Some Scammer on the MSI forums is asking people to PAY him to unlock laptop BIOSES. I did mine for free.

[BleachedFur]

Q: "You have a giant “use at your own risk” disclaimer and you wonder why people might pay someone who knows what they’re doing to do it?"

A: What if this random stranger on the Internet makes a mistake and bricks your laptop? Now you're out $50 for a custom bios and your laptop is broken. Either way it's not covered by warranty, so do it yourself and save your money. I'm a complete retard and I was able to do it to my Gen 1 GT70.

 

Link to guide and tools: https://www.bios-mods.com/forum/Thread-GUIDE-How-to-modify-AMI-MSI-BIOS-to-unlock-full-features-UEFI-Aptio4

 

Link to rude man on MSI forum scamming innocent people out of $50: https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?board=51.0

 

Video guide:

 

The guide itself (copied from bios-mods.com):

Good morning/evening!

I explain here step by step how to modify your notebook BIOS to unlock hidden functions for an UEFI AMI Aptio4 BIOS.
This Tutorial was made using an MSI GS60 2QE Ghost Pro 4K, with MS-16H5 Motherboard (HM87), but it should be the same for other models carrying AMI Aptio4.

Things you need:
- Latest Original BIOS from MSI
- Rufus 2.xx (to create a FreeDOS boot-able USB) download from https://rufus.akeo.ie/downloads/rufus-2.2p.exe
- AFUDOS v3.06 (BIOS update utility from AMI for DOS with BIOS security bypass feature)
- AfuWin (BIOS update utility from AMI for Windows NT)
- AMIBCP v4.53 (BIOS Configuration Program)
- (optional) AMI ChangeLogo ( to change BIOS boot logo )

===
(optional) You can use my already modified BIOS with almost all settings unlocked.
If you do so, skip steps 5 and 5a and use 'mod.rom' included in zip to flash.
(it's BIOS version E16H5IMS.10F unlocked, should be used ONLY for the same notebook as mine)
If after booting you see MSI logo with Hello World Edition!, it was flashed correctly.
===


WARNING!! DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK, BAD FLASH CAN BRICK YOUR BIOS

STEPS BY STEP:

1. Update BIOS to the latest official MSI version.
Follow steps provided by MSI.

2. Load Optimal Default Settings in BIOS.

3. Boot to your Windows OS

4. Open AFUWINGUI.EXE to make a backup of your current BIOS image.
- Click on 'Progress' tab, then Click on 'Save' Button
- Choose where to save and put a name on it or leave it as afuwin.rom
- After completed, click 'Exit'.
- Save a copy of the backup to a safe place, just in case.

5. Open AMIBCP.exe (Where the fun begins)
- Click File -> Open, then select the backup saved on step 4. (afuwin.rom or however you named it)
- Just change Access/Use from 'Default' to 'USER' to every menu/sub-menu/option you want to unlock.
- After you changed everything you want to unlock, Click on the 'Save' button (overwrite the current, don't use save as)
- Now Close program, if asked you can select save changes again (doesn't matter).

5a. (OPTIONAL) Change OEM Boot Logo.
- Open ChangeLogo.exe, click on 'Load Image'
- Select thje modified BIOS already edited with AMIBCP.
- Click 'Save Logo'.
- Now edit it as you wish with mspaint, gimp etc.. but preserve the dimensions and format.
- To change it, click 'Browse' -> Select the edited logo, then click on 'Replace Logo'
(it will say something like: JPEG not supported, do you want to continue?. Click YES)
- Now Click Save Image as (overwrite current or chose another name you wish with .rom)

6. Create a boot-able USB with FreeDOS.
- Open rufus, select your USB stick and check create a boot-able disk using FreeDOS as shown in image.
- Click Start (it will destroy everything on the USB so use an empty one)

7. Copy AFUDOS.EXE and the modified BIOS to the root folder of your boot-able USB.

8. Make sure that the files where correctly saved into the USB stick (compare SHA-1/MD5 checksums, file size, etc..)
if everything is cool, reboot your computer. VERY IMPORTANT: Check that modified rom size match with the backup created in step 4, if mismatch don't continue you may be doing something wrong.

9. Enter in BIOS load default settings, in Boot mode select LEGACY. (this may not be needed)
- in boot order select USB Hard Disk (or hold F11 while booting to select USB stick)
- Save changes & Exit...

