News Enthusiast's motherboard BIOS update is taking more than 24 hours — somehow it's still going

[Admin]

Reddit user u/GoatWithAGun updated the BIOS of their old BioStar A320MH motherboard, and it's now taken over 24 hours (and counting) to finish the process.

Enthusiast's motherboard BIOS update is taking more than 24 hours — somehow it's still going : Read more

 

[artk2219]

Could also be a wonky bios chip, but so long as it finishes and works afterwards, it should be fine.

 

[Notton]

Do SATA SSDs fall back into a slower read, like ATA-33, when the drive has read errors?

Alternatively, watch it turn out this was a BIOS bug and Biostar patches it in a few months.

 

[DS426]

Do SATA SSDs fall back into a slower read, like ATA-33, when the drive has read errors?

Alternatively, watch it turn out this was a BIOS bug and Biostar patches it in a few months.

I wondered if it was something like that as well, but using your specific example, even ATA-33 at just under 33 MB/sec, it would be able to write the entire BIOS bin file in about a second, which obviously wouldn't happen that fast as these EEPROM chips can't write nearly that quickly.

That said, it does seem like there's a bug that's causing data to bus from the SSD to the EEPROM at practically bits per second, but I'd love to here my hypotheses on this.

Either way, wild!! Floppy flashing wasn't nearly that slow either, in case anyone was wondering that has never experienced such.

 

[Kn1ght0fN1]

That said, it does seem like there's a bug that's causing data to bus from the SSD to the EEPROM at practically bits per second, but I'd love to here my hypotheses on this.

Either way, wild!! Floppy flashing wasn't nearly that slow either, in case anyone was wondering that has never experienced such.

That was my first thought - I've been building computers since even before Computer Shopper was an inch-thick Bible we got at the newsstand... Updating BIOS from a 5.25 floppy never took more than a few minutes.

Something's gone really wonky with this update, I will be really surprised if it's functional after. He might have to go with the way we updated BIOS before the floppy days - replacing the chip! (or flashing it in place, if possible)

 

[hwertz]

Geez that'd be nerve wracking. BIOS updates always make me a bit nervous but usually only for 5 minutes. I'm with those who think it may be reading the SSD at some insanely low speed. Best of luck to them!

 

[great Unknown]

That was my first thought - I've been building computers since even before Computer Shopper was an inch-thick Bible we got at the newsstand... Updating BIOS from a 5.25 floppy never took more than a few minutes.

Something's gone really wonky with this update, I will be really surprised if it's functional after. He might have to go with the way we updated BIOS before the floppy days - replacing the chip! (or flashing it in place, if possible)

Computer Shopper! Thanks for the memory.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

Reason number upteen that USB BIOS Flashback needs to be a standard, required feature on all motherboards.

 

[Dntknwitall]

Watch it finish and it still has the old bios on and didn't even flash. That would be the time it goes up for sale on marketplace. Someone else can deal with the cursed machine.

 

[Dntknwitall]

It kinda looks like the old windows disk defrag tool is running!

 

[Konomi]

"Total FFS : 7" I think FFS has been said more times than 7..

 

[Exploding PSU]

Oh, oh, I had a very similar experience with my ASRock A320M (the cheapest motherboard I could find back then)...

Tried to update the BIOS when I wanted to upgrade from a Ryzen 3 1200 to a Ryzen 5 2600... It was still stuck at 30% after waiting for 12+ hours.. Cue me perusing countless forum posts on "Can you shut down the PC when the BIOS update seems stuck?".. I probably still have pictures of it somewhere...

It ended up failing due to power outage. I simply took it as a sign.... and an excuse to upgrade to an X370 platform..

 

[wwenze1]

Do SATA SSDs fall back into a slower read, like ATA-33, when the drive has read errors?

Alternatively, watch it turn out this was a BIOS bug and Biostar patches it in a few months.

You're referring to the interface speed. Back then if your cable couldn't negotiate a faster speed then yes, it will fallback to a slower speed.

Within the SSD (or CD-ROM... or anything) itself, if it has read errors it will also attempt to re-read. Check out Samsung SSD charge loss incident.

 

[HideOut]

Although not hurting the BIOS update process, the 4 gig of RAM is hurting. Everything else. This guy ought to add two 8 gig sticks if he could find them. Decent quality used ones. Probably wouldn't be much more than 30 bucks.

 

[Trailer98]

Oh, oh, I had a very similar experience with my ASRock A320M (the cheapest motherboard I could find back then)...

Tried to update the BIOS when I wanted to upgrade from a Ryzen 3 1200 to a Ryzen 5 2600... It was still stuck at 30% after waiting for 12+ hours.. Cue me perusing countless forum posts on "Can you shut down the PC when the BIOS update seems stuck?".. I probably still have pictures of it somewhere...

It ended up failing due to power outage. I simply took it as a sign.... and an excuse to upgrade to an X370 platform..

I also had a similar problem with an older Biostar MB, don't remember the board# but it was back in the AM3 days...turned out the CMOS battery was dead, making the BIOS update fail after a couple of hours (didn't brick anything, though). Replaced the battery and then all was well. I think I donated that MB to a school or something.

 

[acadia11]

Seriously … this is what constitute news today? Or advertisement views for your viral video … my process on my PC doesn’t work as expected …. I’m sure everyone who has built, manages, updates or is an enthusiast has experienced this isht a long running process, a bios update that doesn’t go as planned … or whatever … how and why is this news worthy … the bait is that this is the bait.

 

[Exploding PSU]

I also had a similar problem with an older Biostar MB, don't remember the board# but it was back in the AM3 days...turned out the CMOS battery was dead, making the BIOS update fail after a couple of hours (didn't brick anything, though). Replaced the battery and then all was well. I think I donated that MB to a school or something.

I... didn't check the CMOS battery back then.. For me though, mine's probably bricked, or something is horribly wrong with it.. No signs of life at all, as if the power isn't even plugged in..

It was a cheapo motherboard though, so I didn't care about it really... Still, the only time I tried fiddling with the BIOS, and it ended up really badly...