"It used to be that some motherboards had replaceable BIOS chips" ... I was there, 3000 years ago

I love how LTT animation now looks flawless while Techquickie is still faithful to its current style

Linus: "Speaking of drop" Explains why the motherboard was bricked in the first place.

I had no idea that sort of device existed - fantastic to know!

Weather: decides to worsen during BIOS update Me: **nervous sweating**

Linus: the best way to deal with the issue is to stop it from happening in the first place Me: yes linus this how you solve 99% of the problems in the world

Thank you! Now I can update bios without having a heart attack.

Or you can just try to whack the bios chip with a hammer a few times.

I work at a major company and have to deal with pre-production hardware on occasion. With that, we are provided flashing tools that Linus talks about at the end that cost upwards of $700. They are quite cool, but didn't know there were ones that cost less.

I had to do the ch341a route a few months ago, and found out the hard way that you also better remove the CPU to get proper reading, erasing/writing of the chip. I was getting lots of unmatching hashes of bios that I read from it, until finally tried to remove the CPU. And don't forget to buy a 1.8v adapter for ch341a if your bios needs 1.8v.

Oh how the times have changed. The only time I've ever had to deal with a bad bios update was back in the 286 days when my AST Premium 286 decided to brick itself. Ordered a new flashed DiP from a company that was advertising in the back of a Popular Mechanics magazine, and it came within 3 days. Worked perfectly and was even a better bios version than the one I had previously.

2:44 the CH341A is known to have a flaw where it sends out 5v directly to the BIOS chip's data line instead of 3.3v. It will still work with reprogramming BIOS chip but it is not recommended for constant reflashing of a single chip. There is a mod people can do to fix this if people do plan on using this specific programmer for repairs.

One thing I would add about the specific example of an electrical storm... if you've got close by lighting strikes, probably best to just unplug crap from the wall since a UPS will not protect you from a nearby, let alone, direct lightning strike. I see a lot of people on social media claiming it will, and it most certainly won't. If that happens, a bricked mobo might be the least of your problems.

Can confirm, dropping and catching a soldering iron hurts like hell. A proper soldering station would've helped my scenario though. What possessed me to attempt to catch it in my hands I will never know. I did finish the project I was working on though 🤣

I am so glad you guys covered this!! I’ve used the exact same tool to save no less than 4 boards that all had corrupted BIOS’. Good video & keep up the good work!!

I'd be cool to see a video of one of you guys attempting to unbrick a bricked motherboard. It wouldn't have to be bricked, could just pretend it is.

Great video, never had this problem, but its refreshing to see someone thought of that updater device.

Thank you so much for takin off your toque and washing/combing your hair! Looks nice :)

This is why I adore this channel. Jumper cable style BIOS flashing! I never knew.

Best episode in a while very interesting and lots of new info to me

Thanks Linus, I could’ve used this yesterday when a motherboard I was looking at wasn’t POSTing

Heads up. Do not use a soldering iron to desolder a bios chip. Too many contacts and you will probably break one of the pads. You need a tool called a hot air station or some sort of heat gun, typical solder melting point is about 230 Celsius so make sure it can do that. They can run you about £70 or $85 if you’re US. Just be steady, gently tug with tweezers while heating and it comes straight off

4:20 minutes, nice

The CH341a is a lifesaver. I bricked the IPMI on a SuperMicro server board in my homelab (firmware updates -can- should always wait until you're sober) and managed to get it working again by flashing the correct image with the afore mentioned tool.

Best Techquickie ever. I honestly did not know a couple of those.

I knew this was possible but didn't someone commercialized it, this is perfect for not ultra techy people like me but still techy enough that can still flash a bricked bios with this tool

Love this style of Techquickie the best👍

Good to see you here, Linus. Good video!

In circuit programming(when the chip is still soldered on the motherboard), sometimes doesn't work. For a 100% certain good flash(as long there isn't a problem with the chip). You need to desolder the chip. There are even really cheap programmers like the USBasp, but those is a real pain to use on Windows. And those who have greater compatibility as the Minipro programmers (TL866/II/IIplus). Good luck everyone! 😁

One of my favorite videos so far wish I would have known this 3 months ago I just tossed some other board out from a bad flash but I bought a new chip and it still wouldn't turn on I imagine the chip I bought was not flashed with the proper bias I guess

On some motherboards, the power rails of the BIOS chip might get sucked up to the rest of the board, which makes the programmer not able to supply enough current to run the BIOS chip properly at the correct voltage. This may or may not happen on CH341a, but it did happen on my TL866 programmer If you constantly get pin detection errors or read different data every single time you read the chip, you need to hook the alligator clip's board up to external power, such as a single AA/AAA battery holder for 1.5V BIOS chips, and a double battery holder for 3V BIOS chips. If you can't get those external power, then you will have to risk it a bit by using the motherboard's power and turn the system on while flashing...

