Q-Flash / EFIFLASH both claiming out of date on X79S-UP5

[RootWyrm]

Pulled out a fresh GA-X79S-UP5-WIFI, Rev1.0, of course with F3. (It's /always/ got F3. Thanks, Gigabyte. Thanks a bunch.)

SOP: flash to F4w, confirm OK, flash side B, confirm OK, flash side A to F4v modified and call it a day. Done it before, always gone without a hitch.

Not this time. Nope. This time, it's gone completely and utterly pear shaped. And I'm stumped as it's a UEFI issue I've never seen before. First thought: corrupted copy. Fresh flash drive, grab F4v stock, "this version of Q-Flash is out of date." Er, what? I strapped the damn thing same way I have before.
Fine. We'll efiflash both sides. That's why I have flash drives in the first place. Except: "this utility is out of date."

It's acting like the ROM strap just lost it's mind, but yeah, that shouldn't be possible. It's persisted through CMOS clear, the works. I thought maybe one of the sides was hosed, but I've confirmed both sides of DualBIOS are at F4w. The September 27th "F4" (F5 IB-E ucode) behaves identically, as does virtualfred's F5A - claims utility is out of date. Oh, and so does F4w. Yeah. It can't flash the version it already flashed.
If that's not strange enough: other than that, the only symptom is that NumLock does not work. Period. I double checked and the LPC SIO ROM is fine. There are zero bytes difference between two downloads and what's on the board.

Same error on both sides, too. Any ideas? I'm at wit's end.

BTW, currently on the bench so available H/W out of necessity includes an HD4870, HD7970 (F3 hates it), a half dozen various SSDs, miscellaneous other bits, you get the idea. Don't ask how many permutations I've already tried. :(

[virtualfred]

Re: Q-Flash / EFIFLASH both claiming out of date on X79S-UP5

Hi,

Could you try with FPT ?

Good luck

[RootWyrm]

Re: Q-Flash / EFIFLASH both claiming out of date on X79S-UP5

Hi,

Could you try with FPT ?

Good luck

Error 75: "fparts.txt" file not found.

FYI, system does not have an OS available ATM. I'm starting to suspect that the Q-Flash region may be hosed. It's showing that it's v1.03 on both F4w's.

[virtualfred]

Re: Q-Flash / EFIFLASH both claiming out of date on X79S-UP5

Error 75: "fparts.txt" file not found.

FYI, system does not have an OS available ATM. I'm starting to suspect that the Q-Flash region may be hosed. It's showing that it's v1.03 on both F4w's.

My fault, now I had fparts.txt in my previous link, could you download it and try again ?

[RootWyrm]

Re: Q-Flash / EFIFLASH both claiming out of date on X79S-UP5

My fault, now I had fparts.txt in my previous link, could you download it and try again ?

Ayup, that would do it. (I have no idea on the layout for the F4W.)

And as feared:

RESULT: The data is identical.

[COLOR=#008000][/COLOR][COLOR=#00ff00]FPT Operation Passed[/COLOR]

So it checks out, won't overwrite, can't find anything wrong, and isn't updating Q-Flash region.
Added bonus, Gigabyte support hasn't responded in 3 days now. Starting to get very, very annoyed with them.

EDIT: So, I gave up and called them. Wow. SERIOUSLY, Gigabyte? SERIOUSLY? You call that support? I try to explain the problem and all your support person says over and over and over and over again is "install the OS and use @BIOS."
I checked the B side and hey look, F3 and won't flash. And F3 won't POST. "Just use legacy card and install OS and install F4. You can't use computer anyway without OS!" What part of "I have one side installed correctly and one side hosed" means the problem is not having an OS? And I love how they didn't listen when I said I CAN'T install an OS because the SATA and SAS are screwed up, just said "you don't have to configure anything."
Haven't been this aggravated by support since Symantec basically told me to go screw myself on about $500K of VxVM.

