Tools to flash and recover BIOS on ASUS P8xxx boards (FD44Editor, FTK)

I realize this thread is about something different, but I have a question ...

Is there any possibility of modifying an Asus motherboard and include a DTS key when one wasn't present before?
I assume that would enable the Realtek drivers to use DTS features, instead of using so called "unlocked" drivers ...

Thanks in advance!
 
Hello Ive got a Asrock Z68 Pro3 Gen3 MB and I need to reflash my bios as I think that me ME is not working correctly ( NO OC).
When I was trying FTK with the reflash of bios it showed me ERROR 26.

I have read the posts that I need to do things, but I am a beginner in this so I dont really understand how to do it.

Please help me out, also Coderush, nice work with your tool. I hope we can fix it!
 
i have a p8z77v-lx, which after various flashing using ezyflash, ai-suite and boot disk flashing utility, is at 2501 version. this is latest official update according to asus. however, in Advanced mode in bios there is version 1208 at bottom of screen. currently running ubuntu, sort of fine, apart from ubuntu thinking it's a eee pc laptop. it's my own build desktop instead.
 
i have a p8z77v-lx, which after various flashing using ezyflash, ai-suite and boot disk flashing utility, is at 2501 version. this is latest official update according to asus. however, in Advanced mode in bios there is version 1208 at bottom of screen. currently running ubuntu, sort of fine, apart from ubuntu thinking it's a eee pc laptop. it's my own build desktop instead.

Hello guys, I need some serious help!! I followed the tutorial for the FTK because my intel ME was corrupt (no turbo ratio, would no go higher than 37 on the multiplier,etc..)

So I decided to read up on the various different forums regarding the FTK. I made a bootable USB and dropped my bios *.CAP file in there and did "reflash" however, it failed because the region was locked. I did "descrefl" and then did "reflash" which was successful. After this, I typed "poweroff" and boom, my motherboard would not restart again!

here is a video of what is going on




PC specs:

Asus Maximus V Formula Z77
i7 3770k
16gb ballistix ddr3
gtx 1080
corsair ax860i PSU

I've troubleshooted the issue with a different power supply and motherboard, and the motherboard seems to be the culprit. I am currently running this cheaper MSI Z77a-G41 just to be able to boot the system back up and everything is working fine. However, I really don't want to lose my expensive motherboard if it means that there is a simple fix.

Thanks alot everyone!!
 
I had the issue where I couldn't see the Turbo Multipliers on my Asus P8Z77-V LE PLUS motherboard to overclock it.

The OP's post was incredible confusing to me, as I am not skilled in any of this stuff. I finally figured out how to get everything working and set up to flash my ME (whatever the hell that is), and I did it successfully and I am happily overclocked now! :)

Here's what I did...

  • Download the Bootable Drive Creator here http://dl.dropbox.com/u/110640285/USBDCR.7z
  • Unzip it and run it with your USB Drive plugged into your PC.
  • For "Device:" select your USB Drive. Select the option "Create Bootable Drive" and select MS-DOS folder, that was unpacked. Press Start and wait for program to finish.
  • Check off the quick format button if you wish to format your device (recommended). Reminder: You will lose all information on the USB Drive when you format it! Backup anything you want to keep on the USB Drive before doing this!!


  • Download the FTK here Release FTK 0.12.0 · LongSoft/FTK · GitHub
  • Unzip and place all of the files inside of the FTK8>DOS folder on your USB Drive root folder. (the USB Drive shouldn't have any folders linking to anything, it should just have all the files there directly)
  • Now download the most recent BIOS Update from ASUS (ver. 0910 for me)
  • Place the BIOS Update file onto the root folder of your USB Drive (same area as all of the FTK files)
  • Rename your BIOS Update file to BIOS.bin

  • Reboot your PC and get into your boot screen (F2 to get into BIOS, and then F7 to open boot menu)
  • Boot from your USB Drive (Not the UEFI one)
  • You should see DOS. Type "MEREFL" - It will do it's thing and once complete you will type "POWEROFF"
  • After your PC turns back on, you should be good to go!
If you get a 201 error, try copying the DOS files from a different FTK#. Example... I tried the files inside of the FTK10>DOS folder and got a 201 error, tried the FTK9>DOS files and got the same error, then tried FTK8>DOS files and it worked for me and my motherboard. Make sure to remove the old existing files from your USB Drive before copying the new files. Also, make sure you keep your BIOS Update file there (the BIOS.bin file).

