Bios update

Forum: Other Help Topics
Topic: Bios update
started by: cbinusa

Posted by cbinusa on July 17 2006,03:35

I run DSL only on 3 dells (Gxa, Gx1, L466cx) but need to update the bios because am upgrading cpu's. Dell's bios files are windows or dos executable. I tried biosdisk from dell but cannot get it to work on DSL. Has anyone figured out a reliable way to update their bios on DSL machines? Thanks.

Posted by mikshaw on July 17 2006,03:55

I was under the impression that you needed to boot your machine with the dos bios disk in order to use it...that would eliminate the need to have a specific operating system installed.

Maybe i'm wrong though...I've flashed my bios only once, and I don't recall if it was done in DOS or Windows.

Posted by kerry on July 17 2006,04:12

yep, i've updated the bios on several machines and you always have to boot with the floppy to update the bios. make sure you read the instructions for your machine, if you don't do it right you'll turn it into a paper weight.

Posted by cbinusa on July 17 2006,05:43

Yes, the problem seems to be to get to the right floppy image from windows only exectuable bios images. For example, we can't just doubleclick the bgx_a10.exe or just copy the gxa_a10.exe to a dos bootable disk from within DSL first. Its what I thought but turns out to be more involved. You can see that and suggested procedures here too:
< http://colt.projectgamma.com/bios/flashing.html >
But this has not yet worked for me either.
Yikes.

Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on July 17 2006,06:15

Yes, most motherboard manufacturers provide DOS programs to flash the mobo's BIOS. I've booted with a win98 cd or win98 bootdisk then ran the corresponding executable.

Newer motherboard I believe provide an interface through the bios setup utility, and even in windows O.o