BIOS UPDATE FLASH DRIVE METHOD NOT WORKING PLEASE HELP

[Striddez]

Please help. I recently purchased a new CPU and GPU. I finished installing them and my next step is to update my Bios for my MSI B450 Tomahawk Motherboard. I no longer have my old CPU so I cannot update bios using the M-Flash method so I have to use a flash drive with the flash bios button on the back of my PC.

 

 I have followed every single step and troubleshoot feedback to make sure I have the right USB Drives, formats, file names, everything related to the flash drive requirements or suggestions. None of them have worked, I’ve tried 7 different flash drives. I’ve also tried putting them on different ports to see if it would work but nothing happened. Every time I try to update it, the cooler turns on then off, the red light blinks 3 times and then stays solid. I let it run for at least 15 minutes but nothing happened either that time. I’ve tried resetting my ram sticks, as well as the CMOS battery reset as recommended but nothing happened. I’ve looked everywhere and there is nothing to help me on where to go from here. What do I do? 

 

Do all the components besides PSU have to disconnected in order to run the bios update or can all components be plugged in? 

 

The following are all my specs: 

• MSI B450 Tomahawk Motherboard
• AMD Ryzen 9 5900x 4th Gen 12-Core, 24-Threads CPU 
• GeForce RTX 3070 Founders Edition GPU
• T-FORCE Vulcan Z 8GB Ram Sticks (x4) 
• 600 W Bronze PSU 

 

Any help would be so greatly appreciated. I’m losing my mind and have been at this for hours now. 

[Thomas4]

Try this

 

Turn off your computer and then power it on again but immediately press the 'Delete' key repeatedly until your computer loads into the BIOS menu.  If you move the mouse to the bottom of the screen, a menu will pop up.  Choose Q-Flash from this menu.  This will open the Q-Flash app.

 

From within Q-Flash, select the new BIOS file you saved to your USB drive.  Follow the instructions to flash the BIOS.  If asked if you would like to flash the BIOS 'Intact' please select this option.  If asked if you would also like to update the backup BIOS, please select this option.

 

The flash process will take a few minutes and the PC must not be interrupted during the flash.  Once complete, the PC will reboot.  Sometimes it may power on and off a couple of times before re-starting.

 

[Striddez]

15 minutes ago, Thomas4 said:

Try this

 

Turn off your computer and then power it on again but immediately press the 'Delete' key repeatedly until your computer loads into the BIOS menu.  If you move the mouse to the bottom of the screen, a menu will pop up.  Choose Q-Flash from this menu.  This will open the Q-Flash app.

 

From within Q-Flash, select the new BIOS file you saved to your USB drive.  Follow the instructions to flash the BIOS.  If asked if you would like to flash the BIOS 'Intact' please select this option.  If asked if you would also like to update the backup BIOS, please select this option.

 

The flash process will take a few minutes and the PC must not be interrupted during the flash.  Once complete, the PC will reboot.  Sometimes it may power on and off a couple of times before re-starting.

 

My computer won’t POST though, the keyboard doesn’t turn on either? Is this only for if my PC POSTs? 

[Crunchy Dragon]

According to the documentation I can find, it seems like you should just have your PSU plugged into CPU_PWR and ATX_PWR, and nothing else installed.

Turn on the power supply without booting the system, and then hit the BIOS flash button.

 

This also assumes that your USB drive is correctly formatted as FAT32, with a single partition, and that you extracted the file from the .zip you downloaded and renamed it to MSI.ROM

I'll go ahead and assume for simplicity that MSI probably doesn't want to have anything else on the USB drive you're using to flash the BIOS, but that isn't explicitly covered in their documentation.

 

Page 40 of motherboard manual

This thread from MSI's forum talks a little more in-depth about some possible remedies.

[Mark Kaine]

56 minutes ago, Thomas4 said:

Try this

 

Turn off your computer and then power it on again but immediately press the 'Delete' key repeatedly until your computer loads into the BIOS menu.  If you move the mouse to the bottom of the screen, a menu will pop up.  Choose Q-Flash from this menu.  This will open the Q-Flash app.

 

From within Q-Flash, select the new BIOS file you saved to your USB drive.  Follow the instructions to flash the BIOS.  If asked if you would like to flash the BIOS 'Intact' please select this option.  If asked if you would also like to update the backup BIOS, please select this option.

 

The flash process will take a few minutes and the PC must not be interrupted during the flash.  Once complete, the PC will reboot.  Sometimes it may power on and off a couple of times before re-starting.

 

the thing is im pretty sure that doesn't work without a compatible cpu, hence they have this flashback button...

 

[Cyberat]

You can hold the Bios Key till you're in the Bios nowadays.

But if this a non-cpu flash bios of the new type, then yeah, you don't connect any drives or the case.

I wouldn't even install the MB into case till I get an out of box test post.