I only made this post to simplify instructions. I am not an expert and I cannot help further than this.
 
I only made this post to simplify instructions. I am not an expert and I cannot help further than this.


You my Friend, are the BEST GUY in the world!

I cheer up for you

I was sitting in front of this error for 3 days now and you just simply explained how to do it

thank you very much, saved me a lot of time and money!

Greetz
 
Hello CodeRush,

Is it possible for you to make fd44editor compatible with Asus m5a99x evo ?

Thank You
 
I had the issue where I couldn't see the Turbo Multipliers on my Asus P8Z77-V LE PLUS motherboard to overclock it.

The OP's post was incredible confusing to me, as I am not skilled in any of this stuff. I finally figured out how to get everything working and set up to flash my ME (whatever the hell that is), and I did it successfully and I am happily overclocked now! :)

Here's what I did...

  • Download the Bootable Drive Creator here http://dl.dropbox.com/u/110640285/USBDCR.7z
  • Unzip it and run it with your USB Drive plugged into your PC.
  • For "Device:" select your USB Drive. Select the option "Create Bootable Drive" and select MS-DOS folder, that was unpacked. Press Start and wait for program to finish.
  • Check off the quick format button if you wish to format your device (recommended). Reminder: You will lose all information on the USB Drive when you format it! Backup anything you want to keep on the USB Drive before doing this!!


  • Download the FTK here Release FTK 0.12.0 · LongSoft/FTK · GitHub
  • Unzip and place all of the files inside of the FTK8>DOS folder on your USB Drive root folder. (the USB Drive shouldn't have any folders linking to anything, it should just have all the files there directly)
  • Now download the most recent BIOS Update from ASUS (ver. 0910 for me)
  • Place the BIOS Update file onto the root folder of your USB Drive (same area as all of the FTK files)
  • Rename your BIOS Update file to BIOS.bin

  • Reboot your PC and get into your boot screen (F2 to get into BIOS, and then F7 to open boot menu)
  • Boot from your USB Drive (Not the UEFI one)
  • You should see DOS. Type "MEREFL" - It will do it's thing and once complete you will type "POWEROFF"
  • After your PC turns back on, you should be good to go!
If you get a 201 error, try copying the DOS files from a different FTK#. Example... I tried the files inside of the FTK10>DOS folder and got a 201 error, tried the FTK9>DOS files and got the same error, then tried FTK8>DOS files and it worked for me and my motherboard. Make sure to remove the old existing files from your USB Drive before copying the new files. Also, make sure you keep your BIOS Update file there (the BIOS.bin file).

I only made this post to simplify instructions. I am not an expert and I cannot help further than this.
Thank You. Perfect. Working on ASUS SABERTOOTH P67.(y)
 
I too have an Asus Sabertooth P67. I finally got it to work after a few failed 201 attempts. Thanks for the easier to read instructions.

For the sake of a little humor, the problem occurred after I broke down my entire system and washed it in the kitchen sink. I removed the CMOS battery, jumped the power button for about 10 seconds, and washed everything. The overnight fanning of all the washed components must have failed a bit since the board was behind the Antec LanBoy Air case. I thought the air would make it to the MB fine with all those holes. :p Anyway, all OC controls are now restored, and everything is fully functional.
 
