Motherboard Dual BIOS

[b1ack1otus]

This post is simply a "help" for those who may have had the same problem as me with corrupt bios.

 

I'm not sure if anyone have posted any information about this but I thought this would help anyone who is having any problems. 

 

I own the Gigabyte Z77X UD5H motherboard and last month, I had a problem flashing the bios and my main bios got corrupted. Some motherboard comes with dual bios (Main and Backup Bios) and this will help you if there is a corruption in the either of the bios. 

 

Some options that I searched was to press ALT+F10 or ALT+F12 right after the splash screen (logo shows up) for the bios to copy (F10 = backup to main and F12 = main to backup). However, this did not work for me as some people mentioned that your keyboard needs to be connected to a PS2 port and the timing was quite tricky.

 

If clicking ALT+Fxx did not work for you, shut down your computer and from a cold boot, click the power button and keep holding it. Your computer should go to the splash screen and while holding the power button, a message should show up saying it is copying the bios from the backup; which at this point you can release the power button. (Takes about 5-10 mins I believe to copy the backup Bios)

 

Please note: 

- You can try booting up from your backup, which should work. However, if you were to corrupt the backup Bios, I'm not sure what you can do at this point. (Maybe the community of LinusTechTips can help out even further)

- You can also update the backup bios. With Gigabyte, I was able to do it through Q-Flash and I believe @BIOS software will work as well but needs to boot into desktop.

- I tried clearing CMOS and taking out battery and this was no go

- I tried only booting with one stick of RAM or no stick at all, still a no go

 

 

I hope this can help some of you out there and avoid the amount of frustration that I had with the BIOS. Maybe if others were to post solutions if they had any errors, in order to help others, that would be great.

 

Happy computing,

b1ack1otus

[JAKEBAB]

ive always wondered if u corrupt your bios but have another once u boot into the back up can u restore the corrupt one or is it always dead u cant fix it?

[KR_king]

Nice to know.

 

I have a Z68X-UD3P-B3 myself and mine switches automatically to the backup if the main bios won't boot.

[b1ack1otus]

ive always wondered if u corrupt your bios but have another once u boot into the back up can u restore the corrupt one or is it always dead u cant fix it?

So, for my case I was able to restore the corrupted bios with the backup one.

 

Short answer: it's not dead.

 

Nice to know.

 

I have a Z68X-UD3P-B3 myself and mine switches automatically to the backup if the main bios won't boot.

 

Yes, I also read that this was a feature. But in my case, it didn't do it so I was left doing my own research