Install VBIOS with EXE updater

Ask Fedora
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1

Hello,
I recently acquired a refurbished MSI Thin GF63 12UCX, but since I didn’t want to install Fedora on it together with a clean Windows install, I simply wiped the drive and proceeded with just Fedora 41.

Now, after taking a look at the downloads page, I discovered that there were newer versions for BIOS and VBIOS firmware. I updated the BIOS just fine with the integrated Flash utility, but I don’t know how to do that with the Nvidia GPU, since MSI only provides a single EXE updater.

After running nvidia-smi -q | grep BIOS this is the output:
VBIOS Version : 94.07.8B.00.27

Updater: MS-16R8_GN20-S7-B-MP-KB_94.07.82.40.63_PP.exe (download)

Does anyone know how to apply this update without a working Windows install?
Is this even that useful? Thanks in advance.

2

I flashed the VBIOS using Windows. You can probably try to do it from Linux[1], but if something goes wrong, there will be no tools to fix it.

My steps were as follows:

  1. Installed Windows 11 (installed the latest updates)
  2. Installed the latest video driver
  3. GPU-Z made a backup copy of the firmware (+ submit to online database) Extracting the GeForce video BIOS ROM file | NVIDIA
  4. Used the universal utility from NVIDIA (followed the instructions on the screen) NVIDIA GPU UEFI Firmware Update Tool | NVIDIA
  5. The update took about 10 minutes

P.S. I don’t know about versioning scheme by MSI, but 94.07.8B.00.27 looks fresher than 94.07.82.40.63 because 0x8b > 0x82

  1. Well known utility for Linux ↩︎

3

Most BIOS these days are able to be updated from a USB.

Basically you put the new BIOS file on the USB and run the installer from the BIOS menu.

It varies between manufacturer, but check it out.

Some generic instructions at How to Install a BIOS Update from a USB

4

Yeah, probably it’s faster to just install Windows 11 + Nvidia drivers without internet than trying to find a workaround. I also thought the provided VBIOS was newer by looking at the hex.

I’ve never used full disk encryption since my old laptop was way too slow. Can I resize the Fedora partition just enough to fit windows on the drive or does that create issues?

As for what @theprogram was saying, yes I was able to just flash the BIOS file with the flash utility embedded in the firmware since MSI provides the binary directly. I could have probably used fwupdmgr, but I’ve never tried installing manual updates before.

5

You can run Windows 11 from a USB, How to Run Windows 11 on a USB Drive (and Take it With You) | Tom's Hardware

You could probably run Rufus in Wine.

6

That could be very useful for the future, but the only high capacity drive I have with me at the moment is the one with Ventoy + some ISOs on it.
I have plenty of space available on the internal drive. Does shrinking the partition interfere with encryption? If not, I could easily spin up a Live ISO and temporarily resize the partitions

There is only Fedora installed on the drive, so there are just the three EFI-BOOT-System partitions. Full disk encryption is enabled.

8

I don’t have the expereince to guarantee you anything unfortunately.
I did a search and found that yes it is possible, but not recommended. How to resize LUKS partition (shrink or extend encrypted luks partition) in Linux | GoLinuxCloud AND Is it possible to shrink an encrypted partition?

Another option I can think of that might brick your graphics card is running the .exe updater in Wine.

You could always start another thread “Can I shrink LUKS partition” and you might want to look up dual booting with Win 11 as poeople often have EFI problems with that.

Sorry I can’t be of more help, possibly someone else will chime in.

9

Yeah, got a quick look at the procedure, and it seems way too convoluted with a non-zero risk of data loss. Since there is no rush at all, I have all the time to simply find another drive and use that instead.

I dual booted W11 in the past and never had any problem, maybe with LUKS is different. The only thing that didn’t work back then was BitLocker, which locked me out at every boot.

Anyway, thank you for your help!

10

And still does, including the foreseeable future. Linux and bitlocker seem unable to coexist on the same drive or any drive that grub might access.

As long as bitlocker is not enabled the systems can dual boot with no problems.