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I Made a Big Mistake - Asus, can You Help?

JohnAb
Level 17

Hello,

I have the 690 Hero and after upgrading to BIOS 2305 I started getting all sorts of problems with iCue and my RGB fans and control hubs. I spent a couple of days trying to find the problem and in the end I thought that 2305 was causing the problem. So, despite the BIOS being locked, I found a way to go back to 2204 using an unlocked 2305 BIOS on overclock.net. Then I directly flashed 2204 using a tool called FTPW64.exe. That all worked fine, but then I discovered that my iCue problems were related to HWInfo, not the BIOS, so I went back to 2305. Since then, I used the WMIC command in Windows and discovered that my BIOS no longer contains the serial number etc.  

Everything is still working perfectly, but it seems that when I flashed the official  2204 directly to my motherboard, the serial number and UUID were not retained within the BIOS. Although 2305 installed fine, obviously the information had already been lost. 

So yes, my fault, but is there any way to get that information restored? My motherboard is registered with Asus and I could supply the serial number etc from the box and motherboard sticker. Is there any way that a BIOS could be programmed with the correct information so that I could re-flash it and get everything back correctly?

I'm really hopeful that a kind Asus engineer could take pity on me and supply a correctly programmed BIOS version?

Or, do I even need to be concerned? After all, everything is working great, but it would be nice to be able correct my silly mistake.  

Many thanks, please let me know. I'd be very grateful! 

 

 

 

 

Z690 Hero, 12900K, BIOS 3701, MEI 2407.6.1.0, ME Firmware 16.1.32.2473, 7000X Case, RM1000x PSU, ASUS TUF OC 3090TI, 2 x 16GB Corsair RAM @ 5200MHz, Windows 11 Pro 23H2, Corsair H150i Elite AIO, 4x Corsair RGB fans, 3x M.2 NVME drives, 2x SATA SSDs, 2x SATA HDs.
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9 REPLIES 9

Murph_9000
Level 14

Going by https://www.ami.com/bios-uefi-utilities/, it sounds like the DMIEDIT tool can probably setup those values for you.  I didn't see any public way to get that tool from AMI, but Intel distribute a version of it which might be worth a look.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/19504/intel-aptio-v-uefi-firmware-integrator-tools....

It's possible that version might be locked to only work with Intel NUC boards.  It's just something I stumbled across a while ago, I really don't know if it's likely to be useful for your situation.

 

JohnAb
Level 17

Thanks for the advice and links Murph.

Those tools might be beyond my expertise and I'd be nervous of making things worse. Getting the serial number back in might not be too bad (I have that on the motherboard box ) but I don't know how to get the original UUID. I wonder if it's just a randomly generated value, or whether it's calculated from some other unique values (maybe including the serial number). 

I have managed to save my current BIOS, but as you can see, the values unique to my motherboard are no longer contained within it. Does it even matter? (since everything is working fine).

 

download.png

 

 

 

Z690 Hero, 12900K, BIOS 3701, MEI 2407.6.1.0, ME Firmware 16.1.32.2473, 7000X Case, RM1000x PSU, ASUS TUF OC 3090TI, 2 x 16GB Corsair RAM @ 5200MHz, Windows 11 Pro 23H2, Corsair H150i Elite AIO, 4x Corsair RGB fans, 3x M.2 NVME drives, 2x SATA SSDs, 2x SATA HDs.

JohnAb
Level 17

Just a thought, currently Windows does give me a UUID value, but it's a very simple string of digits which is mostly 0's. So it maybe looks like a 'default' value that Windows has generated. I do have an OS backup from before I ruined the BIOS. If I restored that temporarily and queried the UUID again, I wonder if I could see the original value?  

Z690 Hero, 12900K, BIOS 3701, MEI 2407.6.1.0, ME Firmware 16.1.32.2473, 7000X Case, RM1000x PSU, ASUS TUF OC 3090TI, 2 x 16GB Corsair RAM @ 5200MHz, Windows 11 Pro 23H2, Corsair H150i Elite AIO, 4x Corsair RGB fans, 3x M.2 NVME drives, 2x SATA SSDs, 2x SATA HDs.

Murph_9000
Level 14

I doubt restoring Windows from an older point will change the reported info, as I suspect Windows is just reading that from the BIOS either on boot or on demand.  It's possible that Windows might write the data to a log file somewhere, but I really don't know where that would be.  I had a look at my most recent reboot in Event Viewer, and it doesn't seem to log any of that stuff on boot in there.  I.e. if the backup contained a logfile or something, maybe, but I don't think the reported value would be restored from backup.  Another possible source is if you've saved a report file from one of the tools like AIDA64, CPU-Z, or HWiNFO64.

For general system operation, I suspect the board serial and UUID don't matter much.  Where it could creep in is things like authentication, cryptography, DRM, licensing, the LSA, the SAM db, etc.  It may well also have done something to your Ethernet MAC addresses.  I don't know if the Ethernet MAC chips on the boards have an address programmed into them, or if it's assigned to them from main BIOS storage.

