Programing Bios. I want to share my experience. LBE vs Medusa!

I started with LBE and a programmer. This does work but I ran into problems. I wanted to share.

LBE software uses a hardware monitor that is used to prevent you from taking your copy and installing it on another computer. They have told me that they are changing this wit a new version but right now it Is no fun. There are two problems with this utility. First it Is detected by your antivirus as a Trojan and every time your antivirus software detects and removes it your LBE quits working. The second Is that it is so invasive and toucy if you change anything wit your pc on a hardware level ( I mean anything) it breaks and you ave to get online using chat program to reactivate your software. Sometimes waiting for hours. Let me explain further. I added a bluetooth keyboard and it broke it. I changed my USB printer and its broke it. To prove this I plugged my usb printer back in and presto LBE works again. So if you use LBE make sure you do it on a laptop or something that never gets anything changed. One more disadvantage is the software does not fix the checksum when changing the serial number. I have not ran into problems with this but all it takes is one update from apple and this is a disaster!

A good thing about LBE is it is for more than Apple! Panasonic Tougbooks, HP and Dell are all supported. So if you work on more than Apple you may want LBE in the tool box.

My second solution was to spend the big $$ and buy a CMizapper Medusa. I have been using the Medusa 3.0 for a week now and it does everything well. It is a little more picky about getting it to read the bios than the standard programmer but once you learn it's quirks its works great. I like being able to change settings without having to use the PC. There are a few things I don't like about it. The simple display makes you wait and using the optional keypad reminder me of the old VCR programming days but it does work. I would like to see a Medusa with a full display and have its make serial number programming easier. But it its still a much better solution than LBE
 
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tlough75

Member
For people who don't know, what is "LBE" I too have a Medusa, mine is the 2 but it works great! So glad I bought it. Have made the money back already.
 
My Medusa 3 broke. He sent me a new one. It started getting a error. The replacement works better than my original did so there must of been something wrong with it. I believe you need both. A regular programmer and a Medusa. Once in a while the Medusa would mess up a serial reprogram or something would go wrong. Having a regular programmer filled in the gaps. I think you need both tools

For my 820-00165 boards I have a copy with the latest bios revision with a clean ME. I upgrade those that come across my bench. If I use a older bios version I can't format third party SSD drives so having the new bios is helpful. But This is not a really a Medusa thing. I save all the bios versions on my pc using a regular programmer. A standard programmer defiantly has it's place.
 
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