Notice for Gigabyte's Z77, H77, B75 motherboards and UEFI

[Hallgrim]

Weird I tried to update my bios post install of Lion , from F3 to F6, my board GA-Z77-DS3H totally refuses to boot, I did change the Sata to ACHI flashing back to F3 it works again.

 

[abdulabase]

thanks for this

 

[elMaco]

Weird I tried to update my bios post install of Lion , from F3 to F6, my board GA-Z77-DS3H totally refuses to boot, I did change the Sata to ACHI flashing back to F3 it works again.

Using F8 firmare with the same board. No problemo. Have i7 3770K and a GT640.

 

[ommi]

hi!
is it bad to update the BIOS post installation??
(I had F3 and went to F9 via @Bios in Win7)
GA-Z77X-UP5 TH

 

[abdulabase]

I don't think it would harm the system if you update the bios after os installation. In fact I believe it makes no difference before or after. I'm not expert so don't take my word for it but here is my experience.

I updated GA-Z77-DS3H FROM F4 to F8 after installing Mountain Lion. The system works perfectly and there are no problems at all. Just make sure that you back up your original bios so that you can roll back to it anytime in the future for whatever reason. If everything is working fine then you probably wont need to roll back but it is good to have it for emergencies, its only a few MB's on your hard drive.

 

[ommi]

I didn't backup my F3 BIOS, the GA-Z77X-UP5 TH has a button that flashes your BIOS back to the version it shipped with. Anyways, something is wrong with my machine. I guess I'll have to open a separate thread in it. but thx

 

[abdulabase]

What is wrong with your system?

Try and flashing your system back to F3 and the updating the bios via q flash. You can do this if you press F12 when the gigabyte screen comes up at boot. Once in setup press F8.

Also if you still have your boot up beep speaker thingy, it will make a single beep to tell you that all hardware is working ok (on boot up). If there is a longer beep then there may be a hardware or system configurations problem. If this test appears to be ok then you may want to consider re-installing your operating system. Did you use a legitimate copy ofWin7. Finally how comes you are using win7, this is a hackintosh forum, do you know that you don't need win7 to update your bios? If you don't know how to update your bios using mac just ask here.

 

[ommi]

Hey, thanks for your reply.
Just to mention, I am a Hackintosh newb, but I am not unfamiliar with hardware. Yes, the mainboard came with a beep-speaker, and it ALWAYS does the one EVERYTHING'S FINE-beep.
I don't know whether there is a vital difference between updating the BIOS via @Bios or QFlash, but I will certainly give QFlash a try.
Did you mean reinstalling OSX? Cause, I have already done that, but without whiping the old OSX installation from the harddrive.
Why I am using Win7 (legal copy), well, I have had a Macbook Pro, but it is damaged and I can't repair it atm.
I purchased this computer, in order to turn it into a Hackintosh. And for two weeks, I didn't have a copy of Lion nor Mountain Lion, and no access to another Mac to download it. In order to have a computer AT ALL, I installed Win7 Home Premium on it. No problems with Windows, the machine runs smoothly. But last weekend I got the chance and purchased OSX ML from the appstore on a friend's Mac and prepared a Bootstick with it. I followed the most popular guide on tonymacx86 and got it installed. It worked fine for like two days, from then on it didn't and still does not boot. :/
When reinstalling OSX ML from my bootstick, can I use the bootstick I still have, or should I prepare it all fresh and reinstall then?

 

[abdulabase]

Using the same boot stick should be fine as I don't thing there is anything wrong with it. It did install fine the first time. If you are having doubts about the usb stick just re-install Unibeast, it only takes 15 mins.

When you say it still does not boot, be more specific. Does the power come on, do you get any messages and if so what are they. Also what happened the time before it stopped booting, were you testing any multibeast settings? did boot failure only occur after removing the usb stick. Only then we can understand your situation because it could be a number of things.

The most common boot error after a fresh install is:

Loading Operating System …

boot0: GPT
boot0: test
boot0: test
boot0: GPT
boot0: test
boot0: test
boot0: error

Is this what you are getting, because ​

there is an easy fix for this, http://www.tonymacx86.com/25-boot0-error-official-guide.html

 

[Snipeye]

For anybody who needs to update the BIOS to UEFI (I didn't have to, but wanted to on my z68xp-ud3p), any of the "F_" bios revisions wouldn't work for updating the BIOS through qflash - I had to create a bootable USB drive and put files on that. Here's a full tutorial:

Attached is a dmg, that's what you'll need to apply to your flash drive. Then, download the BIOS update from the website (mine was here: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3912#bios) and use Keka - or a similar application - to unpack that EXE. Inside (mine, at least) there were a few files: Autoexec.bat, FLASHEFI.EXE, and Z8XPUD3P.U1E - the lattermost being the actual BIOS update. I copied flashefi.exe and the bios file to the flash drive (autoexec doesn't matter) and booted onto the USB drive.

Once you've booted onto the USB drive, choose boot option 4 from FreeDOS - no drivers, or something like that - and run the following command:

FLASHEFI.EXE Z8XPUD3P.U1E

It'll be different for each person - the "FLASHEFI.EXE" might be a different file name or exe, depending on what your motherboard make and model is. The "Z8XPUD3P.U1E" will almost definitely be different, unless you have the same motherboard as me. Anyway, the basic syntax is:

BIOSUPDATER.EXE BIOSFILE.EXTENSION

Make sure you enter it correctly. The scary part comes next - it deletes and re-writes your BIOS - but then it all works! Hurray, and well done. You've updated your bios via FreeDOS.

A couple things to keep in mind - I suggest using a freshly formatted, 1-partitioned flash drive to avoid ANY complications. I also suggest you plug it into a USB2 or even 1.1 rather than 3.0 slot, just to be on the safe side.

Good luck!