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Recovering UEFI boot entries after clear CMOS



 
 
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  #11  
Old April 26th 17, 02:13 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Flasherly[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,407
Default Recovering UEFI boot entries after clear CMOS

On Wed, 26 Apr 2017 04:26:50 -0000 (UTC), Diesel
wrote:

The second BIOS chip isn't a full fledged duplicate, based on the
boards i've seen so far. Not saying one doesn't exist, just that I
haven't, personally run across it yet. The secondary BIOS exists to get
the machine up (post) and allow you to reflash the firmware damaged
actual BIOS. It's a second layer of defense to keep you from accidently
turning your board into a paperweight. Some of us have the required
hardware to be able to pull the dead BIOS and reflash it outside of the
mainboard, but, this can't always be done easily. If the chip is
soldered, the chances are much smaller. If it's removable, the chances
are better.


That may be a possibility, to a limited extent of the other BIOS chip.
If it does save a corrupted BIOS, then at least beggars needn't be
choosy;- I've personally never encountered a bad BIOS situation (out
of umpteen dozens of MBs I've bought or worked with).

Neither is a CMOS image reflash exact either. I was messing with that
the other day when I replaced the CMOS battery.

Out of curiosity I'd saved a recovery image, removed and replaced the
battery, and also jumped the clear-CMOS pins with a paperclip. The
recovery image was saved to a SSD, but when I tried to reflash it the
BIOS routine reported a corrupted image. Did the same thing but saved
to a mechanical drive, which the BIOS then used and restored.

Also noticed it wasn't a fully functional restore. I've an extra
advanced BIOS settings screen only accessible through a hotkey.
Neither were all the settings I'd changed to a user-set condition
restored in both regular or the advanced screen. They had reverted to
back to their defaults regardless the CMOS image.

Oh, well. I looked, I saw, but I'll probably never mess with it
again. I only flashed mine, the AMD board once, in order to get a
BIOS "patch" to max it out both for fastest quadcore it was rated for,
and also available from Ebay pulls for nickel-dime change. The Intel
board, similarly to get to its fastest rated quadcore, there wasn't
need of a flash, that's never otherwise been touched since its
purchase date long ago.

The AMD board's result with that replacement, a 95-watt draw quadcore
was 150F MB chip sensor temps when stressed. (MPU itself runs
relatively cool or for the most acceptable for an AMD.) I decided to
underclock it this year to a bare minimum necessary to get done what I
do, being a multiplier setting for 1600MHz on a 2200 rated chip.

And I still can't touch anything newer for either of those
motherboards, both going on ten-yrs-old, for dollar cost averaging
myself into a new AMD3+ socket MB. Things don't start clicking for me
until I look at octal Vishnu cores for about $100 retail packaged on
Ebay. Everything else, these newer quads, holding respectable resale
value for pulls, are a waste of my money -- bang for the MHz buck --
compared to what I paid for my quad pulls, (under $30 ea.), two or
three years ago. (The MBs, I've owned long enough to have changed
from original retail purchase single core CPUs, to dually upgrades,
and now the present quads.)

Pretty sad old story when the best I can come up with for an excuse to
upgrade is roughly $200 for 8 or 16G memory, a MB, and a 95-watt
Vishnu eight core. And possibly iffy on a newer higher-watter PS than
my 400-watt Rosewill unit;- those Vishnu cores go ambient at 65-watts
but will go upwards to 265-watts, cooking with all eight burners
stressed to their max.
  #12  
Old April 27th 17, 08:02 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Diesel[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 58
Default Recovering UEFI boot entries after clear CMOS

Flasherly
Wed, 26 Apr 2017
13:13:22 GMT in alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt, wrote:

Neither is a CMOS image reflash exact either. I was messing with
that the other day when I replaced the CMOS battery.


That depends what you mean by cmos image reflash. CMOS contains data.
Not code. You don't reflash it...


Out of curiosity I'd saved a recovery image, removed and replaced
the battery, and also jumped the clear-CMOS pins with a paperclip.
The recovery image was saved to a SSD, but when I tried to
reflash it the BIOS routine reported a corrupted image. Did the
same thing but saved to a mechanical drive, which the BIOS then
used and restored.


It sounds to me like you backed up the BIOS firmware...CMOS settings
typically are not backed up along with the firmware...

