PSA: Gigabyte F20B BIOS changes

[hugheba]

Stuck in perpetual reboot on Sierra 12.1 with GA-z70n-wifi V2.

Although I can successfully boot from Unibeast so it's some sort of configuration I'm missing.

I've tried APIC and KernelPM but didn't work.

 

[wstrohm]

However in both my cases clover would NOT boot macOS at all until I checked/enabled both "Patch APIC" and "KernelPM" options in clover. This was not necessary in previous versions of the BIOS. If you do not enable these clover options, the boot will hang as soon as clover tries to load macOS (following the ++++++++++++++++++++++ in verbose readout).

How the heck can you get into Clover to enable "Patch APIC" and "KernelPM" if the OS won't boot? This is a Catch 22, right? My computer was bricked by F20 on my Skylake computer.

 

[BreBo]

How the heck can you get into Clover to enable "Patch APIC" and "KernelPM" if the OS won't boot? This is a Catch 22, right? My computer was bricked by F20 on my Skylake computer.

You don't have to boot into the OS to enable "Patch APIC" and "KernelPM".
Boot into Clover, choose Options and under CPU Tuning you can enable PatchAPIC, and under Binaries patching you can enable Kernel PM Patch. After that boot into your OS.

 

[hugheba]

I was able to downgrade back to a BIOS version previous to F20.

I use the FTP Z170 Tool for DOS from https://www.mediafire.com/?p66jhts7cfi26y8

Then I...

1. Formatted a USB drive to DOS bootable with Rufus
2. Copied the contents of the zip above into the root of the USB drive overwriting the AUTOEXEC.bat
3. Downloaded the the BIOS I wanted to downgrade to from Gigabyte.us site
4. Move the BIOS binary to the root of the USB and rename it "bios.bin"
5. Boot the machine from the USB drive and it will automatically overwrite the BIOS to the desired version.
6. Ctrl-Alt-Delete once it says it's done

** Be sure to copy down the MAC address of your Intel NIC as it will be overwritten and you'll have to change it back once you're back up and running.

 

[wstrohm]

You don't have to boot into the OS to enable "Patch APIC" and "KernelPM".
Boot into Clover, choose Options and under CPU Tuning you can enable PatchAPIC, and under Binaries patching you can enable Kernel PM Patch. After that boot into your OS.

Wow, you are sharp... I never would have thought of that. Thanks much; you may have saved me!

[Edit: Yep, that worked, but only after I updated my config.plist in Clover Configurator about 4 times. Eventually my saved changes "took," and I was able to boot into the OS without using the "Options" in Clover. But now I have a NEW problem: My nVidia Web Driver will not activate, i.e. the graphics always come up using the "OS X Built-in" driver. I have confirmed this; my "Heaven" benchmark app will not run. I rechecked my config.plist and the "NvidiaWeb" box in System Parameters is checked. And the GTX 750 Ti was working fine on my previous BIOS firmware version F4. Not working on F20. Have uninstalled and reinstalled the nVidia Web Driver version 367.15.10.15f03 and still cannot enable the graphics card. Any advice?]

 

[in00b]

so, what I'm getting from this is : do not update the bios, the trouble isn't worth it ?

 

[dfritchie]

Works fine with AMD cards, problem seems to be with Nvidia web drivers. Don't know why that would be, how would the BIOS prevent the web drivers from loading?

 

[wstrohm]

Finally, all OK now, booting from F20 firmware works, MSI nVidia GTX 750 Ti is enabled.

Corrective maintenance:
1) Booted into Clover, added the boot option "KernelPM." That allowed booting once into the Mac OS. Then added it to Clover Configurator, which fixed it permanently. (In my case I didn't need the "Patch APIC" box to be checked.)
2) To get the GTX 750 Ti working, I used Clover Configurator's "Install/Update Drivers" feature to install the "EmuVariableUefi-64.efi" file into the EFI's "drivers64UEFI" folder. And that did it.

Great that the F20 firmware fixed the addition of about a zillion fake "boot options" after restarts and reboots. Now only the true boot options are shown.

 

[Darkstar91]

To get the GTX 750 Ti working, I used Clover Configurator's "Install/Update Drivers" feature to install the "EmuVariableUefi-64.efi" file into the EFI's "drivers64UEFI" folder. And that did it.

Thank you it worked also on my Gigabyte GA-Z170MX Gaming 5 board, after updating the bios to F20 Firmware my graphic card (GTX 750TI) has stopping working, but after installing EmuVariableUefi-64.efi all work well

 

[nextsak]

trying to update from 20e to 20. Same usb drive from which i already had updated to beta 20. Now, after verification 2new icons fast or intact. Whatever my choice cannot update the bios.