Updating the bios

div0

div0

div0

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I've seen a few people asking about updating their bios and generally the stock response is:

"only update your bios if you think that its going to solve a problem"

There still seems to be a lot of suggestions that a bad flash, or incorrect flash of the bios, can result in an unusable mobo.

I know that in the past, it used to be a bit tense when I updated the bios, because of the dangers of it going wrong.

But these days mobo's seem to come with all this "quad bios" and "virtual backup bios" or whatever. I had assumed that the reason for these features were so that you could completely mess up a bios update, and then just resort to some sort of "default" bios and start over.

So are we now able to update the bios in a new mobo, with similar peace of mind that we have when doing something like upgrading graphics drivers?

Or is it still something that can still result in serious headache?
 
can still cause problems, my board has a dual bios so I have peace of mind, I've updated it only once and I didn't need to just felt like doing it.
 
I'm confused by what you're saying - sorry. :confused:

So dual bios does give you peace of mind? Or there's still a reasonable chance you can totally mess it all up?

Or do you mean that its not foolproof, even with dual bios - but it is a lot less risky than it used to be?
 
Anyone else got any thoughts on how safe/easy it is updating the bios on modern boards?

Thanks :)
 
Doing the upgrade from a floppy using the good old awdflash.exe is still the safest way to do it.
 
I have updated both my DS3s through windows a few times, no problems whatsoever.

People worry to much about it going wrong. If a new update came out everyday I would still update every day!!
 
I think if you know what you're doing, then it's no great risk, but the windows applications are more dodgy than the DOS based ones and most of the ones built into the BIOS are fairly dire in my experience.

Where you have a motherboard with an unsocketed BIOS chip (ASUS P5N-E SLi), updating the BIOS can be a complete thrill-ride!
 
I've updated countless BIOSs without any problems at all. Mostly using awdflash, though I have done it through Windows a few times, and my latest mobo has a built in BIOS flasher which makes it so much easier and quicker.

Cue my next BIOS flash failing...
 
Cheers for the input guys.

I've never had a problem updating the bios in the past myself either.

What I was wondering is that usually people seem hesitant to update the bios, because of the risk of it going wrong.

First of all, am I right in thinking that the "risk" is that in the worst case senario you could totally knacker your mobo so that it doesn't work at all?

Secondly, new mobo's come with dual bios, quad bios, virtual bios, or whatever. So do these features remove the risk of knackering your mobo completely? And hence make upgrading your bios a lot less risky?

Sorry if I'm not making much sense ;)
 
div0 said:
First of all, am I right in thinking that the "risk" is that in the worst case senario you could totally knacker your mobo so that it doesn't work at all?
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If you have a socketed BIOS, you can just swap out the BIOS chip. With a non-socketed BIOS, then the motherboard is indeed trashed.

div0 said:
Secondly, new mobo's come with dual bios, quad bios, virtual bios, or whatever. So do these features remove the risk of knackering your mobo completely? And hence make upgrading your bios a lot less risky?
Click to expand...

In theory, yes. However, in practise with a DS4 I managed to completely fail to be able to recover the BIOS without a new BIOS chip, and it supposedly has a dual-BIOS chip.
 
Hi, floppy = unreliable media, how clear do you want it to be? If you flash from media that is unreliable then you run a greater risk of problems. Plus the fact the flash process with a floppy disc is slow thus exposing your PC to an even greater risk. Update withing windows, fine, reliable and straightforward. Never had a bad one myself, but from floppy, yes I have...
ChrisC
 
chriscatt said:
Hi, floppy = unreliable media, how clear do you want it to be? If you flash from media that is unreliable then you run a greater risk of problems. Plus the fact the flash process with a floppy disc is slow thus exposing your PC to an even greater risk. Update withing windows, fine, reliable and straightforward. Never had a bad one myself, but from floppy, yes I have...
ChrisC
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On my Asus A8V Deluxe, I had a bad bios flash which was unrecoverable & that was using the Windows XP utility, at the end of the day their is always going to be a risk of a bad bios update, I went back to the floppy method ever since.
 
chriscatt said:
Hi, floppy = unreliable media, how clear do you want it to be? If you flash from media that is unreliable then you run a greater risk of problems. Plus the fact the flash process with a floppy disc is slow thus exposing your PC to an even greater risk. Update withing windows, fine, reliable and straightforward. Never had a bad one myself, but from floppy, yes I have...
ChrisC
Click to expand...

Why do you think it's slower from a floppy?

Isn't the process;

1. Boot into DOS
2. Run AWDFlash
3. AWDFlash reads the BIOS ROM from the floppy and stores it in memory (you can take the floppy out now, it's not required)
4. AWDFlash validates the BIOS file (still in memory)
5. AWDFlash writes the BIOS chip
6. AWDFlash validates the new BIOS image
7. Reboot

I can't remember the last time DOS crashed - can you? Whereas Windows (especially Vista) crashes more often. I certainly wouldn't want to be relying on Windows to stay up while it writes to low-level hardware. There is just no way you can be sure you've killed all the possible TSR's and background processes that could hurt your flash process.

As for the BIOS flash utilities, because the BIOS utility is in the BIOS chip, if it fluffs up, there is no guarantee you'll be able to recover and run it again. As the AWDFlash program is running under DOS, even if the BIOS is corrupt after the first flash, as long as you can restart the computer (eg. from the ASUS Install CD) then you can run the update utility again.

Floppies may be old hat, however they're anything but unreliable (assuming you're not using one from when you were at school in 1985) and I'll be sticking with them for the foreseeable future.
 
WJA96 said:
Floppies may be old hat, however they're anything but unreliable (assuming you're not using one from when you were at school in 1985) and I'll be sticking with them for the foreseeable future.
Click to expand...
Ahh yes back in the day when Floppies were actually Floppy! lol :)
 
WJA96 said:
Floppies may be old hat, however they're anything but unreliable (assuming you're not using one from when you were at school in 1985) and I'll be sticking with them for the foreseeable future.
Click to expand...

In fact floppy's are a lot more reliable than any windows based flash utility, plus you can set your own parrameters as well. As i run a DFI mobo i can and do use T-Mod's CD, which is also rock solid. But when i'm testing Neo's or any other third party's bios's then i always use a floppy, fool proof(it needs to be :D)and has never given me a bad flash since 1996.
 
I've always flashed the BIOS using DOS and a floppy disk but for peace of mind I always use a new diskette, format it, then check it for errors, copy the files overs, then make sure the files can be read back on a different PC before using the diskette to do a flash.

The above may sound really anal but if the flash software doesn't check the file it's about to flash then it can result in a bad update and foo-barred mobo.

With my previous Asus mobo I always used the Windows utility and never had any probs, with my Gigabyte DS3P it's back to using floppy disks again.
 
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