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[UPDATE]

I do a lot of macro focus stacking using Magic Lantern with my Canon T5i. I use strobes, so I need a way to trigger them. Because of Canon's limitation on 3rd party flashes in Live View, I'm not able to my hot shoe RF trigger or PC sync adapter. Optical triggering from the on-board flash doesn't work well because I don't have line-of-sight with the optical sensors of my strobes. My workaround is to bounce the on-board flash to an optically triggered speedlight which then triggers the strobes.

I previously owned a Canon T2i and was able to use the Magic Lantern 3rd party flash in Live View "hack." I know this option is not part of the T5i Magic Lantern build. Is there any hope in revisiting this in the future? Can anyone provide a build that has this option enabled?   

As much as I love my Canon T5i, it's such a big limitation that I'm considering buying a used Canon 60D/70D/7D which has the ability to disable silent shooting in Live View (supposedly fixes this problem.)

UPDATE

I pulled out my old Canon T2i that I'm selling and tried focus stacking using ML with the the 3rd party flash in LV option enabled. It doesn't work with focus stacking.

I ended up downloading a trial version of Helicon Remote for Windows connected to my Canon T5i via USB. It does exactly what I need for focus stacking. It goes into LV between focus steps and gets out of LV at each focus step to take the picture. The flash works the same as when I'm taking pictures outside of LV. In my case, it's a shoe-mounted generic radio trigger connected to studio strobes. No need to use optical triggers.

Maybe this function can be added to the ML focus stacking routine in the future?

Which EOS Utility version are you using? If it's 3.x you may download EOS Digital Solution Disk v29.0A or v29.1A and try v2.x.

I'm using EOS Utility version 2 (latest update for the T3i per Canon website.) I did a check with a friend's Canon T5i and was able to use the EOS Utility to control the camera. That makes me believe the issue is with the camera and not the EOS Utility.

Use photo mode (M, Tv or Av) to access firmware update menu. Try to reinstall Canon firmware first.

Maybe my description of the problem above wasn't clear, but I'm not able to access any of the camera's menus in any mode. Since I can't use the camera's firmware update utility or the EOS Utility, I'm trying to find another method of updating firmware.

I'm having problems with my Canon T3i/600D and thought I'd see if anyone here can help before I give up on my camera that only has 1300 shutter clicks.

The camera has multiple problems that seem to be related to software/firmware problems. Here are the symptoms:

• LCD display is blank, except when the movie mode is selected (works fine) and when it displays the sensor cleaning message
• The Menu, Live View, Q, Set, arrow keys, Play and Delete buttons don't seem to do anything for any mode
• Can't access any in-camera menus, settings or functions
• The ISO button doesn't work except when movie mode is selected ("function not available" message)
• The Info button doesn't work except in movie mode
• The autofocus select button doesn't seem to do anything
• The aperture and shutter speed works fine in all modes
• The flash works fine in all modes
• The autofocus/metering lamp gets stuck on when selecting through the camera modes
• The camera writes still images to the memory card fine (but I can't review them on the camera)
• The rear display will output to HDMI and can be displayed on my screen (unfortunately the Menu can't be opened)
• Able to connect to the camera through the EOS Utility, but can't control the camera or download images
• Able to read the shutter count and firmware version through a different EOS USB program
• Able to browse through images on the camera with Windows explorer via USB

I was never able to load firmware through the camera (can't access the menu) or the EOS Utility (locks up program.) That means I wasn't able to set the camera bootflag. Because of this, I can't run any of the ML diagnostics. It's out of warranty and the cost of having Canon repair it will exceed finding another used camera body.

Does anyone know of a way to "force" the camera to load firmware from the SD card without setting the camera's bootflag? Or does anyone have an alternate software utility that will allow me to directly load firmware via USB without the EOS Utility?

Thanks in advance!