UpdateBIOS ??

[Cain]

How do you update your BIOS without a Floppy Drive ??

[BenKenobi]

I don't know but I did it with my CD drive. When I updated it I think I had to do "boot from CD" in the bios. See if you can find it.

[Devilguns]

You might have a setting to boot from USB too.

[Trooper110]

Asus has a Windows utility that will do it, not sure about other mobo manufacturers. Never did try it as I have a floppy drive for just such occurences, but it's supposed to work fairly well.

[TheSilentAssassin]

If you have a Dell (unfortunately) their site provides the updates

EDIT: Just updated mine thanks to this thread. Probably took less than 2 minutes...

[{CLR}geneSW]

Asus has a Windows utility that will do it, not sure about other mobo manufacturers. Never did try it as I have a floppy drive for just such occurences, but it's supposed to work fairly well.

works fine. USB will work as well on new boards as the option to flash should be in the BIOS. Should ask you where the file is, tell it it's the removable drive or something along those general lines.

[juneau]

Please do NOT use a windows based application. Floppy or USB is are the best ways.

[drunken_chef]

funny answers. for me at least. what motherboard, system are you wanting to do this with cain?

[drunken_chef]

Please do NOT use a windows based application. Floppy or USB is are the best ways.

would you expand on that. for my knowledge :D

[Cain]

Flashing a BIOS is something you can EASILY screw up your MB and in "the old days" you may have to ship it back to the mfg to get it fixed.

I cannot imagine using Windows to Flash a BIOS, but perhaps it can be done.

Who here has flashed their BIOS, what Company made the MB, and which one had the best Flash utility >???

I have flashed Asus, Tyan, and a few others. But it appears to me if little has changed in the way of BIOS flashing to make it any easier.

I was not planning to have a Floppy in my new PC, then I needed to flash the BIOS on this one, and thought "Oops" !!

[CarbonFire]

I've used Gigabyte's Windows Bios Utility to update my motherboard's bios. I know, I know, sacrilege :roll:

I'd say boot to USB or bootable CD are still your best update options. Either way, the Mobo manufacturer should provide some sort of utility to create said bootable disk for easy flashing. Floppy just isn't needed anymore.

And even if you do manage to screw up a bios update, most motherboards these days have some kind of fail safe to bring the bios back.

[Cain]

:2thumbs:

[Apache Warrior]

I have flashed Bios with MOBO from MSI and Asus. Both have a utility that will dl and flash all at the same time.
Apache

[juneau]

If you have flashed via windows then count your lucky stars. It has a very high fail rate due to windows creating a lot of background activity.

Using a floppy or USB stick on boot is very safe, and while there is a very small chance it could still mess up, it's less then 1%. The only thing you really have to worry about is if you have a power cut while updating.

[WalkinTarget]

Every board I've owned in the past two years I have updated the BIOS on. Like Carbon mentioned, I've used Gigabyte's Windows utility (EZBios) to flash it, and also used a similar setup on my MSI board that is my main rig.

As some have mentioned, a BIOS update is only done when necessary, but in my case I had to update to have it see a newer CPU, or even in the case of an older Soltek NF3 board, it wouldn't ID the Venice core CPU that I put in it and consequently halved the amount of RAM (!!!!) that the board should have seen.
Pretty strange when your PC shows half of the RAM that it previously had just after a CPU upgrade !

Its been three builds now since I put a floppy in one of my rigs, but I do miss the DOS BIOS flash days, but only briefly, may I add.

[YetiChamp]

look for the manufactureres website, look for your board and see if they have a recommended course of action. (that's what i did M2N-MX)

[Duke{CLR}]

I have updated my BIOS on my EVGA board with a hotfix download from the support site. I have never had any problems doing this.

[drunken_chef]

i have flashed my current motherboards BIOS in windows at least 15 times in the last year. it's a gigabyte. i use @bios.

[Dead...Again]

I have an ASUS mobo, and it has the ability to update the BIOS in Setup. You just put the new BIOS image on a USB key and it will find it.
ASUS also has the ability to update in Windows and DOS.
I would imagine that pretty much any newer mobo will boot to a USB key. Just load the DOS-based utility and BIOS image on a bootable USB Key and boot to it.

[juneau]

I have an ASUS mobo, and it has the ability to update the BIOS in Setup. You just put the new BIOS image on a USB key and it will find it.
ASUS also has the ability to update in Windows and DOS.
I would imagine that pretty much any newer mobo will boot to a USB key. Just load the DOS-based utility and BIOS image on a bootable USB Key and boot to it.

That's how i've done mine over the past few years. Can't remember the last time i owned a floppy drive. :D

[darth_nevus]

Cain, we need to know what mobo you have. there are a variety of options depending on the mobo maker. some are workable, some aren't.

lets start here.

