NVFLASH
NVIDIA Firmware Update Utility
Mark Stephen Krueger
2006-11-14
NVIDIA Corporation
NVFLASH – NVIDIA FIRMWARE UPDATE UTILITY MANUAL NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION 1
Supported Operating Systems......................................................................................................1
GENERAL USAGE 2
Warning........................................................................................................................................2
PRIMARY COMMANDS 3
RETURN CODES 30
RELATED UTILITIES 31
Mac OS GUI Versions...............................................................................................................31
Win32 GUI Versions.................................................................................................................31
NVIDIA Firmware Update Utility.............................................................................................31
Page i
NVFLASH – NVIDIA FIRMWARE UPDATE UTILITY MANUAL NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL
Introduction
The NVIDIA Firmware Update Utility (NVFLASH) is used to update the
firmware stored in the EEPROM of an NVIDIA display adapter. It can also be
used to perform other tasks on the adapter such as saving a copy of the current
firmware image to a file, displaying the version of the firmware image, or
determining the EEPROM part present on a display adapter.
Supported Operating Systems
NVFLASH is currently available for DOS, Win32 platforms, Mac OS X, and EFI.
The Mac OS X version requires that a NVIDIA driver be running on any cards
that will be accessed by the utility. The Win32 version includes its own kernel
mode driver to allow it to access the hardware.
Page 1
NVFLASH – NVIDIA FIRMWARE UPDATE UTILITY MANUAL NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL
General Usage
NVFLASH has a set of primary commands that specify what operation it should
perform. In addition there are options that can be specified with each of these
commands to control how these commands operate.
NVFLASH is a command line utility that can be run stand alone from the
command prompt, run from batch files, or spawned from other programs.
Warning
There is a real danger of a display adapter becoming unbootable and thus
preventing the entire system from booting if the update process is interrupted due
to a software fault, power failure, the operator manually resetting the computer
(for example via a reset switch), or the operator updating an adapter with the
wrong firmware image. For this reason, care should be taken when using this
utility.
Page 2
NVFLASH – NVIDIA FIRMWARE UPDATE UTILITY MANUAL NVIDIA CONFIDENTIAL
Primary Commands
This section describes the main commands that are available with NVFLASH.
Each command has options available to use with it, but only one primary
command can be used at a time.
Most commands and options have both a long (English readable) version and a
short version. The long version is invoked by prefixing with a double dash (“--“).
The short version can be used with a single dash (“-“).
Note that for both long and short versions of command and options, case is
significant. The operator can not type “--Version” for example, it must be “--
version”.
Page 3