10. Now boot into FreeDOS.
- Select your keyboard layout.
- DOS prompt will appear, type dir to check that you are on the correct directory.
!!BEFORE TO FLASH BIOS!! Make sure your laptop is connected to the AC power cord. (also good to have just the usb stick plugged in, no other usb gear connected)
- To start flashing, type: (replace mod.rom with the name you saved earlier)
afudos mod.rom /GAN
- hit ENTER, it will start flashing.
!!WARNING!! If you get a warning about size mismatch or something similar DO NOT CONTINUE.Never flash if size don't match! 
When you see Verifying all blocks ... done. and retunred to the DOS promt you then can Power off laptop.
- Push your poweroff button, then disconnect your AC Power charger and keep disconnected for some seconds (like 10seconds, this is only for laptops with integrated battery, if you can remove battery do it for few seconds, this it's also not needed in most cases)

11. DONE! Now re-connect AC power cord and power on your laptop, you should see your new Logo at booting (if you replaced it)
- Enter BIOS, now you should see all the unlocked menus.

12. Enjoy your unlocked BIOS and have funs!!  

[Fasauceome]

12 minutes ago, BleachedFur said:

Link to rude man on MSI forum scamming innocent people out of $50: https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?board=51.0

If MSI forum mods are as bad as their customer service, no wonder this guy is getting away with it.

 

edit: the headline of the MSI forum link made me chuckle at the ludicrous wording:

Quote

By entering this section, you know these are UNSUPPORTED AND UNOFFICIAL BIOS files, and donation is required.

Is it really donation if it's required?

[BleachedFur]

29 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

Is it really donation if it's required?

Nope, that makes it payment. He's probably using "donation" to get away without having to pay taxes.

 

30 minutes ago, fasauceome said:

If MSI forum mods are as bad as their customer service, no wonder this guy is getting away with it.

man you should see some of the PMs he sent me after I called him out on it.

 

Fortunately he has no power here.

24 minutes ago, James Evens said:

You are telling me a administrator uses the forum to sell there bios? wow. this even worse then Nvidia.

I got someone on the nVidia forum to unlock my 1050 Ti back when it was first around release time. It was a BIOS meant for development. They told me not to share it so I didn't. I got my 1050 Ti to 2.1Ghz on air with it tho

[mr moose]

6 hours ago, BleachedFur said:

man you should see some of the PMs he sent me after I called him out on it.

 

 

Some people get really angry when you show people you don't need to pay for something.  Especially when this character is relying on people thinking it is too hard to do themselves.

[RejZoR]

MSI released shitty broken and unstable BIOS with Spectre/Meltdown fixes for MSI X99 Gaming 7 board and just never bothered to fix it. System just keeps on randomly crashing, locking up and experiencing bunch of problems with it and it took me ages to figure out it was the damn BIOS casuing it. It's very unlikely I'll ever buy another MSI motherboard. I guess it makes sense now...

[tatte]

Huh? He is offering a service and wants to be paid for it. Not sure if I'm missing something here. Computer stores also offer services the consumer could do themselves (for e.g. building, bios update), are they scammers too? If any credible company doesn't offer the service, it only makes him even less of a scammer, he'd then just be taking an advantage of a demand he perceived/discovered. It'd be a scam if he just took the money and ran.

 

Are there people offering to do this for free for complete strangers? Would you trust them more? At least with a money trail you have a venue to try and do something if you actually get scammed. 

 

No, I wouldn't use a service like that. No, I wouldn't recommend anyone else used a service like that. But selling off your experience/skills is not a scam, it's just business. 

[BleachedFur]

28 minutes ago, tatte said:

If any credible company doesn't offer the service,

He's even less credible because his offers are likely part of tax evasion.

 

28 minutes ago, tatte said:

re there people offering to do this for free for complete strangers? Would you trust them more?

Absolutely. People offer their custom GPU BIOSes for free.

[tatte]

4 hours ago, BleachedFur said:

Absolutely. People offer their custom GPU BIOSes for free.

How is it more trustworthy if it's free? Out of curiosity, do you feel like art should also always be free?

[mr moose]

3 minutes ago, tatte said:

How is it more trustworthy if it's free? Out of curiosity, do you feel like art should also always be free?

The issue not with what he is offering but the way it is offered, either it's a voluntary donation or it's a fee. By trying to pretend it's one when in reality it's not he is trying to hide something, get away from a rule or regulation or simply make people feel like he is offering a valuable community service that deserves donations.  All of these are disingenuous to a lesser or greater extent.

