LPC /FWH programming from Windows

manohara_k · Tue Jan 10, 2006 6:24 am

Can anybody let me know if its possible to flash bios from Windows Environemnt.

How do i talk to the FWH using LPC interface on the ICH. IS there any register where I need to send Codes to talk to the FWH ? on an intel ich5

Are there any existing utilites for BIOS Flashing from Windows ?

Thanks,
Manohara

maman · Tue Jan 10, 2006 11:11 am

manohara_k wrote:Can anybody let me know if its possible to flash bios from Windows Environemnt.

it's possible, several utilities, such as the winflash from Award Inc. does such a thing. I have an ICH5 based mobo (DFI865PE Infinity) and it works flawlessly. AFAIK, winflash installs and communicate through a kernel mode driver in winXP/2K to be able to access the BIOS flashrom directly from within the OS.

manohara_k wrote: How do i talk to the FWH using LPC interface on the ICH. IS there any register where I need to send Codes to talk to the FWH ? on an intel ich5

Have you read the ICH5 datasheet? I haven't know the details yet.

manohara_k wrote: Are there any existing utilites for BIOS Flashing from Windows ?

Winflash for award BIOS, and I guess others also exist for different kind of BIOS.

manohara_k · Wed Jan 11, 2006 6:35 am

Maman

Thanks for your pointers and the detailed tutorails that are in your site.

I am rookie about bIOS technology

Iam reading the ICH manual and FWD manual , I ws able to talk to the RNG device on FWH but yet to "discover" ways of talking to flash

But i reversed the winfaslh.sys driver with winflash (which actually was crashing on my 865g ich5 system) ..looks like i can falsh bios from windows.

I wonder why we dont see so many utilities for falshing bios from windows, may be its a stability problem

Thanks,
Manohara

Borg Number One · Wed Jan 11, 2006 1:24 pm

Hi.

Utilities like:

(Phoenix)Award WinFlash

Phoenix WinPhlash

AMI WinFlash ("WinSFI")

Asus Update

Abit Flash Menu

...can be used to update the BIOS in Windows.

Asus Update supports AMI and Award / "Phoenix - Award" BIOS mainboards.

The current Abit Flash Menu version also works on/with "non-Abit" mainboards, also with AMI and Award BIOS.

maman · Thu Jan 12, 2006 8:43 am

Borg Number One wrote:Hi.
...
Asus Update supports AMI and Award / "Phoenix - Award" BIOS mainboards.

The current Abit Flash Menu version also works on/with "non-Abit" mainboards, also with AMI and Award BIOS.

There's no major difference between AMI and Award/Phoenix or other kind of BIOS from the flasher-program's point of view. The flasher only needs to know the chipset and it's associated protocol to access the BIOS chip and also the locking mechanism used by the BIOS chip to disable writing into it (certain byte patterns need to be written to certain address). However some of the locking mechanism already standardized by JEDEC

Borg Number One · Thu Jan 12, 2006 10:20 am

Hi.

maman wrote:There's no difference between AMI and Award/Phoenix or other kind of BIOS from the flasher-program's point of view. The flasher only needs to know the chipset and it's associated protocol to access the BIOS chip and also the locking mechanism used by the BIOS chip to disable writing into it (certain byte patterns need to be written to certain address).

Try to run any Award WinFlash version with any AMI BIOS boards in Windows (2k/XP...)

Try to run any AMI WinFlash version with any Award BIOS boards in Windows (2k/XP...)

In both cases you will see nice crashes/error messages by Windows.

maman · Fri Jan 13, 2006 2:38 am

Borg Number One wrote:Hi.

Try to run any Award WinFlash version with any AMI BIOS boards in Windows (2k/XP...)

Try to run any AMI WinFlash version with any Award BIOS boards in Windows (2k/XP...)

In both cases you will see nice crashes/error messages by Windows.

hmm, I think it's because this vendor specific flasher checks the integrity of the respective BIOS binary file based on their propietary mechanism (checksums, etc.), prior to and possibly after the binary is written to the flashrom. That's why it crashed if we try to flash different kind of BIOS binary than what they expect

Borg Number One · Fri Jan 13, 2006 2:42 am

The mentioned steps result a crash, before loading any BIOS file.

maman · Fri Jan 13, 2006 2:52 am

There must be something that I overlooked here. Is it the kernel mode driver interface between both flasher that has issue

. Anyway, thx for pointing out Borg

Borg Number One · Fri Jan 13, 2006 9:55 am

Hi.

I think that the AMI/Award BIOS (some code/routines in the BIOS) are responsible to support "BIOS Flash in Windows".
-->A kind of a special interface to allow to flash the BIOS in Windows???

If you check the string resources in Award WinFlash, you will find stuff like
"Flashing in Windows not supported by current BIOS".

The kernel mode driver interface and the "Award/AMI WinFlash possibility/interface" ( by the Award/AMI BIOS code) may be totally different, so that they crash if you run AMI WinFlash on a board with Award BIOS and vice versa.