There's some licensing and enablement for the advanced audio features that ASUS supply which could possibly be impacted.  I don't know if they use those DTS keys shown in your screenshot above for that, or if they just base it on detecting the board type.

On my Crosshair VIII board, I'm seeing the UUID that HWiNFO64 reports being derived from my two Ethernet MAC addresses.  AIDA64 reports two different UUIDs, a "Universal Unique ID" and a "Universal Unique ID (GUID)", both of which contain my two MAC addresses prefixed by a 32 bit number.  The HWiNFO64 UUID matches the AIDA64 GUID.  They look like this in AIDA64:

Universal Unique ID xxxxxxxx-04421Aaa-bbc00442-1Aaabbc1
Universal Unique ID (GUID) yyyyyyyy-4204-aa1A-bbc0-04421Aaabbc1

xxxxxxxx and yyyyyyyy are 32 bit numbers.  I don't know if they are random, a standard prefix, or what.  My MAC addresses are 04-42-1A-aa-bb-c0 and 04-42-1A-aa-bb-c1 (04-42-1A is a vendor block allocated to ASUS).

My Intel AX210 WiFi M.2 card uses an Intel MAC address that I'm pretty sure is stored in the WiFi card's BIOS/NVRAM, not the motherboard.  It's probably printed on the card's label, but I'd have to disassemble the motherboard to see it.

There's no guarantee that your board's UUID was similarly derived from the Ethernet MAC addresses, so it's maybe not all that helpful but gives you an idea of what it looks like on another board.

Curiously, the DMI serial number for my board is a decimal number that does not obviously relate to the product serial number on the barcode label stuck to the board (which is alphanumeric).  There's a barcode label between my CPU socket and RAM which has my second Ethernet MAC address on it.

Thanks for your extra thoughts. I really appreciate the time you have spent thinking about this. Very interesting. You're probably right about a Windows restore and looking for the UUID not helping. It was only a thought on my part. 

Since I messed up 2204 (and the subsequent 2305) BIOS data I had no problems at the time. Since then I have reinstalled Windows from scratch. It activated fine (I did use my MS login at setup), have had no issues with Microsoft accounts for personal use or work, games (like Modern Warfare 3 which might use some 'ID' validation in addition to logging in), Bitlocker encryption on my extra drives (I use passwords), BIOS updates (already updated to 2305) and even the DTS Sound Unbound App came up as licensed when it was installed. Network access to my NAS for example is also fine (through WiFi, I don't use ethernet). No issues whatsoever that I have identified so far, which does seem surprising. 

Perhaps I've either been very lucky in some way, or the missing BIOS info just isn't important from a practical perspective. I admit that I'm at the limits of my knowledge for how some of this stuff is supposed to work. 

 

 

 

Z690 Hero, 12900K, BIOS 3701, MEI 2407.6.1.0, ME Firmware 16.1.32.2473, 7000X Case, RM1000x PSU, ASUS TUF OC 3090TI, 2 x 16GB Corsair RAM @ 5200MHz, Windows 11 Pro 23H2, Corsair H150i Elite AIO, 4x Corsair RGB fans, 3x M.2 NVME drives, 2x SATA SSDs, 2x SATA HDs.

Murph_9000
Level 14

If you're looking at the other UUID in Settings > System > About (ms-settings:about), that seems to be a software ID (i.e. not tied to hardware) for the Windows install.  Presumably randomly generated at install time.

JohnAb
Level 17

Is anybody from Asus able to comment on whether you can help with correcting my BIOS please?

Z690 Hero, 12900K, BIOS 3701, MEI 2407.6.1.0, ME Firmware 16.1.32.2473, 7000X Case, RM1000x PSU, ASUS TUF OC 3090TI, 2 x 16GB Corsair RAM @ 5200MHz, Windows 11 Pro 23H2, Corsair H150i Elite AIO, 4x Corsair RGB fans, 3x M.2 NVME drives, 2x SATA SSDs, 2x SATA HDs.

Jiaszzz_ROG
Customer Service Agent

Hello, @JohnAb .

Based on the information you provided, we recommend contacting ASUS- support and sending the motherboard for repair.
However, the problem seems not to affect actual use, please consider if there is any maintenance demand.

Thank you.

As the local holiday is ongoing, there may be further delays in responses.
We appreciate your patience in advance.

JohnAb
Level 17

OK, I will do that and see what they say. I don't think there is any need to send the motherboard back for repair, but I'll ask if they might be able to help with the BIOS somehow. Thanks. 

Z690 Hero, 12900K, BIOS 3701, MEI 2407.6.1.0, ME Firmware 16.1.32.2473, 7000X Case, RM1000x PSU, ASUS TUF OC 3090TI, 2 x 16GB Corsair RAM @ 5200MHz, Windows 11 Pro 23H2, Corsair H150i Elite AIO, 4x Corsair RGB fans, 3x M.2 NVME drives, 2x SATA SSDs, 2x SATA HDs.