Which Framework laptop (11th, 12th or 13th generation Framework laptop, Chromebook or Framework Laptop 16) are you asking for support with?
Framework 11th Gen, Intel i5
I am on BIOS version 30.03 and trying to update to 30.20. When the startup.nsh runs automatically when i boot to the usb drive, I am seeing the error “CapsuleApp can not find valid filesystem”, which results in the BIOS not being updated.
Since attempting this upgrade, my machine has been crashing a lot, and commands such as poweroff and reboot seem to hang. I have had to force shut down many times in order to reboot.
You can’t update your BIOS straight from 3.03 to 3.20. I believe the minimum version for 3.20 is 3.17. What you’ll need to do is incremental updates until you get to 3.17 followed by 3.20.
hey thanks for that info. I will give that a shot. Is there anything I should keep in mind when upgrading my BIOS without a battery attached? I saw some other threads that mentioned updating files that I could not find in older versions (for example, i tried to upgrade directly to 3.17 which gave me an error saying i needed an attached battery, which I do not have, and I could not identify what files/changes to make in order to allow me to upgrade bios without a battery)
It’s been a while so I can only give you somewhat vague information on this (and unfortunately it’s going to be limited to the .exe). I know for the .exe, it is possible to modify it so that it doesn’t check for the battery. May be possible to do something similar for Linux but you’ll have to search the older 11th gen BIOS threads here. Do have to warn you that it’s a very risky approach and that you could brick your mainboard.
I would suggest you contact FW support.
There are all sorts of edge cases to worry about along the way.
I would suggest you try updating to 3.10 first and then step through each release until you reach 3.20.
What has happened to your battery? Are you using a FW laptop, or just trying to update the BIOS with a standalone mainboard?
As @TheTRUEAsian mentions, one of the edge cases is bricking the laptop if you don’t have a battery on about 80% charge for the update.
The reason is that it does an update to the usb chip, and while that is happening, the power from the PSU is disconnected, so it needs the battery connected for that bit.
So, that i why I suggest contacting FW support, so they can talk you though a safe way to update the firmware if you don’t have a battery.
I had purchased a new mainboard for my laptop, and a cooler master case. My old 11th gen, being discussed, was put in the cooler master case and today I have been trying to upgrade the bios.
So since a battery is required, I removed it from the cooler master case and put it back in the laptop chassis i have, so that it would have access to a battery.
I have been updating the bios one version at a time. Unfortunately I have found that there is no 3.19 version for Linux, and that people have seemingly been required to install windows in order to install the 3.19 bios update. I tried to update to 3.20 from 3.17 but I am getting the error described in the original post.
It appears that 3.19 is required in order to upgrade to 3.20. And since 3.19 is not officially ready for linux, I will be staying on 3.17.
@ttrreevvoorr
At least you have been able to update the BIOS a bit to 3.17 from 3.03
I think there have been reports of that error message appearing when there is not enough free space on the EFI partition.
I think the upgrade copies some files from the directory the firmware is, to the EFI partition. If this copy fails, the file won’t be at the destination, and therefore the “Not found” error.
See if you can free some space up on the EFI partition.
The release notes say you can go from 3.17 to 3.20, without needing 3.19, so it should work.
The other main cause of this issue is if you’ve accidentally used MBR instead of GPT for your internal SSD’s partitioning scheme, and you don’t actually have an EFI System Partition.
If that’s the case, you’ll need to get one ASAP. It is also a miracle everything is robust enough to keep working.
In my case, I had this error because after the (successful, despite this message) BIOS upgrade, the EFI config was wiped, so I had to use F3 to boot (selecting the EFI binary, which allowed me to boot in my Linux system as usual) then reinstall GRUB from a terminal, and that’s it, the following restart the problem was gone.
I think it was because I had deactivated the Secure Boot right before, which disrupts the EFI binary setting.
So it is possibly just intended to behave like that, by specs, in case of Secure Boot change. In which case that would not be a bug of Framework’s firmware.