[virtualfred]

Re: Q-Flash / EFIFLASH both claiming out of date on X79S-UP5

Ayup, that would do it. (I have no idea on the layout for the F4W.)
And as feared:

RESULT: The data is identical.
[COLOR=#008000][/COLOR][COLOR=#00ff00]FPT Operation Passed[/COLOR]

So it checks out, won't overwrite, can't find anything wrong, and isn't updating Q-Flash region.
Added bonus, Gigabyte support hasn't responded in 3 days now. Starting to get very, very annoyed with them.

Hummm... strange it works for joe2108 ... did you to edit autoexec.bat with F5a ?

[RootWyrm]

Re: Q-Flash / EFIFLASH both claiming out of date on X79S-UP5

Hummm... strange it works for joe2108 ... did you to edit autoexec.bat with F5a ?

Yeah, my instincts are telling me that this board is hosed. And with support being that counter-intuitive, not listening, and so on... holy crap. That was the most useless call EVER. I've been building systems for 22 freaking years. If I'm saying an OS is not possible, why the hell are you repeating the same crap about installing an OS?

Going to have to try and replace this board with vendor obviously, since I have zero faith Gigabyte will honor warranty on it because I can't install an OS.

EDIT: Oh, my favorite part was how they clearly knew nothing. "Oh you can't use Q-Flash or EFIFlash because the BIOS is too big so it doesn't work." It's all of 8MB/64Mbit. It worked just fine and Gigabyte support was telling me 'oh it doesn't work.' Nothing as offensive as lying.

[boe323]

Re: Q-Flash / EFIFLASH both claiming out of date on X79S-UP5

I think gigabyte was trying to say that some new bios are bigger than the one installed, qflash sees this as an error, updating through @BIOS first with the new size bios will fix the issue, then qflash will see the bios matches the size installed and will then proceed to flash future bios until it changes again, many of us have had to do this, a few hours agao I had to use @BIOS for a new bios for g1assassin2, I had exact same message, qflash out of date, this new bios is completely different to one that was installed before hand, sounds like the support got confused somewhere.

[RootWyrm]

Re: Q-Flash / EFIFLASH both claiming out of date on X79S-UP5

I think gigabyte was trying to say that some new bios are bigger than the one installed, qflash sees this as an error, updating through @BIOS first with the new size bios will fix the issue, then qflash will see the bios matches the size installed and will then proceed to flash future bios until it changes again, many of us have had to do this, a few hours agao I had to use @BIOS for a new bios for g1assassin2, I had exact same message, qflash out of date, this new bios is completely different to one that was installed before hand, sounds like the support got confused somewhere.

I only wish that were true. But no, that is definitely not what they were saying. They were saying it was impossible to do an F4w using efiflash. That's pretty much verbatim. Which makes it either inexcusable ignorance or flat out lying - neither of which is acceptable, especially when refusing to listen to what I'm saying. (That being: it won't POST or recognize disk with F3.)

The refusing to listen was the absolute most inexcusable part. When a customer calls you for support, you do not talk over them when they are trying to explain the problem with the same ignorant idiotic instructions. You listen to what they are saying so that you understand the problem. The person I spoke with CONTINUALLY talked over me and refused to listen to more than half of what I said. I may as well have been dealing with a broken IVR - THAT would have been more useful and less obnoxious.

At this point, I'm almost POSITIVE the board is a brick, too. Which Gigabyte might have been able to determine IF THE WORTHLESS TWIT ANSWERING TECH SUPPORT LISTENED AND DIDN'T TALK OVER ME. Yeah, I am REALLY pissed off about this. It's not just idiotic, it's rude. And yeah, I am pretty damned sure that when my thumbdrive with the F6 omnibus cannot detect any of the SATA or SAS, the board is just plain faulty. BIOS bricking of SATA/SAS means no RSTe - yeah, well, they're there pre-boot. And this is the first and only board with this behavior.

EDIT: Aaaaaaaaaand the board is officially a brick which I am now officially in nasty mode over. Finally got F4 release to take on the A side, B side still completely hosed. Hey look! Invalid MAC address AND firmware load on the i82579LM so it's totally bricked. Great job, Gigabyte! Oh, look, nothing attached to SAS shows in BIOS -or- OS no matter what it is or what mode SATA is set to, including disabled, and RSTe won't load with the SATA in RAID!