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Hi coderush,

I want to ask something. My mobo (ASUS Maximus VIII Ranger) was on service under warranty. Now they return me the mobo with strange MAC Address 88:88:88:88:87:88, UUID all F's and no serial number. Can i fix this with flashing my bios like your suggestion in this guide and does this tools work on my mobo or i should use spi programmer to fix this problem. And if i must use spi programmer can you suggest me what model should i buy and should i buy bios chip also. Also in bios when i enable network stack WOL is greyed out and it says N/A and i can't change that. Here is MEinfo -verbose and MEManuf -verbose files. I suppose that i can remove the bios chip on my motherboard easily because it's socketed. I hope you can help me.
 

Attachments

  • memanuf.txt
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  • meinfo.txt
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Hi Bios Update Cracks!

I am in a weird situation. Had one of our boards (ASUS RIVE) repaired by a third party and it seems it came back with a customized BIOS to revive it. Unfortunately the 2nd BIOS socket is destroyed and it does not post if I switch to it. They also sent us a fresh and current 4901 BIOS chip along with the board, but if I place it in the working first socket the board does not post. It tries to post but the fans turn off after a second or so and this repeats. I thought it is possibly corrupted so I used the USB BIOS flash method along with a 4901 cap file downloaded from ASUS with the same result.

So I created a backup.bin file of the working one with backup.bat, but I am a bit scared to brick the system as I don't have a hardware programmer atm and don't want to loose this system over the holidays.

Would it somehow be possible to flash the backup.bin file using the USB BIOS flash method onto the 2nd chip I have? I tried to save it onto USB as R4E.ROM, but it won't flash it. Does it only accept CAP files?

Can I convert the backup.bin into a CAP file somehow?

Another idea I came up with, was to boot up, remove the working BIOS chip, while the system is running and insert the 2nd chip I have and then try to run restore.bat. Is that in the realms of possibility? Anyone did that before? With the USB BIOS flash method I first booted with the working chip, shutdown the system and then exchanged the chips, which allowed me to flash it successfully (even though it did not boot).

Am not an expert on flashing a BIOS unfortunately. I also compared the backup.bin file of the working BIOS to a 4901 bin file extracted from ASUS cap file and there is some differences here:
-Descriptor <- identical
-GbE <- Differences
-ME <- Differences
-BIOS1 <- Differences
-BIOS2 <- Does not exist in ASUS version
-BIOS3 <- Differences
-BIOS4-8 <- identical

The working BIOS has one more BIOS region (8 regions + padding) than the original ASUS (7 regions + padding) one, could that possibly be a saved configuration?

The reason why I am looking into this, is because even though the board works well, it suffers from the GBe error 10 when cold booting. I can work around it by stopping and starting the driver, but it somehow sucks. I found it also weired that GbE and ME are different, even though both shows the same version if looking at it with UEFITool. If checking in BIOS ME shows N/A. I would like to create a copy of the working BIOS first (onto the second chip) and then try flashing the GBe and eventually ME.

Working BIOS showing up as 4901:
Working BIOS.png


ASUS 4901 BIOS:
ASUS 4901 BIOS.png


Thanks for any help / thoughts / prayers.

Green
 
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Couldn't wait....LOL....used the gberefl. Ran another backup.bat after that and exported the GBe region from backup.bin and now it is how it should look like if comparing it with the original GBe from Asus 4901. Am curious if I will be back after rebooting. Fingers crossed. Before it somehow had some duplicate data fragments as if parts were written to a wrong location somehow. Great Tool CodeRush!! Thank you for creating it. :)

Update: Am back again after powering down and rebooting. But it did not fix my error 10 problem. Very weird. Will try Intel's 0.15 GBe version instead of 0.13 next.

Update2: Still the same with 0.15 GBe. Scratching my head....

Update3: After updating ME the error 10 problem of the NIC after a cold boot disappeared finally. Maybe the network driver is somehow dependent on the Intel Management Engine driver, which showed error 10 as well before updating the ME firmware. Best tool ever!!
 
