Tag Archives: update

tech

When a BIOS update goes bad!

Leave a comment

The BIOS update a scary update that might mess up your PC if it goes wrong.

So recently i wanted to play a Blu Ray disk i bought on Amazon and i remembered (probaly wrongly) that the BIOS of my motherboard the MSI 450 a Pro Max had problems with the Blu ray drive i have the Pioneer BD-202.

So i had the bright idea of rolling back the BIOS to see if that would fix it. I had done so 3 times previosly and there was no problems that was until an ipdate that made my CPU work the motherboard.

AMI BIOS 7B86vMC

Description:

  •  Optimized and support AMD Ryzen 5000 series processors.

Basially this update made the motherboard work with AMD Ryzen 5600 CPU’s and rolling it back past this update would “probably” break the compatability.

Now i knew this was kinda stupid but i wanted to see if a previous BIOS update would make the Blu-Ray drive work properly.

Disaster:
BIOS updated but when the PC went to reboot there was nothing put the white motherboard light on and nothing on the screen. it was at that moment i knew i had fucked up!

USB M Flash:
I knew there was a way to recovery if i could rollback the update but how. id never used this feature before on any motherboard and since nothing came up when the PC came on how would i even enable this recovery mode which is called “M-Flash”.

Mikes Unboxing Video:
so i googled this motherboard and the bios and was searching for some way to fix the mess i had made and i found this video and i cannot thank this guy enough for making a video like this.

What i needed:

  • USB Flash Drive
  • A Working BIOS Rom file
  • Way to move and rename the BIOS File

Problem:
I only had my phone and had no access to a laptop or other PC.  i had to copy the BIOS file to the root folder of the USB drive and rename it to “MSI.ROM”.

Without a PC this would normally be impossable but i remembered that i had saved the BIOS working previous update on the flash drive i was using and only needed a way to rename and move the file.  How to do this with no PC?

The flash drive i had both a USB A and USB micro connector and my phone was now USB C. It was a Sandisk 16Gb drive.

How to connect a USB C Slot to the Flash drive. A few months ago i ordfered a Pen mouse from Amazon;

CestMall 2.4GHz USB Wireless Optical Pen Shaped Mouse Adjustable 800/1200/1600 DPI Handwriting Smart Mouse for Laptop Android Tablet PC-Blue

I remember at the time if had some weird adapters for it. I thought to myself i will never need them but i kept the box for some reason and when i opened it to see what adapters were inside it;

When i connected the Flash drive and adapter see below;

Two USB adapters
The handy USB C to USB A adapter that came with the USB Pen.

My phone was able to detect it as a Flash drive and now all i had to move the file to root dir of the flash drive.

Doing the Flashback.

This is where the youtuber Mikes Unboxing Video’s saved the day. He went through the process of how to get the motherboard to “re-flash” or “flashback” to different BIOS version.

After putting the BIOS that was working fine in the root folder of the flash drive and renaming it as per intructions.

  • Power off PC
  • insert flash drive to the correct slot on back of motherboard
  • hold down the bios button near the USB slot until PC comes on
  • once the BIOS light at the back of the motherboard starts flashing wait!

This process was nerve wracking it took 5 agonising mintutes of waiting to see if i would have to my PC back and luckily it came back to life.

Huge thanks to Mikes Unboxing, give him a sub on youtube at;
https://www.youtube.com/@mikesunboxing

 

Linux, Operating Systems

Kali 2020.2 Linux Update Problem

Leave a comment

If your getting this error while trying to update Kali Linux via with sudo apt update

Get:1 http://kali.download/kali kali-rolling InRelease [41.2 kB]
Err:1 http://kali.download/kali kali-rolling InRelease
The following signatures were invalid: EXPKEYSIG ED444FF07D8D0BF6 Kali Linux Repository <[email protected]>
Reading package lists... Done
W: GPG error: http://kali.download/kali kali-rolling InRelease: The following signatures were invalid: EXPKEYSIG ED444FF07D8D0BF6 Kali Linux Repository <[email protected]>
E: The repository 'http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling InRelease' is not signed.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.

The solution is to run the command;
sudo wget -q -O - archive.kali.org/archive-key.asc | sudo apt-key add

 

Huge thanks to the kalitut.com for this solution, i  had no idea how to fix it.

how to update Kali Linux and Fix update error – KaliTut

tech

Hard drive failures – Western Digital Hard Drives are winning!

