Appendix C: UEFI BIOS Recovery
C-1
Appendix C
UEFI BIOS Recovery Instructions
Warning:
Do not upgrade the BIOS unless your system has a BIOS-related issue.
Flashing the wrong BIOS can cause irreparable damage to the system. In no event shall
Supermicro be liable for direct, indirect, special, incidental, or consequential damages
arising from a BIOS update. If you need to update the BIOS, do not shut down or reset
the system while the BIOS is updating to avoid possible boot failure.
C-1 An Overview to the UEFI BIOS
The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) specification provides a software-
based interface between the operating system and the platform firmware in the
pre-boot environment. The UEFI specification supports an architecture-independent
mechanism for add-on card initialization to allow the UEFI OS loader, which is stored
in the add-on card, to boot up the system. UEFI offers a clean, hands-off control
to a computer system at bootup.
C-2 How to Recover the UEFI BIOS Image (-the Main
BIOS Block)
A UEF BIOS flash chip consists of a recovery BIOS block, comprised of two boot
blocks and a main BIOS block (a main BIOS image). The boot block contains critical
BIOS codes, including memory detection and recovery codes for the user to flash
a new BIOS image if the original main BIOS image is corrupted. When the system
power is on, the boot block codes execute first. Once that is completed, the main
BIOS code will continue with system initialization and bootup.
Note:
Follow the BIOS Recovery instructions below for BIOS recovery
when the main BIOS boot crashes. However, when the BIOS boot block
crashes, you will need to follow the procedures in Appendix D.
C-3 To Recover the Main BIOS Block Using a USB-
Attached Device
This feature allows the user to recover a BIOS image using a USB-attached device
without additional utilities used. A USB flash device such as a USB Flash Drive, or
a USB CD/DVD ROM/RW device can be used for this purpose. However, a USB
Hard Disk drive cannot be used for BIOS recovery at this time.
