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BIOS updated by itself...?

gitkeeper
Level 7
Hey all,

Trying to understand if there is any way the bios on my 703GS Scar laptop would update itself without prompt.

I ask because:

I left my house today for 3 hours, leaving the laptop in the lock screen
I came back to find my bios password prompt, indicating the machine had restarted
After putting the password in, the machine restarted, and re-asked for the password
After entering it a second time, I progress bar and bios updating message came up
After two more bios passwords (self reset in between), windows is back up and running.


I haven't installed the Asus bios flash windows utility on this fresh windows install. Nor did I ever download a bios update for this machine.

I'm like 90% sure my roommate's been messing with my lappy - this kind of confirms it...I was just hoping someone might point out that our laptops just reflash their bios by themselves sometimes so I can stop worrying here.

Thanks in advance for any advice.
k
634 Views
28 REPLIES 28

Well, I watched with my own eyes my BIOS update after returning home. Only reason it didn't do it without my knowing is the BIOS password is installed so it couldn't start until I entered it.

But the laptop had no Asus Live software on it, and I definitely did not request the update. Nevertheless, it re-wrote the BIOS. No troll.

Maybe you could open your own ticket with Asus and ask if this is possible, because multiple Asus support employees have now told me BIOS updates are delivered via Windows Update and that this is normal and I shouldn't be alarmed.

I just hate the idea of a compromised windows install leading to your BIOS getting hacked. I've searched pretty hard and cant find a way to rewrite the entire BIOS image without sending it back to Asus (ok fine). But I also cant find any information on setting the write-bit to disabled to prevent software like windows from accessing the flash writer.

Masenshi
Level 7
Hi, just want to share my experience in case there are other users come across this thread from Google search.

The OP didn't lie, the same thing happened to me on my Asus X550VXK laptop.

I don't have Asus Live Update on my system, but Windows Update can automatically push the BIOS. I left my laptop powered on last night, then when I woke up it's already rebooted. When I checked Windows Update history, I found Asustek Firmware 10.1.2.307 already installed. Rebooted and open up my BIOS, it's already updated to 307.

Same happened with me today. Bios update was installed on my GL703GE by itself, after that notebook had 3x bootloop. I was super spooked after this happened :mad: . Hopefully everything works fine after that. I also checked Windows Update history and found what asustek computer inc. - Firmware - 10.0.16299.316 was installed :).
Any suggestions how to prevent this? Thanks

Guys.

I also have this problem. Windows is installing the firmware update (BIOS) on my laptop by itself.
I have a SCAR III G731GW and windows keeps installing the 307 ver BIOS. Problem is that with this BIOS i get a lot of BSOD's. Sometimes very often. If I manually roll back to the previous BIOS 306, everything works just fine until the next restart when the BIOS updates by itself to the newest version 307.
I tried to disable automatic windows updates via group policy, but no luck. Windows keeps pushing firmware update like crazy.

I am still mesmerized about how bad the Asus software is. Really they have 0 quality control.

Any ideea? how to avoid the BIOS updating

Thanks.

SpyderBlades
Level 7
I had the same thing happen with my Asus Zephyrus GX701GWR. Windows update wanted a restart to install something so I obliged... I was pretty surprised when it went into EZ flash and upgraded the bios.

Problem is, it bricked my GPU by corrupting the registry with a host controller or something like that. I had to reset windows completely to get my GPU back. After the reset, the bios is still the new 306 version and it sucks. The fans will randomly cut out for 10 seconds and then kick back in.

If I can't flash it back and get it working properly again, I'm going to just RMA this piece of crap. Starting to really regret buying Asus this time.

Curiously, I was in the middle of some work this evening when my PC suddenly went to black screen with some disk activity - then it rebooted, showing the message "BIOS is updating. Do not shut down or reset the system to prevent system bootup failure."

This happened twice - the routine did something, rebooted, showed same message then rebooted, then POSTed as usual.

The board is a Maximus XI Hero, fairly recently installed.

There were no Windows prompts or warnings, nor did I request this to be done.

I have Armoury crate installed (which comes from the motherboard's UEFI WPBT portion of the firmware as I understand it?!) -- frankly I find this ridiculous. I did wonder how Armoury Crate magically appeared after first boot, I suspected it was just Windows Update being helpful at the time so didn't investigate further.

Surely a BIOS update shouldn't just happen without warning in the middle of the evening? Have all the usual protections, antivirus, firewall and I carefully monitor my system's activity. Very curious, and I'm worried about it happening again in future. I can see two BIOS updates available (as .zip files) in Armoury in the BIOS section, the most recent is from last year which I'm already running.

As my board and CPU was OCed as a pair by the retailer, I want to prevent any automated or blind BIOS updates which might destabilise the overclock or cause other nasties. Quite worried now that I have a board which just updates its own firmware as and when it feels like it. Or is this something to do with a bad OC partly corrupting the BIOS and Flashback is automatically restoring it to a good state? The feedback on-screen was useless so I don't know what's going on. There was no sign of a firmware update in Windows Update history though...

The machine was running stably with nothing intensive going on, temps all normal and clock speeds well in reasonable limits.
Hi mum!

Same issues...

My Asus G731GW autoupdated the bios (no prompts...no warning) from 307 to 308. Each time this happens my CPU undervolt and underclock settings no longer work, and the laptop heats up too much while playing games.
I flashed back to 307 a few times, but it keeps updating randomly.
Uninstalled MyASUS and disabled Windows Update and any autoupdate/startup service and task....not sure where this is coming from.
Can anyone help with this?

Edit: I looked at my Device Manager and the "Firmware" tab indicated that the system needs to be restarted...So instead I rolled back the driver.
Let's hope this prevents any autoupdates when I restrart. I will report back if this DOESN'T work.

championtuck
Level 7
hi i am able to help.

just follow this instruction.

go to device manager - firmware - system firmware - properties and disable it

restore to older version

try to restart and the windows will not update as u already disable it in device manager.

all the best cheers 🙂

Windows update just decided to update my BIOS form .307 to .308 and kept on updating it on every restart, besides I was manually reverting to .307. What I did was to navigate to C:\Windows\Firmware\{many symbols, blah, blah blah}\ and erased the .308 file. No problem afterward.