Why Can't I Flash My Motherboard BIOS? Basic Fault Finding Steps & Fixes
Вставка
- Опубліковано 6 лют 2025
- #biosflash #biosupdate #howto #mikesunboxing
Why cant i flash my motherboard bios? Basic fault finding steps and fixes
Today we are looking at BIOS flashing and reason why you might not be able to perform a bios update on your motherboard.
Some of the reasons it won't flash are overlapping but the areas covered here are all good diagnostic ideas that might solve the problem.
1 Wrong BIOS file?
i. check the motherboard model and revision if applicable
ii. Are you jumping too many BIOS updates? Try an older version or smaller steps
iii. does the Motherboard have a custom bios from the manufacturer?
2 Bios file not unzipped or extracted fully.
3 BIOS file not renamed correctly
4 USB Drive too big or not compatible
5 Try extracting and renaming the file on another PC
6 Verify you don't have a hardware fault that is preventing the bios flash.
7 Reset the CMOS and try again
Helpful links
How to create a smaller FAT32 file partition on larger drives
• How To Create A FAT32 ...
Reset the CMOS
• How To RESET Your PC B...
The links below may be affiliated, meaning we get a small commission from them if you make a purchase. It won't cost you any extra, but really can help support us and the videos we make.
Available from:
RECOMMENDED USB DRIVE
Amazon Local: amzn.to/3v7P0H4
Ebay UK: ebay.us/nRoDca
Ebay US: ebay.us/P9yUZs
Ebay CA: ebay.us/LlI9lU
Ebay AUS: ebay.us/THwmCj
Cheap Windows 10/11 Office/ Steam & Gaming Keys available from affiliate links:
www.premiumcdk...
Discount code: MIKESUNBOXING 7.5% Off
Custom mouse mats: technicallysta...
Use the discount code MIKE to get an additional 10% discount and free shipping in the UK for MUB fans
Computers & Gaming Playlist: • Computers And Gaming
PC How To Playlist: • PC How To
How To: BIOS Updates Playlist: • How-to: BIOS updates
Maybe consider becoming a Patreon supporter here: www.patreon.com/mikesunboxing or
UA-cam membership: / @mikesunboxing
Send donations to paypal.me/mikesunboxing
Most of the items we review can be found in Our Amazon influencer Storefront:
www.amazon.com...
We earn commission from some affiliated links if you make a purchase
Get a cool mouse mat / deskpad technicallysta...
Discount Code MIKE
Affiliate links:
Ebay UK: ebay.us/g4XxLe
Ebay US: ebay.us/68JcLl
Ebay CA: ebay.us/IR59Bt
Ebay AUS: ebay.us/db0b6x
Amazon UK: amzn.to/2S8k1Fv
Amazon US: amzn.to/2Xs1YuR
Amazon CA: amzn.to/2RVkRFa
Amazon DE: amzn.to/2W4U49T
Amazon FR: amzn.to/2XkA8Bx
Amazon ES: amzn.to/2KiQVRB
Amazon IT: amzn.to/3w25K38
Amazon AUS: amzn.to/303ycku
Amazon JP: amzn.to/3jRdmwS
Amazon Sweden: amzn.to/32bdBLk
Ali Express s.click.aliexp...
Q Link: share.shopqlin...
www.premiumcdk... (discount code MIKESUNBOXING)
Get 5% Discount at Keychron UK
www.keychron.u...
DISCOUNT CODE - MIKESUNBOXING
Get in touch with us:
Email mike@mikesunboxing.com
UA-cam / mikesunboxing
Website www.mikesunboxi...