That cable for BIOS flashing can also let you flash custom versions of your BIOS, for ThinkPads this can include removing WiFi card whitelists

Dawid and the Saga of GT 210s has taught us about this all to well.

I once rescued a 2004 motherboard with a DIY arduino-based ROM flasher. Lucky me that the chip was a simple removable 8 pin chip that I could plug into a breadboard.

As an electrical technician I would not recommend using a soldering iron for surface mount components. You sould use hot air gun for that instead. Solderig irons are for through hole components and maybe if needed, to pre-tin the pads for SMD components. Also don't forget to use good quality flux! Cheers!

Good to see the sponsor spots back at the end.

AdamantIT has some videos about this topic aswell, very well explained.

Nice video - thanks - learned something new.

Love how you skimmed over GETTING A RAW BIOS DUMP TO FLASH! The downloaded bios file generally does NOT contain a full bios as it appears in the flash?

Pretty mindblowing that how this can be still a thing while there’s already easy solutions

I remember having to email a manufacturer to ask them to mail out a new (socketed) bios chip. It turned up in an envelope a week or so later and was ready to swap out. Good times!

Had no idea those existed. Great video

For once I love the sponsor. That isn't the specific model of Sennheiser open backed headphones I have, but I can confirm, they're the best. I have a frankenstein setup with a headphone amp and mic instead.

thank you this videos was 1/4 helpful

Had this problem the other day. Popped out the cmos battery for 20 seconds and put it back in. Good as new.

I was gonna get ready to learn how to solder or get 200 bucks. But this is a life saver. I was just rippeed off and sold a faulty cpu thst shut off mid update. This is so much easier

2:10 "Modern BIOS chips" Please correct me if I'm wrong but BIOS chip package didn't change in like 15 years and still remains in the SO-8 package... Furthermore I could solder this type of ICs when I was 15yo so I'm sure some grown up adult can do same right?

Note to self: Keep bricked motherboards away from Red Shirt Jeff. 🤣

Last summer I lost power while I was updating my bios.These (2:35) still give me nightmares. Eventually I got a replacement chip because fortunately mine could be swapped.

Would be nice to make it a full video on ltt about how to fix bios!

How about a shorted 3 pin argb header. Any ideas on fixing that one?

So excited to watch this! I just accidentally dropped a brick on my mobo and split it on half :(

A pretty comprehensive video without having to go into a technical deep dive of what's going on, bravo. The only thing I'd add to this is that obtaining a raw BIOS image can be a challenge sometimes. The UEFI spec contains a specific mechanism to deliver BIOS updates. In a nutshell, it's supposed to help verify the integrity of the update, maintain security of the system, and only update parts of the BIOS that are changed. This means the file you download may not be a file that is a 1:1 version of the data that should be on the flash part. I don't know of any way to use that to make an file suitable for flashing onto the BIOS chip. A quick way to tell is to check the file size. It should be exactly 4, 8, or 16 MiB (it should exactly match the size of the BIOS flash part). The next possible issue, at least with Intel mainboards is that the flash part containing the BIOS may also be shared with the built in ethernet adapter and the Intel ME. If that's the case, then the whole thing needs to be assembled into a single image with a tool like a hex editor. The process would to read the file, look at some data in the file (usually detailed in the chipset specs), then paste the good BIOS image into the correct spot, and finally flash the resulting file onto the system. When I was an engineer in this space, we had tools to put all this together. I don't know if the BIOS modding community have their own tools for this. In a production system, BIOS recovery mechanisms should work for nearly any situation but in my experience, OEMs are generally pretty bad at documenting them (BIOS is still something of a PC dark art and BIOS developers don't generally like to draw attention to themselves). It may help to pester support a bunch and hope that someone there gets brave enough to reach out to the BIOS engineering team who may be able to provide a solution before resorting to using an external flasher. It might also be possible to get a raw image file though companies might be extra cagey about that (as they perceive IP issues but if you have physical access and a flasher, there is little point).

Wish you could leave a link to asprogrammer.. Also, can you ask you tube to add a brightness adjuster in the videos setting icon? ...

Linus it’s called an alligator clamps not a car jumper cable thingy LOL good video

linus you've gained a loyal subscriber today with this one video...

I mistakenly formatted my bios update file in NTFS when i was suppose to format it in FAT32. My PC ran for like 2 days with no apparent problems then one night i turned off my PC for the night and in the morning when i turned on my PC i got a black screen and my keyboard didn't light up. I can't enter bios or hear POST beeps. I was considering this tool as an option. Is there any way you can make a tutorial on how to use the CH341A programmer?

