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Chapter 7: Troubleshooting and Support
7.5 UEFI BIOS Recovery
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 do update the BIOS, do not shut down or reset the system while the BIOS is
updating to avoid possible boot failure.
Overview
The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) 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 that will allow the UEFI
OS loader stored in an add-on card to boot the system. The UEFI offers clean, hands-off
management to a computer during system boot.
Recovering the UEFI BIOS Image
A UEFI BIOS flash chip consists of a recovery BIOS block and a main BIOS block (a main
BIOS image). The recovery block contains critical BIOS codes, including memory detection
and recovery codes for the user to flash a healthy BIOS image if the original main BIOS image
is corrupted. When the system power is turned on, the recovery block codes execute first.
Once this process is complete, the main BIOS code will continue with system initialization
and the remaining POST (Power-On Self-Test) routines.
Note 1:
Follow the BIOS recovery instructions below for BIOS recovery when the main BIOS
block crashes.
Note 2:
When the BIOS recovery block crashes, you will need to follow the procedures
to make a Returned Merchandise Authorization (RMA) request. Also, you may use the
Supermicro Update Manager (SUM) Out-of-Band (
https://www.supermicro.com.tw/products/
nfo/SMS_SUM.cfm
) to reflash the BIOS.
Recovering the Main BIOS Block with a USB Device
This feature allows the user to recover the main 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.
The file system supported by the recovery block is FAT (including FAT12, FAT16, and FAT32)
which is installed on a bootable or non-bootable USB-attached device. However, the BIOS
might need several minutes to locate the SUPER.ROM file if the media size becomes too
large due to the huge volumes of folders and files stored in the device.
To perform UEFI BIOS recovery using a USB-attached device, follow the instructions below.