Discord: / discord
Available from:
RECOMMENDED USB DRIVE
Amazon Local: amzn.to/3v7P0H4
Ebay UK: ebay.us/nRoDca
Ebay US: ebay.us/P9yUZs
Ebay CA: ebay.us/LlI9lU
Ebay AUS: ebay.us/THwmCj
Cheap Windows 10/11 Office/ Steam & Gaming Keys available from affiliate links:
www.premiumcdkeys.com/mikesunboxing
Discount code: MIKESUNBOXING 7.5% Off
Custom mouse mats: technicallystable.com/?ref=mub
Use the discount code MIKE to get an additional 10% discount and free shipping in the UK for MUB fans
Great instructional video Mike. Judging by the number of BIOS queries that come into your Discord channel this video will surely be of help to folk. Thanks Mike and Kath 🙂
yeah this one will be pinned in the tech chat for sure, will save Dave and others loosing what hair they have left :-)
If it ain't broke don't fix it
Mike, your recent videos helped me save my server mainboard😄👍 Just wanted to share my yesterdays scary experience with bios mysteries: Asus Prime b450 Plus board, Ryzen 2700x: put in new 32 Gb Ram. Perfectly booting, but couldnt get into bios to adjust frequency, just an active, but black screen. Exchanging ram modules, trying different slots, trying hdmi and display port, another monitor, taking bios battery out didnt help. Couldnt update bios via windows (the board doesnt support it), no flashback available. Finally, but not recommended, i used the legacy asus bw-updater tool for Dos. This let me start the flash process, but insta failed and corrupted the bios as planned. Then i put a usb stick with the renamed bios file in a mobo usb slot and restarted. Boom, bios update worked via Asus crashfree bios update, everything working perfectly and Ram running at 3600 speed without issues. Crash free is really obsolete, but it did its thing. Nice!
Fantastic video, Mike! Great for those among us that end up helping people on the “Mike’s Unboxing” Discord server. Thanks for putting it up!
Yeah it should be mandatory that users watch this before they start
Until I found your channel cannot recall ever doing bios updates but then I'm old lol. Following your tuition since building Ryzen pc's never had any issues with bios updates with flash button, within bios or mb software centres! Thank you for excellent videos taking the strain outta the process Mike and Kath 🐈👍
Glad to help!
Funny, just last night I updated my daughter's MSI Gaming Edge Z490 bios and it acted funny when selecting the ROM and I had to enter it 3 times before it grabbed...I never saw this in over 30 years of flashing.
You don't know BIOS flash hell until you've had to prepare a boot floppy flash for a retro board
And find a spare floppy drive to do it with
yeah and find a floppy cable
@@mikesunboxing that didn't have any keying
Thank you Mike! 🙏🏼
Last month I plugged a brand new, freshly formatted 32GB _Verbatim_ flash drive into the back of my (bare) *ASRock Z690 Taichi* motherboard to flash the BIOS and ... NOTHING happened.
I started to panic, but then decided to switch to a new _PNY_ flash drive I had (both drives were fresh out of their packaging) and _it_ worked perfectly.
Needless to say I won't be buying anymore Verbatim flash drives. 😆
Thanks again. 👍🏼
no worries and glad you got there in the end
When building a new PC I wanted to update the motherboard BIOS right away, my processor was too new. It failed and never got into the BIOS, I used a new USB stick.. Sent the motherboard back. Another motherboard had the same problem, then I replaced my USB stick with another brand, but older. Everything worked perfectly, started testing the USB and that was the problem.
@@tomhighsmith They can be quite fussy about USB sticks
Thank you mike
Im buildinb mg second pc in less than a month and your videos always helped me
glad they are helping you
Great educational video as always.
thanks Phil, hope you have a great day
Going to be sharing this a lot! Thank you! 🙏
Please do! It’s going to hopefully save us a lot of typing and questions
Useful video, thank you!😉
Glad it was helpful!
There is always some thing new/good to learn on MUB.
Thanks Mike 😀
You bet!
Thank you, very interesting. I had damaged the pins on a motherboard and even though it would boot the bios flashback didn't work (and other issues). Thankfully I got it from Scan who replaced both the CPU motherboard after an unsuccessful repair, without a charge!
Good to hear
Hi from discord! You actually sent me here from the other video lol
Oh hi, did it work yet?
@@mikesunboxingI haven't tried everything in the video yet. But I did get the USB that was recommended. No joy. 5 red light flashes on the back of the motherboard, then everything boots up and nothing happens. Tonight when I get off work I'm going to take everything apart, leave nothing but the power supply and CPU plugged in and try it again
@@mikesunboxing nope. Unplugged everything but the mobo and power and even using the usb mentioned the flash bios red light flashes maybe 5 times and then the PC powers up and nothing else happens. I'm dead in the water
There are not many things that terrify me, but flashing a bios is definitely one of them. I've lost too many hardware trying to flash their bios so I refuse to do it.
it can be a scary time
Thank you. Great info.
Mike on his flashing escapades!
Thanks for this informatve and helpful video.
