How to do a BIOS upgrade ( idiots guide )

[will_s]

Have a Stix X99 and am going to do an upgrade of BIOS ( Chino recommended in another thread ). Now am always hesitant about doing this so I want
to get everything right even if that means asking for an idiots guide to doing an upgrade from within BIOS. Now I assume its put it on a USB stick and then go into BIOS
and select something and then sitback and twiddle my thumbs ? There is a BIOS button on the back panel so do I stick the USB drive in ...boot and hit that button....
now I dont need to b:oe told to put a finger on the power button and press to turn on but from there simple simon would like it explained 🙂

[Chino]

1. Make sure your USB pendrive is empty and FAT32 formatted.
2. Download the BIOS from the support page.
3. Extract BIOS to your USB pendrive. It should be the only file on it.
4. Restart your system and go into the BIOS.
5. Navigate to the EZ Flash Utility and start the flashing process there.
6. The system will restart 1 to 2 times on its own depending on which BIOS you're flashing to.

[will_s]

thanks.....still just curious as to what the BIOS button on the back is for..

going to upgrade it right now

edit: the BIOS upgrade didnt kill anything but I couldnt get PC to boot to Windows. Problem was it wouldnt make the M.2 drive the bootable drive....changed
it in the options then somehow lost all of that on later attempts so ended up hit the power button and turned the PC off and removed my 3 SSD drives and behoild it now sees the
M.2 drive and it boots into Windows.

also it would be nice if you had a turn PC off feature in the BIOS ie. save and power off

[kkn]

will_s wrote:
thanks.....still just curious as to what the BIOS button on the back is for..

its a bios flashback. ( as stated in the user manual )
in case you have problems whit a bios flash and cant get in to bios.
you can take a older bios file and stick it in the stated usb port and flash to an older or current bios to recover.

[kkn]

when flashing bios, it all goes back to default.
kinda like a clean install of a driver for example.

[will_s]

so can you take a new BIOS and stick the USB into that port and flash it or is it only for recovery ?

[Eric_F]

You can use BIOS Flashback for both upgrades and for recovery. Your choice. EZ flash utility in the BIOS GUI interface is easy and fast to work with, and gives you some visual feedback as you set up the upgrade. BIOS Flashback is totally automated and works from low-level firmware on the board, and it seems to take longer to complete -- but it's great to use if you want to be 100% sure that the bios is completely reset to default and re-written with the new flash. Just another feature that puts ASUS boards at the top, IMHO.

Another hint -- if you have a lot of custom settings in your BIOS like me, you can use the utility in the BIOS screens to save a text copy of all your current settings. Once the new BIOS is flashed, it's easy to go down the list and re-enter your settings. (Remember, the BIOS configuration backup can only re-load to the same version that was saved, not to a new version. So you need to use the text output to record your configuration and re-enter by hand in the new version. Not hard at all once you get the hang of it.)

[will_s]

ok...thanks, at the moment I am doing it the old way and using a pen and writing in the manual 🙂

[Martin_J]

Can I update BIOS with the .CAP file that is in the archive or do I need to first use a renamer utility to rename it? (I know I need to extract it from the archive but shal I rename it?)

[Martin_J]

I've done it! And I used the .CAP file. So far so good...

PS
I asked because I remember that when I was assembling my comp some 2 ys ago, and flashing, I had to rename the BIOS I was flashing then with some sort of utility from the ASUS website...