Despite the fact cmos backup/restore/erase apps already exist, I
wrote one myself. You can find it he

http://bughunter.it-mate.co.uk/core/cmoscon1.zip

It also allows you to view the cmos contents as they are inside the
chip. If you wanted to do such a thing. Keep in mind though, this
program doesn't touch your bios/uefi firmware, just the cmos
configuration data.

I did submit it to zdnet back in the day, and won four out of five
possible stars for it. One star deducted due to documentation.

Also noticed it wasn't a fully functional restore. I've an extra
advanced BIOS settings screen only accessible through a hotkey.


Erm. was this a user changable setting in cmos setup? If so, it
didn't save your customized settings. The firmwares typically have a
checksum of sorts, so if it didn't complain, it probably restored
fine.

Neither were all the settings I'd changed to a user-set condition
restored in both regular or the advanced screen. They had reverted
to back to their defaults regardless the CMOS image.


They weren't backed up. And, it's quite normal when reflashing the
bios that the cmos data is restored to defaults.

Oh, well. I looked, I saw, but I'll probably never mess with it
again. I only flashed mine, the AMD board once, in order to get a
BIOS "patch" to max it out both for fastest quadcore it was rated
for, and also available from Ebay pulls for nickel-dime change.
The Intel board, similarly to get to its fastest rated quadcore,
there wasn't need of a flash, that's never otherwise been touched
since its purchase date long ago.


Unless you have a specific reason to reflash the system BIOS, you
typically don't touch it.

And I still can't touch anything newer for either of those
motherboards, both going on ten-yrs-old, for dollar cost averaging
myself into a new AMD3+ socket MB. Things don't start clicking
for me until I look at octal Vishnu cores for about $100 retail
packaged on Ebay. Everything else, these newer quads, holding
respectable resale value for pulls, are a waste of my money --
bang for the MHz buck -- compared to what I paid for my quad
pulls, (under $30 ea.), two or three years ago. (The MBs, I've
owned long enough to have changed from original retail purchase
single core CPUs, to dually upgrades, and now the present quads.)


The machine I'm writing this post on is actually a dual cpu system.
Not dual core, it actually has two independent cpus under the hood.
Mated, running in SMP mode. It's ancient technology by todays
standards, but, it still does mostly what I ask of it. I've got so
much stuff on it, migrating to another daily box will be a chore.

Happily though, I spent $80 the other day on another external HD; WD
passport. 2tb! USB 3. It flies! I was pulling average 90mb/s on my
laptop with usb 3 ports. And just shy of 22-23mb/s on my usb 2
mainboard tower beside me. Now, I have a complete backup of all of my
machines and I can access the files without any proprietary software.
I have two other WD external drives, but, they have power supplies
and won't fit in your pocket. This one will, and, it has no external
power supply. I'm very happy with it. It's near full capacity now
though, so I'm going to buy some more of them.

Pretty sad old story when the best I can come up with for an
excuse to upgrade is roughly $200 for 8 or 16G memory, a MB, and a
95-watt Vishnu eight core. And possibly iffy on a newer
higher-watter PS than my 400-watt Rosewill unit;- those Vishnu
cores go ambient at 65-watts but will go upwards to 265-watts,
cooking with all eight burners stressed to their max.







--
I would like to apologize for not having offended you yet.
Please be patient. I will get to you shortly.
  #13  
Old April 27th 17, 09:18 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Flasherly[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,407
Default Recovering UEFI boot entries after clear CMOS

On Thu, 27 Apr 2017 07:02:07 -0000 (UTC), Diesel
wrote:

Neither is a CMOS image reflash exact either. I was messing with
that the other day when I replaced the CMOS battery.


That depends what you mean by cmos image reflash. CMOS contains data.
Not code. You don't reflash it...


This MB BIOS --
Gigabyte m61pme-s2 ( Phenom X4 9550)
has a reflash for itself as built-in BIOS menu option. It writes an
image of itself to a BIOS-ID'd drive and then you use that. So, yea -
it's a reflash at that point: you can tell by how slow it is, eg same
same as a regular BIOS overwrite or near about for EPROM speed. I'd
have to do a check-point on that, whether backed up BIOS firmware/CMOS
settings...to compa a) size of manufacturer provided MB BIOS update
revision file (it seemed to me a smaller rewrite), b) points of CMOS
settings I'd changed and how if any make it through by rewriting with
a created file. As I said, I don't like it because when I first wrote
one, to a SSD, it errored out on me first time up with "corrupted"
returned;- not good for playing with fire.