Glad it was helpful!
Hi Mike. My first step is to save this video, "How to do a BIOS update." It's hard for me to believe we are going into 2025 with WIN 11 and recently released MBs, and I can't go into the BIOS and click on UPDATE BIOS. This could be covered in the owner's manual, which didn't come with your MB or pre-built PC, and you have to download it. Thanks to your help, I may finally get my BIOS updated. A lesson on FIRMWARE updating should be covered in a future video.
Had a memory overclock break the BIOS chip once, would not reset no matter if I pulled the CMOS battery or used the BIOS flashback feature, had to send it in for RMA. It was a MSI B550 Gaming Edge Wifi, has been excellent since the repair
One other thing I would make sure to note, Mike, is that people MUST use a USB drive that is 32GB or less (don't waste your time trying to get around it like I did). I don't know exactly why, but I had a 256GB drive and had used a free utility to format it to FAT32. The MB STILL would not read from the drive and I was on the verge of RMA'ing the board. But, I borrowed a 2GB thumb drive from a friend and tried to flash again...this time it worked.
yeah the fat32 windows file limit catches a lot of people out
Hey Mike, love your content. You're a great help. I'm replacing my motherboard, the Asus X470 prime pro. Ordered the MSI MPG b550 Gaming Plus. Would you know if it already comes with the correct bios to run the Ryzen 7 5700x3d? I'm guessing these new batches should support the latest Ryzen 5000 cpu's out the box. I already have my USB prepped with the version needed to run the 5000 series. If I can avoid doing this all together then that would be amazing. Haha..
unless it is really old stock it should be ok
good information, thanks
Glad it was helpful!
The reason for having to do a step bios update is due to that sometimes there is a small chipset firmware update/change within the bios update. This happens a good bit on A-Suck a good percentage of the time. So the newest bios might have to rely on that firmware update/change to the chipset for it to work accordingly. Sometimes it is listed in the description of the bios and then again sometimes not. A good rule of thumb is to use a 8 gig or less usb drive preferably 1.0 usb drive because of the speed factor that I have found in my shop for the bios chip to read correctly. (strange I know).
does the usb have to be completely empty or can i also have a copy of windows as well?
Windows won’t fit on a fat32 drive as the wim file is over 3gb
hello . excellent video congratulations. Today I bought a gigabyte b650m ds3h revision 1.3 motherboard. Cp Ryzen 5 7600, and 32 gigs Corsair Veangeance. PC starts up but doesn't show the image. I tried updating the bios and it doesn't work either. I downloaded the correct file, flash drive mbr and fat 32. When I insert the flash drive and press the qflash button, nothing flashes. There are no LEDs blinking. Power supply starts and stops. Could the motherboard be defective? thanks
sounds like a short circuit or motherboard pillar short, that cpu should work out of the box with that motherboard
I thought mbr format is obsolete now..? Gpt or ?
mbr still has its uses, but most Windows OS now will be GPT / UEFI
I bought a new motherboard this week and had to rely on bios flashback for CPU compatibility, so I searched UA-cam on how to do it and the first video result was yours. I followed your guide, but unfortunately, it didnt work. Turns out my motherboard is very picky when it comes to USB drives (had to buy a cheap 32gb USB 2.0 drive).
Now, you release this video. What are the chances?
great timing
Not having the USB stick formatted to MBR was my issue. Also not mentioned in the mainboard manual :o
yeah that is why we make these videos to hopefully clarify the process
I have a Kingston USB stick 8 GB (which is quiet old already), i did all these steps, in regards for naming etc. (FAT32, MSI.ROM and the correct bios file from the website - I even did the command line formatting with MBR just to be sure that it is formatted correctly)
The motherboard is MSI PRO B650-S WIFI and i cant post currently while having a EZ DEBUG Red LED and DRAM Yellow light.
The processor is AMD Ryzen 5 9600x and everyting pretty much turns and goes on, however the errors are there, I would like to update the bios, but whenever I press the Flash Button the light is being ON as long as I press it the moment I let go, it goes Off.
In regards to the CPU I can tell you that while installing it I didnt see any bends and the installation was actually smooth.
Any other suggestions, because I think its actually its a bios issue?
try one stick of ram only in slot 2
@@mikesunboxing thanks for the advice, but I found out the issue, it was that the PC needed to be turned OFF :'D.