[Grisu]

Couldn't believe it myself at first: A BIOSupdate under Windows (tm) is possible.

Just make sure you bring a fresh set of pants and backup everything important. :roll:

[omfg karl marx]

I've flashed the BIOS on Asus, ASRock, Gigabyte, and MSI boards. I've also done it with several "brand name" computers. All of them were from in Windows and I've never had any issues with any of them.

[ThisElfRocksHard]

The only time I have ever had to flash my BIOS was with some crummy PC Chips board I got for my first 1ghz cpu. I put in a pci graphics card, then I upgraded to an AGP card a few months later, which the motherboard wouldn't recognize without a BIOS update. Thank god I had that PCI card laying around; I can't imagine the frustration I would have felt if I had bought the video card at the same time and been greeted by those damn beeps...

[drunken_chef]

Cain, we need to know what mobo you have. there are a variety of options depending on the mobo maker. some are workable, some aren't.

lets start here.

i tried that, he wouldn't tell me :(

[drunken_chef]

BIOS flashing is not too big of a deal IMO. i've done it hundreds of times. i've flashed corrupted BIOSs blind(no video output) and have done hot flashes a couple of times(pop the chip out of a running PC and replaced it with a corrupted chip and then flash). heck, when i was younger i fiddled around with editers and made some costum BIOSs. but then, i've been an electronics geak for all of my 48 years :D

[WalkinTarget]

Well Hells bells .... after reading this thread and then checking for 45nm Intel CPU support on my MSI board, I noticed I was one rev. behind what they recommended, so I updated from 1.4 to 1.5, which went fine. I did this from within Windows using the MSI Live BIOS Updater which successfully loaded the new BIOS and restarted the PC.

But when I came back 5 minutes later, it was stuck on the MSI splash screen, so I know the BIOS was successfully updated, but it wouldn't proceed past that step. I'll try clearing the CMOS via jumper when I get home, but sitting here at work for 8+ hours while that issue gnaws at my gut, making me think I hosed the board, is going to make for a verrry long and stressful day.
:(

[juneau]

I hope it isn't the bios. I told you even the smallest of things can go wrong when updating via windows. Even if the bios displays as updated.

It is probably just a case of needing to load your bios defaults.

[Dead...Again]

Well Hells bells .... after reading this thread and then checking for 45nm Intel CPU support on my MSI board, I noticed I was one rev. behind what they recommended, so I updated from 1.4 to 1.5, which went fine. I did this from within Windows using the MSI Live BIOS Updater which successfully loaded the new BIOS and restarted the PC.

But when I came back 5 minutes later, it was stuck on the MSI splash screen, so I know the BIOS was successfully updated, but it wouldn't proceed past that step. I'll try clearing the CMOS via jumper when I get home, but sitting here at work for 8+ hours while that issue gnaws at my gut, making me think I hosed the board, is going to make for a verrry long and stressful day.
:(
As long as you are able to see video you should be able to use Recovery to reflash the BIOS. It depends on the BIOS, but you should be able to use a key combination (CTRL+HOME for example) to enter Recovery mode. The BIOS will then search floppy, IDE, and USB devices for a ROM image. This will allow you to either reflash the latest BIOS or try to revert to the previous image.

[WalkinTarget]

Two possibilities here .... one is the CMOS reset as I mentioned, and the other is the USB keyboard support may have been reset, so my USB keyboard isn't allowing me to TAB past the splash screen or hit the Del key to get into the BIOS.

I need to swap the RAM out of that PC anyways now that my Buffalo sticks are back from RMA (sorry Carbon .. I didn't know they were a P.I.T.A) and see if I can't get it back up and running. Looks like my board tops out at the Q9450 CPU, which is what I was going with anyways.

12 freakin 'megs of cache !!! Do you realize you could theoretically install Windows 3.0 on the cache now stored on the CPU itself ??? Hahaa, good times, good times indeed to be buying a CPU ... of course we have to wait about 3-4 more weeks until they are all released ... grrrr

[WalkinTarget]

Cleared CMOS, swapped out the Super Talent RAM and popped the Buffalo back in and running merrily along !!
:2thumbs:

For now, I've lowered my OC from 3.2 to 3.05, as I've heard that Buffalo was possibly using cheaper Elpedia RAM on these sticks instead of Micron D9 stuff, but another poster confirmed from Buffalo that all Firestix are using Micron.

There's no way to tell, but I know that I got this CPU to 3.6 on my first OC try (accidental OC - I didn't do the math until I was in Windows and saw it set at 3.6)
:shock:

So, all ends well, just freaked me out when I wasn't expecting it, altho I darn well should have known better.
CoD4 .. here I come !!! Bar, hold still while I toss spoons and Skorpion rounds at you.