Very cool! Something I didn't know!

Finally some decent consumer repair advice although to myself this video is 7 years late. Remember with HP laptop Bios repairs you need the 1.8V adapter

This is much better, those rushed "youtube shorts" videos have been agitating me.

i've done the USB flash method on a Asus board. Works great

Ok, we need to see you guys successfully perform that last one with the special clamp. Someone please ship them your dead motherboard so they can try it.

I’ve already had to flash my bios with this external EPROM programmer, it was not easy, but It saved me from buying another motherboard.

Thank you very much, I wrote the bios file to the bios chip as .bin and my computer was saved, thanks to you. (Advice for those who will do it: test clips are useless things, I cut off the cables and soldered them to the chip, I attached them poorly, but it was enough to throw the bios, then I removed it immediately)

This kind of bricking is only related to BIOS flashing. What about bricking related to power delivery component/VRM failure?

I want to see a video testing one of these chip clamps

Informative 👍🏾

I run a repair shop and I do these desktop BIOS flashes without charging, when possible. It's another story with laptops, though.

Many servers that are higher end for reliability can have up to four socketed bios chips so if one or two fail they can still continue running without any issues! :)

About that UPS, is there a power supply for desktops that will take 12v dc input instead of ac?

Nobody gonna talk about one of Linus' best sponsor transitions ever?!? 😂

Had a rare instance where I have a X470 motherboard with dual bios, so, to run the Ryzen 3700x, I needed to flash the bios to gain support for it. Didn't think anything of it til my bios corrupted, and the second bios was not compatible with the 3700x, and I have a Monoblock water block on my motherboard.... fun times😂

Is it possible to flash a bios for windows on an old android tablet. I have an old xoom table with LTE and I hate E-waist

my Dell precision t1700 Bios been corrupted and is unreadable(failure to POST) i tried to load a O.S with a flash drive and while switching to uefi safe move and restarting my computer no longer post. clearing cmos ,drain of power ,checking all ports monitors and cords dident fix the issue Computer was maybe interrupted during load(Cant remember).any help to fix my BIOS.

1 hour ago this vid wa uploaded. FONALLY I WAS ABLE TO PEEK AN EYE TO A VID RELEASED RECENTLY !

I thought that video would make me feel confident to update mine. Instead, I m gonna let it be old :D

nice video lenght

Quality content 👍🙏

If my PC is not showing anything can I boot from my os disk and reset the bios settings after booting from the disk

I bought an X1 carbon 2nd gen laptop in fb marketplace. The fan start running for few seconds and stops. I googled, most of them says logic board has gone. Any recommendations before I buy new logic board? Current condition: Just blank screen when turned on. I tried connecting to monitor, no luck.

Good video

I replaced the removable bios chip on my ASUS x58 sabertooth. It is still running by the way, with a xeon 5670. Running windows 7 for my older games.

Linus i have a veeeeeery odd issue. my mobo only runs with the cmos battery REMOVED and seems to work perfectly. any idea why???

just my luck. when i was watching this video. around 0:45 when linus finished saying "when you bios gets corrupted" by pc froze. initially i thought it was a gag in the video but when it lasted too long without anything happening and i couldnt move my mouse. i think that means my computer just did a le funny at the perfect time

I'm sad that the wrench in the thumbnail wasn't a viable option. Missed opportunity to embrace Linus' natural talents.

Like a decade ago I bricked my mom's Vista era laptop because after reinstalling the OS I went to update the bios, but the laptop froze during said installation. I never could fix it, because the information that I found said that to repair that one I needed to do so via a floppy disk.

lmao the timing on this. i just bricked a laptop mobo earlier today

The first time I hot swapped a bios chip and it actually worked, I felt like a boss.

I updated my bios to be able to use my new cpu and i was so nervous while it was updating but it worked

there is small battery inside the mobo what it's purpose, resetting bios?

That, was actually short and comprehensive

Anyone have a good link for the bios reprogram device?

unless u got a msi board they use a chip thats smaller then that test clamp and theres no available test clamp for the package size i have an msi x470 gaming plus that has a bios hip thats smaller then SOP8

0:07 or maybe beacuse you have connected the PCIe power cable to the CPU power pins (or what the name was)

That soldering iron drop gave me nightmarish flashbacks of me actually dropping the soldering iron in electronics class.

what is protection mode and what causes it ?

Linus: makes the Video exactly 4:20 minutes long. Me: Nice

I work at a tech repair shop. There is a shiny new ITX board in our recycling bin I believe the bios is corrupted. If it's save able I would totally try to save it

I expected you guys pulling your hair out trying to revive some psu-induced mobo death scenario 😩

does gigabyte vision have anything like a back up