Friday, September 30, 2011

MSI MS7528 (G31M3 motherboard) bios update Linux horror story

I had this error on dmes log output BIOS bug: CPU MTRRs don't cover all of memory, losing 768MB of RAM Solution is to upgrade the bios fro v1.1 to v 1.3 1.After i have searched the motherboard on msi site i didn't knew where is the generic motherboard (without F/L) and it seems that according to the forum All I can see are the -F and -L(S) models. It's almost as if the plain G31M3 does not exist. and if you like to know why doesn't my board have the -F printed on it:"-F" is ommited. G31M3-F or G31M3 means the same board
2. Flashrom from linux doesn't work yet with this board
3. Next instal windows (yes you read that is right) and use the useless Windows tool Live update 5 that doesn't work at all (it doesn't find the drivers, it doesn't find the bios update)
4. I need to put another tool that it will install DOS ! and then put the zip with the bios on an usb stick
5. I had to run fix it to redo the drive geometry also i had to format the usb stick
6. Required Boot from ubuntu live cd and remove windows (optionally format usb stick as ubuntu live cd)
check the bios and dmesg log
dmesg
[    0.000000] DMI: MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO.,LTD MS-7528/G31M3-F(MS-7528), BIOS V1.3 06/19/2009
...

[    0.000000] total RAM covered: 4096M

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