Asus H170 PRO GAMING BIOS is not displayed

Current BIOS: H170-PRO-GAMING-ASUS-3403

https://www.asus.com/supportonly/h170_pro_gaming/helpdesk_bios/

Problem: BIOS is not displayed, can’t enter BIOS, cursor/underscore on black screen.

Cause: unknown. PC stayed some time unused and then this… Power on PC and it shows black screen with non-blinking cursor, then monitor blinks and you get same black screen with non-blinking cursor. Tried on old and new TFT monitors with DP, HDMI, VGA, DVI-D – same. Tried on discrete video – same.

Potential cause: low CMOS KTS battery - 2.6 V - may have corrupted BIOS.

I can boot from USB WinPE without any problems and see hardware with utilities, if no OS is installed on any HDD or SSD.

Windows PE => CMD with admin rights => shutdown /r /fw /f /t 0 

I can boot from Win 10 USB and install Windows 10 on HDD or M.2 SSD, but after install Windows won’t boot. You get same black screen with non-blinking cursor.

I can’t enter BIOS by pressing F2 or Del, but Ctrl+Alt+Del reboots PC without problems.

When entering UEFI BIOS from Kubuntu USB GRUB menu PC turns off and then restarts.

I can’t flash BIOS with BUPDATER or AFUDOS.

With BUPDATER PC simply reboots or proposes to secure flash and reboots.

With AFUDOS I get message that BIOS is write protected. Can’t backup it and can’t flash it.

I changed battery, unplugged devices, removed CPU, tried another PSU, changed memory modules, reset CMOS many times but nothing helps. Looks like BIOS is working because with service utilities booted from USB drive I can see sensors, all specs, test video and cpu, hdd and ssd are visible, etc… But I can't enter BIOS.

BIOS chip flash solved the problem. Used buggy CH341A black USB 5V adapter, CH341-USB/CH341WDM.INF driver, UEFITool.exe, AsProgrammer_2.0.3a, Windows 7.

AFTER 3805 BIOS flash LAN Intel Ethernet Connection (2) I219-LM  stopped working!!!

Flashed 3403 BIOS again!

Asus H170 PRO GAMING BIOS chip model: GD25B128CPIG E6S556 AH1644

Asus H170 PRO GAMING BIOS chip photo:

https://forums.overclockers.ru/viewtopic.php?f=89&t=624998&sid=a223bad92cdc077b857d1b7c0b16eb3f&start=20

https://forums.mydigitallife.net/threads/ami-bios-seems-write-protected-how-to-disable-or-circumvent-this.23932/

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?99490-Flash-any-most-Asus-motherboard-Bios-in-DOS-with-USB-tutorial-Intel-AMD-roll-back

https://winraid.level1techs.com/t/asus-h170-pro-bios-recovery/31530

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYXKOo4sJqM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpjs4-B7HPU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9IuCtNuakE

https://github.com/corna/me_cleaner/issues/98

https://www.cryptoprofi.info/?p=10901

https://i2hard.ru/publications/30697/

https://greentechreviews.ru/2020/09/09/vosstanovlenie-bios-v-domashnih-i-okolo-togo-usloviyah/

https://www.wimsbios.com/amiflasher.jsp#gsc.tab=0

https://robotchip.ru/obzor-programmatora-dlya-flash-i-eeprom-na-ch341a/

https://forums.overclockers.ru/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=23980&start=9260

Install CH341A drivers and AsProgrammer_2.0.3a on Windows.

Install flashrom on Linux. [ You may also need libftdi1-2, libusb-0.1-4 ]