Despite the fact cmos backup/restore/erase apps already exist, I
wrote one myself. You can find it he

http://bughunter.it-mate.co.uk/core/cmoscon1.zip

It also allows you to view the cmos contents as they are inside the
chip. If you wanted to do such a thing. Keep in mind though, this
program doesn't touch your bios/uefi firmware, just the cmos
configuration data.

I did submit it to zdnet back in the day, and won four out of five
possible stars for it. One star deducted due to documentation.


Cool. Sure I've seen similar on MB sites, in their utilities
sections;- perhaps not as featured with a view-in or preview.

Also noticed it wasn't a fully functional restore. I've an extra
advanced BIOS settings screen only accessible through a hotkey.


Erm. was this a user changable setting in cmos setup? If so, it
didn't save your customized settings. The firmwares typically have a
checksum of sorts, so if it didn't complain, it probably restored
fine.


Not sure. One time (electrical brown/black out) came back to find the
boot/BIOS checksum faulted out to restore defaults. Happened to find
a spare replacement battery, and shorted the clear CMOS, did the
write/rewrite routine out of curiosity. No, it didn't restore to
firmware/CMOS settings I'd selected, least not all -- things like
disabling LAN/soundcard, etc., were defaulted back to on.
Academic...super simple budget AMD2 Gigabyte BIOS and easy enough to
memorize how I need it.

Here's the PDF manual (on the boot menu options):
" Function Keys: DEL: BIOS Setup/Q-Flash
Press the Delete key to enter BIOS Setup or to access the Q-Flash
" utility in BIOS Setup.

Only thing I haven't tried is a pointing that BIOS utility/routine to
a manufacturer-provided BIOS revision update file.

They weren't backed up. And, it's quite normal when reflashing the
bios that the cmos data is restored to defaults.


First I seen such on a BIOS, a BIOS routine to write itself/CMOS to
identified/detected HD/storage medium -- so I well could be imagining
and expecting too much from newer features.


Unless you have a specific reason to reflash the system BIOS, you
typically don't touch it.


Amen there. (I don't that much of an excuse to break it to justify
that Vishnu 8-core.)

The machine I'm writing this post on is actually a dual cpu system.
Not dual core, it actually has two independent cpus under the hood.
Mated, running in SMP mode. It's ancient technology by todays
standards, but, it still does mostly what I ask of it. I've got so
much stuff on it, migrating to another daily box will be a chore.


Cool. Intel Xeons, I'll hazard. That's no shineola, a migration. I'm
ashamed to say how old and many MBs I've been through, transplanting
my primary OS binary image (three generations or images, actually).
All those tweaks are significant hair-pulling to start from scratch
and attempt to duplicate.

Happily though, I spent $80 the other day on another external HD; WD
passport. 2tb! USB 3. It flies! I was pulling average 90mb/s on my
laptop with usb 3 ports. And just shy of 22-23mb/s on my usb 2
mainboard tower beside me. Now, I have a complete backup of all of my
machines and I can access the files without any proprietary software.
I have two other WD external drives, but, they have power supplies
and won't fit in your pocket. This one will, and, it has no external
power supply. I'm very happy with it. It's near full capacity now
though, so I'm going to buy some more of them.


I use docking stations. Went whole-hog w/ an Anchor (brandname), very
popular on Amazon ratings -- a USB3 docking station, requiring I send
out for USB3 PCI boards to update my USB2 MBs. Total friggin'
disaster: The Anchor gave it up, killed itself within a week or two
of new. Happened to notice Anchor polling themselves on Amazon for
positive reviews a few weeks ago. Told them it was bad-tasting
trashed and they sent me a PDF for shipping out on a new return unit.
So bad tasting I didn't even bother. I'll just remember them. I've
been getting docking stations, several even free (w/ related
purchases), for ages from NewEgg, and not one of them crapped on me.

Pretty sad old story when the best I can come up with for an
excuse to upgrade is roughly $200 for 8 or 16G memory, a MB, and a
95-watt Vishnu eight core. And possibly iffy on a newer
higher-watter PS than my 400-watt Rosewill unit;- those Vishnu
cores go ambient at 65-watts but will go upwards to 265-watts,
cooking with all eight burners stressed to their max.