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Sorry to revive such an old thread but I'm having an issue with my Asus P8P67 its missing the CPU ratio options in bios and I cant bring them back using the reflash or merefl commands. I've tried using various bios versions but havent had any luck and the ME version still shows N/A in bios. I've noticed that the board wont poweroff completely when I use the poweroff commend so theres no chance to wait 30 seconds before powering back on but I've also tried turning the power off from the wall wich made no difference.
 
Just upping this wonderful thread to thank CodeRush.

This weekend out of nowhere after 5 years of flawless service, my P8Z68-V Pro / i5 2500k started to behave oddly. I suddenly lost my H24 5years overclock and the BIOS detected only 8GB of the 12 I have installed. The UEFI still was showink all the banks full though. Also the CPU Ratio setting just disappeared from the menus and anything greater than 1333Mhz as ram speed resulted as a POST error.

I found this thread and followed instructions, when reflashing from the Asus BIOS and doing CLR CMOS were doing nothing.

Looks intimidated but no major issue beside getting the correct flash tool from my Mobo. I took the 7 series tools as it was for MEI 8.x (the one I have with my serie 6 chipset oddly). Used the DOS version make a bootable USB stick with Rufus.

It just works. Thanks again!
 
6 years later and your post has saved my board and I from a complete meltdown. Thank you so much!

This topic is my reaction to situation with BIOS corruption problems on current ASUS boards and inability to recover from it using ASUS tools.
I have started this projects on overclockers.ru forum about 6 months ago, and now the tools I developed are proven to be working, stable and reliable by large Russian overclockers community.
 
Here's what I did...

  • Download the Bootable Drive Creator here http://dl.dropbox.com/u/110640285/USBDCR.7z
  • Unzip it and run it with your USB Drive plugged into your PC.
  • For "Device:" select your USB Drive. Select the option "Create Bootable Drive" and select MS-DOS folder, that was unpacked. Press Start and wait for program to finish.

Can anyone provide working link to this "MS-DOS" folder? I'm trying to do this since yesterday and tried multiple options like freedos and various fpt programs but none worked.
I've p8z68 v and 2500k with missing OC settings.

If noone has that folder, could you please guide me how to create working dos usb with fpt?
 
I had the issue where I couldn't see the Turbo Multipliers on my Asus P8Z77-V LE PLUS motherboard to overclock it.

The OP's post was incredible confusing to me, as I am not skilled in any of this stuff. I finally figured out how to get everything working and set up to flash my ME (whatever the hell that is), and I did it successfully and I am happily overclocked now! :)

Here's what I did...

  • Download the Bootable Drive Creator here http://dl.dropbox.com/u/110640285/USBDCR.7z
  • Unzip it and run it with your USB Drive plugged into your PC.
  • For "Device:" select your USB Drive. Select the option "Create Bootable Drive" and select MS-DOS folder, that was unpacked. Press Start and wait for program to finish.
  • Check off the quick format button if you wish to format your device (recommended). Reminder: You will lose all information on the USB Drive when you format it! Backup anything you want to keep on the USB Drive before doing this!!


  • Download the FTK here Release FTK 0.12.0 · LongSoft/FTK · GitHub
  • Unzip and place all of the files inside of the FTK8>DOS folder on your USB Drive root folder. (the USB Drive shouldn't have any folders linking to anything, it should just have all the files there directly)
  • Now download the most recent BIOS Update from ASUS (ver. 0910 for me)
  • Place the BIOS Update file onto the root folder of your USB Drive (same area as all of the FTK files)
  • Rename your BIOS Update file to BIOS.bin

  • Reboot your PC and get into your boot screen (F2 to get into BIOS, and then F7 to open boot menu)
  • Boot from your USB Drive (Not the UEFI one)
  • You should see DOS. Type "MEREFL" - It will do it's thing and once complete you will type "POWEROFF"
  • After your PC turns back on, you should be good to go!
If you get a 201 error, try copying the DOS files from a different FTK#. Example... I tried the files inside of the FTK10>DOS folder and got a 201 error, tried the FTK9>DOS files and got the same error, then tried FTK8>DOS files and it worked for me and my motherboard. Make sure to remove the old existing files from your USB Drive before copying the new files. Also, make sure you keep your BIOS Update file there (the BIOS.bin file).

