Flashing BIOS - Best way?

warren_1979 · 17 Apr 2009 at 12:42

Hi. I want to flash a 2nd hand Dell Vostro I bought recently. The two methods mentioned on the dell website are:

1. Flash using a windows based flashing program - which I don't want to do because I've seen many posts in the MOBO section of people bricking there boards doing windows environment flashes, and

2. Using a floppy drive - which I haven't got.

Is it possible to use a USB flash drive to flash a Dell laptop and how would I go about doing this?

CHeers.

beermonster · 17 Apr 2009 at 13:17

yes you can make a bootable pen drive, should bring up the instructions in google.

Bry · 17 Apr 2009 at 15:01

For the love of god make sure the battery is fully charged and plug in when you do it.

Also, the only real reason flashing via windows fails is when you are running other programs in the backgrounds. Disabling everything in the background should make it pretty safe to do.

warren_1979 · 17 Apr 2009 at 16:01

Ok cheers all. Will try and make a bootable pen drive tonight.

My power cable is really loose in the socket so I will make sure the battery is in as well!

Memphis · 18 Apr 2009 at 15:33

I'm 'pretty' sure the Dell flashing program for Windows doesn't actually do the flash from within the OS anyway. It just kicks it into a reboot and starts the flash then. Perfectly safe tbh.