I have just installed a new MSI 790GX-G65 and my Windows XP freezes a few seconds after it comes out of any sleep mode (S1, S3 or S4). My mobo has BIOS 1.4; it looks like there was a 1.5 version, a 1.6, and then they jumped to 4.0 (I wonder why?).
I wanted to update the BIOS to current. The MSI website offers a LiveUpdate Online service, which detects my BIOS version correctly at 1.4 and offers to upgrade it to 4.0. The process downloads the update and runs an installer program to do the update; however when it's supposed to actually do the update, a DOS command window just flashes up for about a 1/2 second and disappears with no text visible. Nothing else happens.
When I downloaded the BIOS update package, the instructions have a warning to use LiveUpdate when updating from 1.xx to 4.xx. I booted FreeDOS from Ultimate Boot CD and tried it anyway, but the updater just hangs the system with no output (I left it there for 20 minutes just to be sure it wasn't doing a slow silent update). Upon reboot all was OK, but no update was done. (I am used to Windows-based flashers with my older mobo's which also allow you to save the old BIOS to a backup first, and were very simple to use).
Anyone else encountered this with updating an MSI board? Any suggestions?
PS: This is an AMI BIOS.
PPS: I tried the M-Flash menu in BIOS; it let me backup the current BIOS to a flash drive, saving it as M7576AMS.140. But when I put the downloaded 4.0 image on the same drive, with the same filename format (M7576AMS.400), the M-Flash option to update the BIOS does not seem to see the Version 4 file.
PPPS: Solution posted as a self-answer below.