[tatte]

15 minutes ago, mr moose said:

The issue not with what he is offering but the way it is offered, either it's a voluntary donation or it's a fee. By trying to pretend it's one when in reality it's not he is trying to hide something, get away from a rule or regulation or simply make people feel like he is offering a valuable community service that deserves donations.  All of these are disingenuous to a lesser or greater extent.

That's not how OP approached this, they called someone a scammer because they want to get paid for their work. That's not scamming, it can be greedy for sure, but I feel like someone who looks into something like this should be smart enough to understand their options. It's not the same as people selling for example ancient Macs for ten times what their real market value is, that's a scam because they know some people only see it's an Apple product and expensive, so they go for it. What that guy sells isn't shiny, you actually need to know what you're after and want to get it done.

 

I went to see what the fuss is about myself, and I got a cancer from that forum theme.

Quote

To keep the work running, donation is required!

It could as well be lazy English, could be using the vaguely wrong word because that's what PayPal uses (let me know if PayPal has a separate public "Pay me!" -form option). I don't really care. There are places where donations are taxed, or he could make so little it's not taxable, so aren't we just guessing here? In the end he could call it whatever he wants and still just as easily skip the taxes. That's still at least not scamming the customer, and who loves the tax agency? 

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, tatte said:

That's not how OP approached this, they called someone a scammer because they want to get paid for their work. That's not scamming, it can be greedy for sure, but I feel like someone who looks into something like this should be smart enough to understand their options. It's not the same as people selling for example ancient Macs for ten times what their real market value is, that's a scam because they know some people only see it's an Apple product and expensive, so they go for it. What that guy sells isn't shiny, you actually need to know what you're after and want to get it done.

 

I went to see what the fuss is about myself, and I got a cancer from that forum theme.

It could as well be lazy English, could be using the vaguely wrong word because that's what PayPal uses (let me know if PayPal has a separate public "Pay me!" -form option). I don't really care. There are places where donations are taxed, or he could make so little it's not taxable, so aren't we just guessing here? In the end he could call it whatever he wants and still just as easily skip the taxes. That's still at least not scamming the customer, and who loves the tax agency? 

It's not lazy English if he refuses to help these who don't "donate". 

[tatte]

1 minute ago, mr moose said:

It's not lazy English if he refuses to help these who don't "donate". 

The world is full of break rooms with "optional" coffee funds.

[mr moose]

2 minutes ago, tatte said:

The world is full of break rooms with "optional" coffee funds.

and?  If you aren't allowed coffee without paying the optional fee then it isn't an optional fee,  same here, this bloke is using the term donation disingenuously.

[tatte]

Just now, mr moose said:

and?  If you aren't allowed coffee without paying the optional fee then it isn't an optional fee,  same here, this bloke is using the term donation disingenuously.

If you want a service that you are expected to pay for, it doesn't really matter what the transaction is called. When the rules are clear, you can either take it or leave. He's clear about his rules and delivers a service, so it's not a scam. You don't need to be happy about the price, you don't need to be happy about his marketing skills, but that doesn't make trading a knowledge/skill for a compensation a scam. Like I said, this is not how OP approached this, and I don't care about some word.

[mr moose]

3 minutes ago, tatte said:

If you want a service that you are expected to pay for, it doesn't really matter what the transaction is called. When the rules are clear, you can either take it or leave. He's clear about his rules and delivers a service, so it's not a scam. You don't need to be happy about the price, you don't need to be happy about his marketing skills, but that doesn't make trading a knowledge/skill for a compensation a scam. Like I said, this is not how OP approached this, and I don't care about some word.

That's exactly what is being contested here, that the rules are not clear,that  the service being offered is presented as something that it isn't quite.  Words can insinuate quite a lot when used in the right manner. There is a reason your coffee jar presents as optional when in reality it isn't.

[TechyBen]

6 hours ago, mr moose said:

Some people get really angry when you show people you don't need to pay for something.  Especially when this character is relying on people thinking it is too hard to do themselves.

Nothing wrong with offering a paid for service. Is something wrong with being horrid to customers, lying to them as to what service you provide, and lying to them about if they can do it themselves.

 

I've cleaned floors and windows. People can do it themselves, but were happy to pay me to do it... I did not hold them to ransom though. But you are right, it's their "character" that makes this a scummy move, instead of a proper service to others.

[Curious Pineapple]

I have a laptop with a locked down BIOS and has been software restricted to 2GB of memory.

 

Would I try modify the BIOS myself to remove the restriction? No.

