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Using Efi-Flash to avoid the "invalid bios image" error

Joined
Sep 11, 2020
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Hello to everyone.

on 2019 I've bought a new motherboard,model Gigabyte Z390 / AORUS PRO CF. I don't remember where I bought it.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to find some evidence that helped me to find where I bought it. Maybe on Amazon,but I'm not sure,since I didn't find any link within my email address that confirms it.

On 2020 I wanted to make the passthru of my GPU (RTX 2080 ti) from Windows to a Linux VM using the DDA (Direct Driver Assignment) but I was not sure that my motherboard was able to supports it,so I asked to Gigabyte to check if I could do that.
Gigabyte gave to me two customized BIOS files. I've installed the first one and I really seen that it added the SR-IOV options on the BIOS menu.

I never been able to passthru my GPU from Windows to Linux using the DDA,but later I found that I shouldn't have installed the customized BIOS version (G) of Gigabyte because since I did it,I was no longer able to install the official BIOS versions that come after the G version.

Actually every OS that I ran on my PC (equipped with an Intel CPU model 9900K and two memory banks,model HyperX Predator 32GB 3000MHz (but configured at 2400 mhz) CL15 DIMM XMP (HX430C15PB3K2/32) is experiencing a problem,like the corruption of the ZFS file systems when I run FreeBSD and the crash of some applications (like caja and thunar and Firefox) while I use Linux and FreeBSD.

I made a test of the memory with memtest86 and I found that both the banks are corrupted. Everytime I repeat the test it fails.
What caused the corruption of both the memory banks ? I see two causes :
  1. one or more of the multiple and close power outages that I got before to buy an UPS
  2. a bug present in the old BIOS version that I'm running. Old because I haven't been able to upgrade it since 2020,when Gigabyte gave to me their customized version.
There is an interesting bug that has been fixed in the latest bios version released by Gigabyte,it's called "Fix to improve Kingston DDR4-2666 stability concern on some specific memory chip suppliers".

I have this kind of memory.

I tried to upgrade my Bios to version F13,according with this :

https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/Z390-AORUS-PRO-rev-10/support#support-dl-bios

but I've got the error message "OemID Mismatch".

I've renamed Z390AORUSPRO.F13 to GIGABYTE.bin and I tried to flash it. Unfortunately I've got the same error.

At this point,I tried to look for a method to force the upgrade and I found this thread :

https://winraid.level1techs.com/t/f...avoiding-invalid-bios-image/31185/241?page=13

titled : Efiflash can bypass “Invalid BIOS image”

Is that a safe procedure ? Do you reccomend it ? I don't want to brick my motherboard. Thanks.
 
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