Flashing BIOS on prebuilt system?

[Brio]

Hello everybody,

 

I'm looking to flash the bios on my system in an effort to solve a few display issues/system hang on booting my system. (Sometimes when powering on the system my two monitor displays fail to receive a signal, if they're powered on when the system is turned on. Then sometimes the system won't post completely unless I take out the CMOS battery for a few seconds and drain the system of power) I've been doing my research for a few months now, and feel comfortable enough to flash the BIOS. The catch is figuring out the version to flash to...as CPUZ/UEFI says, the current version is American Megatrends Inc. 0404. This is all well and good but on the BIOS/Firmware page under the Asus Support Site, there's a note for the most recent BIOS that says "*This BIOS is for Latest Win8-ready model only. If your Desktop current BIOS file is XXXX.ROM, please do not upgrade your BIOS to this version or other XXXX.CAP version."

 

(I do know if you don't have to flash the BIOS you shouldn't. And yes, I'm aware of the dangers, it's just wanting to solve this niggling issue during booting up as well as the desire to keep things up to date as best as possible that has brought me to this point.)

 

The American Megatrends Inc. site doesn't seem to have a clear BIOS update area for my system so I've stuck to ASUS which is where the system is from originally. It's essentially a prebuilt with some modifications: i.e. new power supply. graphics card, SSD, Windows 8.1 install. The product name is ASUS Essentio Desktop PC Model: CM6830 cir. 2012. Long story short, I could use some help either determining if my system uses a .rom or .cap BIOS file, or which version of BIOS to update to. I've got a UPS hooked to my system, somewhat familiar with the guts of my little workstation, and not afraid to poke around and tweak. Any help or direction on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

 

(Hopefully this is the right place to ask. It's a toss up between here and the troubleshooting forum)

 

[Mira Yurizaki]

I recently updated my BIOS because I was in a "eh, why not?" mood and it came in a CAP file.

 

Not really sure if that answers your question because I've seen it go the other way in older systems.

[Brio]

Just now, M.Yurizaki said:

I recently updated my BIOS because I was in a "eh, why not?" mood and it came in a CAP file.

 

Not really sure if that answers your question because I've seen it go the other way in older systems.

Not quite no, but I do know that most new BIOS's (at least that I've seen) seem to be CAP files. If I could figure out which one mine is currently, then there'd be no problem at all. Google seems to be a bit lacking in the "determining your BIOS file type" department, at least under the search terms I've used.

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, Brio said:

Not quite no, but I do know that most new BIOS's (at least that I've seen) seem to be CAP files. If I could figure out which one mine is currently, then there'd be no problem at all. Google seems to be a bit lacking in the "determining your BIOS file type" department, at least under the search terms I've used.

I'm almost in a "try it and see" mood. But I'm not sure how smart the updater is with regards to making sure it has the right file. Hopefully it's only looking for one or the other file type and you don't have to bother with trying to figure out what type you need.

[Brio]

3 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I'm almost in a "try it and see" mood. But I'm not sure how smart the updater is with regards to making sure it has the right file. Hopefully it's only looking for one or the other file type and you don't have to bother with trying to figure out what type you need.

It certainly would be nice to have an updater that could check for me. So far all I've seen is flashing it manually from a USB drive using E-Z Flash in the UEFI.

[Brio]

So I got in touch with ASUS technical support and they recommended utilizing their Winflash utility to update the BIOS. While their instructions are a little sketchy because they refer to the desktop I'm using as a notebook, I'm going to try out their utility and see what comes of it. The hope is I don't brick the motherboard, but if that's the case, then there'll be a Black Friday motherboard purchase for me in the near future. ㅇㅅㅇ;