Question B450 Tomahawk Motherboard might be bricked

[Orcka]

So I decided to update the bios via the m-flash option inside the msi bios. The computer restarted, but went to a black screen and now I am not able to see any input from the monitor. The fans, gpu, cpu, all seem to be on and spinning.


I attempted to switch the hdmi cable to both the motherboard and graphics card with no success, I attempted to remove the battery for 15 minutes and place it back with no success, I attempted to wire the 2 pins next to the battery to reset the bios, no success. I also noticed that the debug lights on the motherboard were all off, so it seems like nothing is actually wrong with the cpu.

I decided to call up MSI the next day since their support was closed on the night I was trying to fix the motherboard, the person on the call said that I should try placing a new bios on my usb drive, rename the file to MSI.ROM hook it up to the back panel usb port that is highlighted in white, then press the BIOS FLASHBACK button (with power supply connected but the computer NOT on).
Tutorial:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTkXunUAriE


I will try this when I get home, but I wanted to see if anyone has any other ideas or possible solutions.

Much appreciated

Specs:

Ryzen 3600X
B450 Tomahawk ATX
16GB HyperX Ripjaw 3200
msi Ventus OC 2060 Super
650 Watt PSU 80+ Gold

 

[drea.drechsler]

It seems to me that is the only solution if you have a bricked motherboard for a bad BIOS. But if it truly IS bricked and won't update through a FlashBack: does your board have a 3 year warranty? So start an RMA to get replacement.

One thing though: I'd probably use the BIOS revision you had earlier and worked. On Reddit is this:

View: https://www.reddit.com/r/MSI_Gaming/comments/cn9fee/sticky_this_do_not_update_your_bios_if_it_is/

 

[Orcka]

It seems to me that is the only solution if you have a bricked motherboard for a bad BIOS. But if it truly IS bricked and won't update through a FlashBack: does your board have a 3 year warranty? So start an RMA to get replacement.

One thing though: I'd probably use the BIOS revision you had earlier and worked. On Reddit is this:

View: https://www.reddit.com/r/MSI_Gaming/comments/cn9fee/sticky_this_do_not_update_your_bios_if_it_is/

I just got it 1 week ago, returning it is not a problem, but I would prefer not to go thru the hassle of waiting another week to get another motherboard.

 

[drea.drechsler]

I just got it 1 week ago, returning it is not a problem, but I would prefer not to go thru the hassle of waiting another week to get another motherboard.

Return to vendor for exchange maybe? Assuming they're local, of course. That's about your only option left, unless you have a 16MB FLASH BIOS chip laying about that happens to have the correct BIOS burned on it...and have the means and skills to unsolder and replace it.

Yeah, that's about where we're at, sorry to say.

Let's just hope back-flashing to the working rev works.

 

[Orcka]

Great news, it worked! The flashbios+ worked!

Took three tries though, but it seemed that third time's a charm

 

[drea.drechsler]

Great news, it worked! The flashbios+ worked!

Took three tries though, but it seemed that third time's a charm

Great to hear you're back up!

Now... I hope you did a couple things before putting the system back in service. First wold be do a clear CMOS with the battery pulled. Just leave a jumper on the clear CMOS pins for a few minutes, time to make a cup of tea or something.

Immediately after putting battery back in and booting, go into BIOS and before loading any of your custom settings do a Load Default Settings first, to drive all optimized (as in safe optimized) settings into all CMOS locations. I believe that helps overcome a lot of problems because BIOS settings are frequently just bit toggles so if a setting is in an illogical value flipping it, by changing a setting through BIOS screen, just flips it to another illogical value. Driving them to all defaults makes them logical with what's displayed in the screens.

Good Luck!

 

[Orcka]

Great to hear you're back up!

Now... I hope you did a couple things before putting the system back in service. First wold be do a clear CMOS with the battery pulled. Just leave a jumper on the clear CMOS pins for a few minutes, time to make a cup of tea or something.

Immediately after putting battery back in and booting, go into BIOS and before loading any of your custom settings do a Load Default Settings first, to drive all optimized (as in safe optimized) settings into all CMOS locations. I believe that helps overcome a lot of problems because BIOS settings are frequently just bit toggles so if a setting is in an illogical value flipping it, by changing a setting through BIOS screen, just flips it to another illogical value. Driving them to all defaults makes them logical with what's displayed in the screens.

Good Luck!

I already cleared the CMOS the day before trying to reset the bios, but it didn't seem to work on getting the bios to post.

I know that the CMOS was reset because all of my bios menu settings were reset to default after I did the bios flashback+.

Also, the more straight forward way of doing it from what I remember is just reseting the BIOS settings to factory defualt in the BIOS menu.

 

[drea.drechsler]

I already cleared the CMOS the day before trying to reset the bios, but it didn't seem to work on getting the bios to post.

I know that the CMOS was reset because all of my bios menu settings were reset to default after I did the bios flashback+.

Also, the more straight forward way of doing it from what I remember is just reseting the BIOS settings to factory defualt in the BIOS menu.

Clear CMOS and setting BIOS settings to default in BIOS do different things, so doing both is a good safe way to ensure you're starting without any illogical bit values in CMOS. I also forgot to mention that after loading default values to do a SAVE to CMOS and reboot back into BIOS and then start loading your custom BIOS settings.

And just because you SEE something set a certain way in the BIOS screen doesn't mean that the bit value in CMOS is set the same way. That's what I mean by illogical - setting default, optimized values is designed to make everything be logical.

There are also a lot of settings you never see on the screen because they aren't exposed for you to make changes, they get set conditionally based on what you change in what you can see. Here too, if not set logically first they just get changed to the wrong value again.

I believe this is why (or at least one reason) so many people have such great troubles when changing to the new BIOS; it's radically different from the old (the GSE-Lite change from Click BIOS 5) so a lot of locations are being used differently. It's just best to make absolutely sure everything gets initialized and made logical, first with a CMOS reset followed by a set default settings.

 

[Orcka]

Clear CMOS and setting BIOS settings to default in BIOS do different things, so doing both is a good safe way to ensure you're starting without any illogical bit values in CMOS. I also forgot to mention that after loading default values to do a SAVE to CMOS and reboot back into BIOS and then start loading your custom BIOS settings.

And just because you SEE something set a certain way in the BIOS screen doesn't mean that the bit value in CMOS is set the same way. That's what I mean by illogical - setting default, optimized values is designed to make everything be logical.

There are also a lot of settings you never see on the screen because they aren't exposed for you to make changes, they get set conditionally based on what you change in what you can see. Here too, if not set logically first they just get changed to the wrong value again.

I believe this is why (or at least one reason) so many people have such great troubles when changing to the new BIOS; it's radically different from the old (the GSE-Lite change from Click BIOS 5) so a lot of locations are being used differently. It's just best to make absolutely sure everything gets initialized and made logical, first with a CMOS reset followed by a set default settings.

As the saying goes, "if it isn't broke don't fix it", and I really dont want to mess with the BIOS anymore after everything that has happened. Everything seems to be working fine, the OS and all of the drivers are still intact, the bios functions properly, no diagnostic erros on the CPU/RAM/GPU.

If something else happens to the motherboard, I'll give it a shot again.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Thatyoungtom]

Hello, I'm experience the exact same issues and I was wondering when using the flashback button on the rear of the PC did you unhook everything from Mobo, like gpu,cpu,ram ?