Leave a comment

Over the years ive had two hard drive’s fail but one failed before there was even a chance to know the drive was about fail probably before S.M.A.R.T back in 2002/2003.  It was a brand new drive with alot of programming stuff on it.  I didnt think id need to backup a brand new drive oh what a lesson learned.

The first one was at a time where there was no google cloud and no online sync and backing up was a pain in the ass.

The Windows 10 1903 update
When the Windows 10 1903 update “rolled out” it became one of the worst experiences ive ever had to go through in upgrading a Windows PC in almost 20 years.

When i did get the fecking thing to work after two BIOS tweaks it revealed another problem. Everytime windows booted up one of the harddrives would dissapear for no reason.

Turns out after a few software hard drive diagnosis programs, the drive is kinda fu*cked and its a Western Digital Drive.

S.M.A.R.T – Self Monitoring and Reporting and Tool:
This invention in hard drive tech is fantastic, if your having problems with a hard drive and do a scan if there are any problems with the SMART settings then you could be in trouble.

Now the drive is still working but S.M.A.R.T is reporting problems with the drive which isnt a good sign.

Thats two Western Digital Hard Drives dead!

Dont buy Western digital Drives im guessing i bought these drives cause they were the cheaper option and that wraps up this post with this link to a survery of hard drive failures and yes Western Digital is number one.

Hard drive failure survey;
56,224 hard drives later, Western Digital fails most often

 

 

 

Windows 10

Windows 10 1903 freezes PC – Fix Found

Leave a comment

Microsoft did it again, released another f***king update for Windows 10 that broke things. This is the second or third time this has happened now.

This time the problem is similar again to one i had just solved a while ago where my PC would just freeze randomly.

Again this problem was caused by updating Windows 10 to 1809 which i only did a few months ago due to all the issues that update had.

This fucking update is a disaster and i have not been able to roll back to 1809 yet and i still down know whats causing the problem. All the evidence points to the Windows 1903 update.

The problem:
Only seems to occur when the PC is either idle or watching youtube or netflix.

Windows 10 Reliability:

Windows 10 Reliability after the Windows 10 1809 update

 

Windows 10 Reliability after the Windows 10 1903 update

 

So far ive;

Did Not work:

  • Reinstalled Video drivers
  • Reinstalled Bluetooth dongle drivers
  • uninstalled Realtek sound drivers
  • uninstalled Realtek ethernet drivers
  • Changing the ‘Default Sound Format’ from 48khz to 44khz
  • Reinstalling Realtek Lan Drivers
  • Reinstalled Realtek sound drivers
  • Uninstalled USB 3.0 Drivers
  • Ran the system file checker command ‘sfc /scannow‘
  • Reinstalling Asmedia USB 3.0 drivers
  • Disabled C1E power state in BIOS
  • Update Graphics card drivers (New Nvidia version)
  • Ran chkdsk on all drives-no errors reported
  • Reset Power saving settings
  • Reinstallion of Clean Windows 10 1903
    • The problem remained despite having a brand new clean install of Windows 10.
  • Turn Off Link State Power Management
  • Disable AppXsvc using Registry Editor
  • USB 3.0 – front side of PC disabled
  • Installed dot.net 3.5
  • Running Windows Memory Test
  • DPC Specfic fixes
    • disabled IPv6

The Fix in the BIOS:

  • Disable Core C6 state
  • Disabled C1 Support

Note:
This may be a BIOS or Motherboard compatability issue with Windows 10 1903. The motherboard in question here is an Asus m5a97 r2.0 with BIOS version 2501.

 

Windows 10 May 2019 Update Megathread
byu/jenmsft inWindows10

Fixing DPC latency;

The below article which im still reading recommends a few things;

https://merabheja.com/high-dpc-latency-on-windows-10/

Problem *seems* to be a compatability problem between windows and a Bluetooth Dongle.

I had old Bluetooth dongle from Motorola “BCM92035DGROM” which worked fine but i did have problems with it and the 1809 update.

The cause is still unknown the PC froze again for no known reason. The below article has some tips to stop it happenening;

Laptop freezes randomly after Install Windows 10 May 2019 update
https://windows101tricks.com/windows-10-freezes-randomly/

 

Articles about this problem;

https://howtofixwindows.com/windows-10-laptop-freeze-and-crash-issues/

https://wintechlab.com/windows-10-freezes-applications-not-responding/

Finding the cause of freezes;

https://www.digitalmastersmag.com/magazine/tip-of-the-day-how-to-find-crash-logs-on-windows-10/

How to rollback on the update;

https://howtofixwindows.com/rollback-windows-10-update/