 

Would I pay for someone to do it for me? Probably.

[BleachedFur]

7 hours ago, tatte said:

do you feel like art should also always be free?

Not at all. I pay for art all the time. I paid for the piece I'm using as my avatar.

 

6 hours ago, mr moose said:

and?  If you aren't allowed coffee without paying the optional fee then it isn't an optional fee,  same here, this bloke is using the term donation disingenuously.

honestly here I'm agreeing with the guy that has 10k+ forum posts lol

 

2 hours ago, Curious Pineapple said:

Would I pay for someone to do it for me? Probably.

I'll do it for you for free, since I learned how to do it.

[tatte]

15 hours ago, mr moose said:

that the rules are not clear

Doesn’t every page there say that you have to pay? How is that not clear? Or are we back to my lazy English hypothesis? I thought your problem was him calling an apparently mandatory thing something that is usually a voluntary thing, now it sounds like you too would be arguing that it could be unclear? 

 

How dense would you have to be to approach that guy and expect free work from him? I honestly think he has put up enough reminders...  ”Oh, those? They couldn’t possibly mean me, so that guy is a scammer!!”

[mr moose]

26 minutes ago, tatte said:

Doesn’t every page there say that you have to pay? How is that not clear? Or are we back to my lazy English hypothesis? I thought your problem was him calling an apparently mandatory thing something that is usually a voluntary thing, now it sounds like you too would be arguing that it could be unclear? 

using the word donation when he is actually charge a fee is intentional ambiguity.  I suspect, like the OP, that there is a specific reason he chose the word donation rather than fee.

26 minutes ago, tatte said:

How dense would you have to be to approach that guy and expect free work from him? I honestly think he has put up enough reminders...  ”Oh, those? They couldn’t possibly mean me, so that guy is a scammer!!”

I don't think Intelligence really comes into it. 

[Falkentyne]

This thread needs to be locked and the original poster punished or worse.

SVET has been around for YEARS and has been modding MSI laptops since the Kepler days.  He was the only person capable of modding MSI laptop Nvidia vbioses and changing the fan curves.  He's a lot more knowledgeable about hardware than most people on these forums.  I even donated for the registered version of the old vbios editor (when I had a 570m).

Reporting the OP for troll posting.

[mr moose]

4 minutes ago, Falkentyne said:

This thread needs to be locked and the original poster punished or worse.

SVET has been around for YEARS and has been modding MSI laptops since the Kepler days.  He was the only person capable of modding MSI laptop Nvidia vbioses and changing the fan curves.  He's a lot more knowledgeable about hardware than most people on these forums.  I even donated for the registered version of the old vbios editor (when I had a 570m).

Reporting the OP for troll posting.

Are people not allowed to discuss if they think something is inappropriate?   I get the OP is a bit full throttle, but the underlying discussion is not ban worthy.

[BleachedFur]

7 hours ago, Falkentyne said:

SVET has been around for YEARS and has been modding MSI laptops since the Kepler days.  He was the only person capable of modding MSI laptop Nvidia vbioses and changing the fan curves. 

So what?

 

7 hours ago, mr moose said:

I get the OP is a bit full throttle,

"chill" is not a word anybody I know uses to describe me

 

7 hours ago, mr moose said:

but the underlying discussion is not ban worthy.

if anything Svet should be banned for "mandatory donation"

 

Donation:

something that is given to a charity, especially a sum of money.
"a tax-deductible donation of $200"
synonyms:    gift, contribution, subscription, present, handout, grant, offering, gratuity, endowment
 

Donations are given without expectation of receiving in return.

 

Payment:

an amount paid or payable.
"an interim compensation payment of $2500"
synonyms:    installment, premium, amount, remittance
something given as a reward or in recompense for something done.

Payment is given in exchange for an item or service.

 

"donations" are never mandatory and you get nothing in return. Payments are required to get anything in return.

[Curious Pineapple]

Lets call it a gratuity then, problem solved.

[BleachedFur]

18 minutes ago, Curious Pineapple said:

Lets call it a gratuity then, problem solved.

or the asshat can just be honet that you have to pay him to get an unlocked BIOS.

 

The whole reason I made all this was because of that. I was like "nah, this cost money? screw that, I'll do it myself for free" because if he can do it then so can I.

 

In one of his PMs he says he has his own "tools", which I highly doubt. If he was really that skilled with reverse engineering and BIOSes he would't need to charge people to do it because he'd have  a well paying JOB doing so.