It would have to be initially for an entertainment center, relatively
easy to tweak in for sound processing viz a mixer into a two amplifier
approximating "stereo bi-amping." Even though it already sounds great
with the Phenom X4 9550. To get real and serious it would involve
running virtual machines, or significant *nix background learning to
catch up on. Slated for when that day comes: When giving Windows 10
the slip becomes ... an inevitability.
  #14  
Old April 27th 17, 10:37 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Diesel[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 58
Default Recovering UEFI boot entries after clear CMOS

Flasherly
Thu, 27 Apr 2017
08:18:28 GMT in alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt, wrote:

On Thu, 27 Apr 2017 07:02:07 -0000 (UTC), Diesel
wrote:

Neither is a CMOS image reflash exact either. I was messing
with that the other day when I replaced the CMOS battery.


That depends what you mean by cmos image reflash. CMOS contains
data. Not code. You don't reflash it...


This MB BIOS --
Gigabyte m61pme-s2 ( Phenom X4 9550)
has a reflash for itself as built-in BIOS menu option. It writes
an image of itself to a BIOS-ID'd drive and then you use that. So,
yea - it's a reflash at that point: you can tell by how slow it
is, eg same same as a regular BIOS overwrite or near about for
EPROM speed.


As I said, it doesn't backup your cmos settings into the flash. cmos is
data, not executable code.

I'd have to do a check-point on that, whether backed
up BIOS firmware/CMOS settings...to compa a) size of
manufacturer provided MB BIOS update revision file (it seemed to
me a smaller rewrite), b) points of CMOS settings I'd changed and
how if any make it through by rewriting with a created file. As I
said, I don't like it because when I first wrote one, to a SSD, it
errored out on me first time up with "corrupted" returned;- not
good for playing with fire.


Feel free to do so. You'll find that your 'custom settings' are not
preserved in the image. Although the CMOS isn't a seperate actual chip
anymore, it's contents are not routinely backed up along with the bios
firmware. No.

Cool. Sure I've seen similar on MB sites, in their utilities
sections;- perhaps not as featured with a view-in or preview.


It just sticks with the semi official AT standard at the time it was
written. So, in that sense, it's generic and not motherboard specific.

Not sure. One time (electrical brown/black out) came back to find
the boot/BIOS checksum faulted out to restore defaults. Happened
to find a spare replacement battery, and shorted the clear CMOS,


The CMOS isn't the BIOS. Two different creatures, despite them living
on the same piece of silicon...


The machine I'm writing this post on is actually a dual cpu
system. Not dual core, it actually has two independent cpus under
the hood. Mated, running in SMP mode. It's ancient technology by
todays standards, but, it still does mostly what I ask of it.
I've got so much stuff on it, migrating to another daily box will
be a chore.


Cool. Intel Xeons, I'll hazard. That's no shineola, a migration.
I'm ashamed to say how old and many MBs I've been through,
transplanting my primary OS binary image (three generations or
images, actually). All those tweaks are significant hair-pulling
to start from scratch and attempt to duplicate.


Xeons? No, those were a bit too pricey for what I was planning on
using this machine for when I built it. They are p3/800mhz, mated
processors. Running on a tyan tiger 230 mainboard.

Tweaks alone are a pain, reinstalling various software that's not
'portable' in nature is another nightmare, entirely. Granted, I don't
actually have to do the reinstall route, I know how to put this copy of
Windows XP on another mainboard and adjust the registry prior to
booting for the first time on the new board so it doesn't go ape ****
on me, but, it's still a pita.

I use docking stations. Went whole-hog w/ an Anchor (brandname),
very popular on Amazon ratings -- a USB3 docking station,
requiring I send out for USB3 PCI boards to update my USB2 MBs.
Total friggin' disaster: The Anchor gave it up, killed itself
within a week or two of new. Happened to notice Anchor polling
themselves on Amazon for positive reviews a few weeks ago. Told
them it was bad-tasting trashed and they sent me a PDF for
shipping out on a new return unit. So bad tasting I didn't even
bother. I'll just remember them. I've been getting docking
stations, several even free (w/ related purchases), for ages from
NewEgg, and not one of them crapped on me.