Confusing formats for USB. We watched you do a Fat32 but earlier, you said it needs to be in MBR format? Are they the same? Never heard of MBR
Mbr and uefi are also types of system or low level systems. Mbr is the older style and was known as master boot record so the system would look at the master boot record to see what sort of drive it is before even looking at the format of the data. New systems use uefi which allows a bit more flexibility and compatibility with modern hardware
@@mikesunboxing Yes, quite. BUT you said on the video ensure it is mbr - and then did a FAT32 and then said it was all
ready for a bios
Yes fat32 is the file system mbr is the platform or drive type.
Like ford is the car brand and fiesta is the model
@@mikesunboxing Cool - you can understand the confusion when you state: "When the drives are doing FAT32, they need to be in what's known as MBR format."
Ι have an msi b650 mortar. What will happen to all the settings we have made?
Αre they going to be lost or will they remain the same?
Ιs there any way to save them in pc or we must to do them all over again? I think it s a very big problem if they lost...
you can save the bios profile settings to a usb drive and restore them
@@mikesunboxing FYI It didn t work. When I try to restore the settings a message appeared that they are not compatible with the new bios so I followed your instructions from another video and went through them from the beginning. Now all are ok and work fine
I did Bios flash on Asus rog Strix B550 F with AMD 5900x did it pretty simple it's always great idea 💡 make sure use I'd software like cpuz or any other software that may help you.
Thanks for sharing
I tried to flash my Ryzen ASUS board and it froze at the progress bar at 0%. When I rebooted of course the machine would blank freeze. Fortunately I have BIOS flashback. It was a breeze to do, I highly recommend it. Should have done it that way a long time ago.
I cant seem to get my b650 tomahaw k to work with this,i never get the flashing led.done everything like u said with different usb sticks
There are a lot of reasons the BIOS update won't work as it should. If you are interested, we have made a video discussing common errors and some sanity checks you can make before considering returning the motherboard or taking it to a professional.
ua-cam.com/video/TDtrH2QsbHo/v-deo.html
Mike can you review the Asus PRIME B650M-A WIFI II pls pls pls
i'll see what i can do
Thanks bud
No problem 👍
Hi mike i just updated my bios latest version strix b650e-e. Now the debug number going nuts keeps flashing 35 to 36 38..was fine till i just updated
it that showing the cpu temp?
@mikesunboxing yes it was mate 🙃🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I also have a msi mag b650 tomahawk wifi when I am doing bios flashback electricity supply gone in middle of the process
After i tried second time white light flashing so long time but not stop
Please tell me what to do?
There are a lot of reasons the BIOS update won't work as it should. If you are interested, we have made a video discussing common errors and some sanity checks you can make before considering returning the motherboard or taking it to a professional.
ua-cam.com/video/TDtrH2QsbHo/v-deo.html
Help the LED only flashes while I am pressing the button but it does not flash after releasing
I tried two USBs with FAT32 and the file renamed
I have an MSI B550M PRO-VDH WIFI Motherboard
sounds like a short circuit somewhere, There are a lot of reasons the BIOS update won't work as it should. If you are interested, we have made a video discussing common errors and some sanity checks you can make before considering returning the motherboard or taking it to a professional.
ua-cam.com/video/TDtrH2QsbHo/v-deo.html
@@mikesunboxing Thank you mister I already found you had to plug the USB in before powering the computer on and then press the flash button which powers the mobo on automatically
When changing the file name. Example to gigabyte.bin. I have seen the same person entering. GIGABYTE.BIN. or gigabyte.bin. sometimes all caps, sometimes lower case. Does this matter. Does motherboard recognize both styles when flashing.
yes, it will work both ways
both should be ok
Ha you helped me with this problem with my b450 gaming max it was my usb stick was old and had been formated lots of times so it wasnt the helthist usb stick it wouldn't flash so I used an old 3rd gen cpu to upgrade bios clearly old usb don't work well for bios flash new usb should be fine
glad to help
I'll keep this one in the bank and hopefully never need it, thanks
After I cleaned disk my disk management fails to open
that is pretty strange?
mostly its just wrong file name and wrong usb port, especially when using flashback method.
Yes, you are right
If it ain't broke don't fix it never had to do a bios flash brick the board and your screwed
Mine was because of updating to Windows 11