didnt happend a thing, still get 1 long beep followed by 2 short beeps them a little pause and starts continous high short beeps that never ends (waited more than 2 minutes and nothing chaanges), no video and if I press Enter or Home button on a PS/2 keyboard nothing happends, it never tryed to make even a single read on the floppy drive.

Also tryed out shorting the 2 highest pins on the BIOS Room chip procedure (PMC FLahs Pm29F002t-90JC), A17 with A15, A15 with A14, to make a faulty read on the checksum of the BIOS to force the load of the AWARD Boot Block, sometimes makes the same thing described and other times all the leds on the keyboard lights up and never shuts down and no beeps (really close to [censored] it up ).

Anyway the flashed through a Wiggler Cable or USB JTAG NT???

[sebholz]

Looking back for what it did happend, I found out that it wasnt my mistake. As always I do a crosscheck to ensure that Ive got the correct BIOS before updating it, so this problem was very frustrating to me.

At first I though that it was my mistake because I flashed down the BIOS of a MS-6378 Ver.: X instead of MS-6378 Ver.: 3 (that its realy a MS-6378X-L), when I saw the error on the verification process, Ive satrted to panic   and it was a very confusing moment at the time. Tryed diferent older versions of the BIOS  to flash down and with diferent Winflash versiion, also tryed to flash back the original BIOS and got all the time the same problem. Finaly when I was tyred, just restarted and wait for what I was specting a dead mobo.

Now calmly, Ive looked down on the files that Ive flashed down on the mobo and they were CORRECT!
All of them were for a MS-6378 Ver.: 3 as being specifyed on the changes log file, I didnt flashed out a incorrect BIOS on the mobo and even if made that mistake, it should start anyway because al the MS-6378 comes with the same Chipset but with diferent componments like on one version it doesn have video incorporated or other one doesnt have lan.

So what could posibly happend to get a verification error??

PD: For the start, lets say it was an old mobo, with a long used time.

[sebholz]

Well, as I always continue with my posts even if I have succesuflly reapaired the board to give anyone some knowledge of the matter to someone else.

I was very disappointed about this issue, the update files were correct but even with that, Ive ended up with a dead mobo due to a faulty flash procdure.

Any attemps to recover the mobo through standard procedures were a dead end because at the first time Ive choosed to flash all the chip with the Boot Block, so with any faulty flash, all the Boot Block were messed up!

So on that point I only though on one path and that one was through a Bios Chip Hot Swap, so how is done that. Well first the dead mobo has the chip soldered on with no socket, with the use a heat gun Ive succesfuly extract the chip, and with the help of another computer at my work that has a Biostar U8668D made all the deal, so Ive looked over at bootdisk(dot)com for a clean bootdisk for flashing bios and came across with one that has DR-DOS on it, I copied to the bootdisk AWDFLASH and also for some strange feeling Ive also put down UniFlash, first, turn on the fully functional mobo (U8668D) without any components just only the board it self and with a floppy drive (saying that makes me feel very old! ) and seted up as the floppy drive to startup with the bootdisk described earlyer,  when the mobo is up and running, you have to extract the Bios Chip very carefully and them place down the bad flashed bios chip in the same exact position as the extracted one.

First Ive though on giveing a go with the standards flashing software that is AWDFLASH, with this software even if I ussed the force command to flash, it refused to do that when reading the chip.
So Ive though on the second option, that was UniFlash, first Ive tryed to flashback the original backedup Bios, but all reading gived me a wrong size so I though that even if it was the backup, it was all damaged, then I used the newer bios file and without any problems UniFlash did the thing, it flashed the new bios to the chip!.

So Ive took back the flashed chip and soldered back to the dead mobo and prayed to startup and it did!!

So what do I have to say, first, NEVER FLASH ALL THE CHIP IS NOT NECESARLY, LEAVE THE BOOTBLOCK ALONE, CHANCES ARE THAT FOR SOME STRANGE REASON THE MOBO MANUFACTURER UPDATES THAT PART, BUT MOSTLY OF THE TIME IT NEVER DOES!, second, IF YOU UNDERSTAND THE RISKS OF BIOS HOT SWAPPING, THAT IS PROBABLY LOOSING BOTH BOARDS, THEN GIVE IT A GO, ITS NOT SO DIFFICULT, OTHERWISE JUST MAKE THE IDEA THAT THE BOARD IS A TRASH, and the last one, ¿Why did WinFlash failed to flash the chip or read it even if it was just plain Windows with no third-party software on it? (ANYWAYS, MY ADVISE IN THE FEATURE IS TO NOT FLASH FROM WINDOWS!)

[LosSantosPro]

The reason the BIOS update failed in Windows could be due to the following:

1. Anti-Virus may detect suspicious activity DURING flash, therefore corrupted the ROM chip

2. You had an application running in the background (Chrome, Word, Paint) etc could cause it to fail

3. The BIOS chip could of failed when writing to it, possibly a faulty write pin/bus which caused it to fail while updating

It is recommended all BIOS flashes, if possible is done either via the BIOS itself or Pure DOS

Kind Regards

Jamie

[sebholz]

The reason the BIOS update failed in Windows could be due to the following:

1. Anti-Virus may detect suspicious activity DURING flash, therefore corrupted the ROM chip

2. You had an application running in the background (Chrome, Word, Paint) etc could cause it to fail

3. The BIOS chip could of failed when writing to it, possibly a faulty write pin/bus which caused it to fail while updating

It is recommended all BIOS flashes, if possible is done either via the BIOS itself or Pure DOS

Kind Regards

Jamie

Well, thank your for youre reply, for the first and second point, knowing that kind of issues or even unupdated/bad drivers that cause Windows to be unstable, I used a clean fresh install of Windows to do the update procedure (the desktop in its first state didnt had a HDD) and no other app running.
For the 3rd pont, that could be the cause of the error but on the first time Ive checked that all pins were right, maybe the write bus could be the one that caused the problem.
And yes, as you posted, from now on I would only advise to do the flashing procedure through DOS with a clean startup or through the BIOS update option.

Anyway, on an other matter, could you help me with this post: https://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-I...t-have-one