I only made this post to simplify instructions. I am not an expert and I cannot help further than this.

and here I am 3 years later solving the same issue thanks to you guys. I followed ThisKory99 summarized tutorial and it worked like a charm. I just used another bootable usb tool as the original link was dead but no biggie, those tools are common. Now my RAM works great again, I can overclock the CPU and the iGPU options reappeared in the Bios.

KUDOS!
 
First of all I want to thank the author! I just bought a new cooler for my 2600k and started playing with overclocking, having to reset CMOS in the process and losing half of my RAM and OC settings (wouldn't turbo even to default 3.8ghz any longer) - so thanks a LOT! Now my old companion has just a bit more time!

Anyway, since the link for the USB creator didn't work, I just created a FreeDOS bootable USB stick with Rufus, followed the steps in the post a bit above, however contrary to the post, I *had* to boot from "the UEFI one" because Rufus could only make UEFI bootable FreeDOS image. That did work just as well.
 
I am trying to follow this guide, but I can't get the keyboard to work (USB 2.0) and so I can't flash the bios. I'm getting the error "the data in the ec or ec flash might be corrupted".

I replaced my cpu cooler and ever since I've gotten that error? I've cleaned cmos and removed battery, and I have no hdd etc. connected.

Have I bricked the bios?
 
This error happend when i was flashing my asus modded bios. Help me please.
Error 201: [FPTw64.exe] cannot be run on the current platform.
My board is p8z77vlx, modded bios from a backup one.
 
Bought 2 x 4 GB DDR3 to complement existing 2 x 8GB sticks on Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe, system was not detecting added memory, after reading this thread figured out the problem must be in the ME section.

What I did:
1. Used Rufus to create MS dos bootable USB stick, used USB2 ports not USB3.
2. Downloaded latest BIOS .CAP file from Asus: P8Z77-V DELUXE BIOS 2104 Version 2104 2013/09/18 (P8Z77-V-DELUXE-ASUS-2104.CAP)
3. Renamed file to bios.bin using Windows File Explorer and copied to USB stick root folder
4. Downloaded FTK8 tools from link and extraced and copied to USB stick root folder. Found tools when reading this article.
5. Rebooted to BIOS and disabled secure boot, changed non uefi usb stick to primary boot device, this was hardest part and needed some retries to get to work.
6. Booted to USB stick, gave command merefl and after it finished poweroff, removed USB stick.
7. Bang! All memory was detected and Windows 11 started without problems :joyful:
 
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Bought 2 x 4 GB DDR3 to complement existing 2 x 8GB sticks on Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe, system was not detecting added memory, after reading this thread figured out the problem must be in the ME section.

What I did:
1. Used Rufus to create MS dos bootable USB stick, used USB2 ports not USB3.
2. Downloaded latest BIOS .CAP file from Asus: P8Z77-V DELUXE BIOS 2104 Version 2104 2013/09/18 (P8Z77-V-DELUXE-ASUS-2104.CAP)
3. Renamed file to bios.bin using Windows File Explorer and copied to USB stick root folder
4. Downloaded FTK8 tools from link and extraced and copied to USB stick root folder. Found tools when reading this article.
5. Rebooted to BIOS and disabled secure boot, changed non uefi usb stick to primary boot device, this was hardest part and needed some retries to get to work.
6. Booted to USB stick, gave command merefl and after it finished poweroff, removed USB stick.
7. Bang! All memory was detected and Windows 11 started without problems :joyful:
How did you find the download link for FTK8? I'm looking for FTK9. I have a z97 motherboard
 
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