Appendix C: UEFI BIOS Recovery
81
Appendix C
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 need to update the BIOS, do not shut down or reset the system while the BIOS
is updating. Doing so may cause a boot failure.
C.1 Overview
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, hand-off control to a computer system at bootup.
C.2 Recovering the UEFI BIOS Image
An AMIBIOS flash chip consists of a boot sector block and a main BIOS code block (a main
BIOS image). The boot sector block contains critical BIOS codes, including memory detection
and recovery codes for the user to flash a new BIOS image if the original BIOS image is
corrupted. When the system power is on, the boot sector codes execute first. Once it 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 block crashes. However, when the BIOS Boot sector crashes, you will need to
send the motherboard back to Supermicro for RMA repair.
C.3 Recovering the BIOS Block with a USB 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.
To perform UEFI BIOS recovery using a USB-attached device, follow the instructions on the
next page.