I would have bought the drive from newegg, but, for the first time (for
me) Newegg couldn't beat the local Walmart (yea, the walmart) on price.
Nowhere near it for the same drive, infact. I price shopped before I
took the plunge. Not only did I walk out the door with the drive in
hand, I paid $30 or so less for it, and didn't have to wait for it to
arrive on my doorstep. So, in the event the drive was DOA when I got
it, I could drive right back and exchange it. Vs mailing it back to
newegg. I really like newegg too, I've done business with them for
years. Fantastic return policy, but, sometimes, when I want something,
I have a need for it then and really don't like the idea of having to
wait for it. It had been bugging me for awhile to get the data backed
up on Slimer; it has a pile of things important to me and others. Now,
I can relax a bit. It's all backed up.

Incidently, my XP box can't use the new drive I bought. So, I had
the joy of copying the folders/files I wanted over to Slimer and then
having Slimer copy them over to the external.




--
I would like to apologize for not having offended you yet.
Please be patient. I will get to you shortly.
  #15  
Old April 28th 17, 01:57 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Flasherly[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,407
Default Recovering UEFI boot entries after clear CMOS

On Thu, 27 Apr 2017 21:37:48 -0000 (UTC), Diesel
wrote:


I would have bought the drive from newegg, but, for the first time (for
me) Newegg couldn't beat the local Walmart (yea, the walmart) on price.
Nowhere near it for the same drive, infact. I price shopped before I
took the plunge. Not only did I walk out the door with the drive in
hand, I paid $30 or so less for it, and didn't have to wait for it to
arrive on my doorstep. So, in the event the drive was DOA when I got
it, I could drive right back and exchange it. Vs mailing it back to
newegg. I really like newegg too, I've done business with them for
years. Fantastic return policy, but, sometimes, when I want something,
I have a need for it then and really don't like the idea of having to
wait for it. It had been bugging me for awhile to get the data backed
up on Slimer; it has a pile of things important to me and others. Now,
I can relax a bit. It's all backed up.

Incidently, my XP box can't use the new drive I bought. So, I had
the joy of copying the folders/files I wanted over to Slimer and then
having Slimer copy them over to the external.


That's one well made MB, the tyan tiger 230, to have held up so long.
Wasn't until these Gigabytes that I thought I had something really
unusually well built to last, but your Tyan has twice the age of mine.
Two or three of my hard drive docking stations also date back to about
a 1G limit. Bought most of my drives just before the "big storm" that
hit the Pacific Rim facilities, when prices went up near enough to
where they are now. 2G drives would go on sale for $49 during the
year before the storm.

Be sweet, though, to switch over to a small stack of SSD drives.
Around $250 1T SSD averages, Sandisk (WD), Crucial, Mushkin, OCZ ($350
for a premier Samsung EVO). Cut that in half and suspect I'd get
gamey about consolidating everything program, data and text related
(outside of Audio/Visual). Even with a sense of containment well
enough to be called a core or essential collection. It's difficult to
say that, in a decade or two, picking up either a HDD or SSD, one
holding archival material and having sat on a shelf 3 or 5 years --
whether in fact the SSD will be of magnitudes greater certitude, over
a HDD, for any likelihood of faulting/failure. I'll probably give it
try when that day comes.
  #16  
Old April 28th 17, 11:51 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Diesel[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 58
Default Recovering UEFI boot entries after clear CMOS

Flasherly
Fri, 28 Apr 2017
00:57:33 GMT in alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt, wrote:

That's one well made MB, the tyan tiger 230, to have held up so
long. Wasn't until these Gigabytes that I thought I had something
really unusually well built to last, but your Tyan has twice the
age of mine.


Heh. Thanks. It's been a very good machine. It used to have 1gb of ram
on it, but, due to a failure with a ram stick, it literally toasted the
circuitry powering that slot. As in, burnt the trace in two on the
mainboard. She's still running though. On three out of four sticks. [g]
Slight reduction in available system memory as a result, but, I really
can't complain considering the age of this particular machine. I've
gotten my monies worth out of it and then some.

I originally built it for audio/video encoding work. At the time, it
rocked the socks off near anything else out there for the time period.
it's obviously showing it's age these days though. It's the oldest and
obviously, slowest box I've got still running. But, still running it
is.



--
I would like to apologize for not having offended you yet.
Please be patient. I will get to you shortly.
 




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