MSI Motherboard BIOS Updating Remains A Pain For Linux Users

[user82]

While updating from flash drive finally worked in bios v1.9(!) i have to say: Not MSI again with so much choice.
Props to flashrom for letting me update!

[gilboa]

General suggestions.

Buy pure Intel boards.
I use them both at work and at home for HTPC up to 4S servers.
They may have but-ugly BIOS's and tend to be very squeamish about power supplies and cases, but it can be controlled and upgraded from the UEFI shell.
(It also has first class Linux support.)

- Gilboa

[nadro]

But how do you get the BIOS file?

The situation in-question is that while MSI does offer the BIOS, they have it in a Windows-only format (archive > Windows executable > BIOS File) and also impose conditions to make it hard to even get the BIOS file when running Windows (you have to be running Windows on that motherboard if you want that BIOS extracted; can't run it on some non-related computer). Once you get it out of that WIndows-only archive though, you're free to flash it however you want (from UEFI, Flashrom, Win98, etc).

From what someone said above, it seems not all of MSI's BIOS packages are like that, and include the actual BIOS file in the archive. The GD80V2 I mentioned didn't do this though, but it's last BIOS came out late 2013.

Should also note Acer also does this.

I can download *.zip archive with rom file included. Eg. BIOS for my mobo:

http://download.msi.com/bos_exe/7903v11.zip

You can flash it in DOS via *.EXE or directly in UEFI via M-Flash using E7903AMS.110 file, so without Windows.

[Walldorf2000]

A bug report could help Wine to improve

Buy pure Intel boards.
I use them both at work and at home for HTPC up to 4S servers.
They may have but-ugly BIOS's and tend to be very squeamish about power supplies and cases, but it can be controlled and upgraded from the UEFI shell.
(It also has first class Linux support.)

- Gilboa

Intel stops producing boards. They don't even provide Bios updates for their Haswell Refresh. This is much worse then the MSI issue.

[garyzyg]

MSI does not consider Linux users. However, if you have UEFI BIOS, it's still possible to "execute BIOS update package .exe under Windows PE legally and possibly".

To prepare Windows PE is easy, you only need to simply copy few files, which can be extracted under Linux, to your flash drive. Then, boot (through UEFI rather than legacy way) into it and do BIOS flash.

Here are some material you may need:

1. The Windows? Automated Installation Kit (AIK) Supplement for Windows? 7 SP1
2. WinPE: Create USB Bootable drive

[gilboa]

Intel stops producing boards. They don't even provide Bios updates for their Haswell Refresh. This is much worse then the MSI issue.

According to ark, they still produce desktop boards.
... and I buy workstation and servers boards from Intel on a monthly basis.

- Gilboa

[Kano]

Flashrom is not meant for noobs. Basically you overwrite everything incl. the mac adresses/serial numbers with defaults. A dos tool like fpt does the same but can be used with -savemac option. Flashrom is certainly a good choice to recover a BIOS als you can flash anything without checks, with hotswap for other boards AS well. But you need to extract the firmware first, if it really checks the dmi strings you could try emulating those with Vbox and Windows.

[dashcloud]

Universal Extractor is probably what you want

If you've already tried extracting the files using 7-zip and that didn't work or didn't give you usable files (it works a decent amount of the time), then you'll want to get a copy of Universal Extractor (sadly, the original version hasn't released an update in over a year). The original is located here, while the more current (and what I've used in the past) is the Gora mod version.

If you look at the installed files, or the website for the original, you'll notice it's not one big program, but a program that has enough intelligence to call out to the appropriate utility to extract the files for you.

I've had mixed results using this with Wine- the individual utilities work better, because Universal Extractor is a GUI program, and without the shell integration, it's not nearly as useful.

[dashcloud]

Here's a Linux solution from one of the flashrom folks:

tail -c 8M E7738v37.exe >bios.rom

Good luck!

[hamkaas]

While a bootable PE environment could work, I have had bad experience with it, depending on the flashrom type. I prefer a full Windows installation for flashing, my daily OS is Ubuntu.
Nowadays for flashing I'm using a Windows 8 To Go install on an external usb drive.
I didn't use the drive that much so it's ok to reserve it for this installation.

Quite easy to install and legal:
- install windows 8 evaluation version in Virtualbox or your favourite hypervisor.
- plug in your usb drive and pass it to your virtual machine.
- inside the vm, start the Windows To Go wizard
- when searching for the image file (.wim) browse inside the mounted Windows 8 iso.

Boot from the usb, happy flashing.
btw, you can rearm the eval version so you can use it legally for a year a guess, before reinstalling.