How do you update your BIOS?

[aidanjt]

If the BIOS of a motherboard has a built-in flash utility (and all of my current boards do), I just load the new BIOS image off a USB stick. Otherwise I'd just put FreeDOS or something on a USB stick, and copy the motherboard manufacturers flasher and bios image, and do it that way.

[Syllopsium]

I get my butler to do it. He burns every new bit in with a laser chisel..

Seriously, the Windows BIOS flashing tools are pretty damn reliable these days. Failing that, bootable CD or floppy.

[i4000]

Floppy drives, do people still actually have them?

I flash from within the OS GUI if the manufacturer has a utility to do so, have done for several years and never experienced a problem. Otherwise I whip out my bootable USB drive and flash from a minimal DOS boot.

[TomHE]

Floppy disk with plenty of sweaty palms and swearing in the vain hop that I don't screw it up!

[Funkstar]

I usually do it from within Windows. The last few systems I've build have been Gigabyte though, and they have dual BIOSs, so I feel pretty safe flashing them.

[ArCElM]

Abit flash utility.

I do not even own a floppy drive.

[aeonf242]

I just did mine over the weekend with a USB Floppy drive, a Windows 98 boot disk and the Floppy that had the RAID drivers on that came with the motherboard....but then again I'm not that elegant when it comes to Computer stuff...lol

[mac124]

I did my new i5 mobo over the weekend, everything i had tried to update it from within windows or the inbios flashing tool seemed to throw up errors or just plain refused to do it , so i asked on the msi forums and some mod on there pointed me towards a util they recommend on there which created a bootable usb stick complete with the bios (downloaded seperately which i already had anyway) and memtest (run before flashing just in case) once i had created that i booted from the usb stick, followed a couple of instructions and 2 mins later i was booting with the latest bios, 1.3, a big step up from the 1.0 it shipped with .

[malfunction]

In windows. Never had a problem with it though in a past life I did once remove a BIOS chip (EEPROM) after a bad flash (wrong image IIRC) and stuck it in another motherboard to flash it with a good image - which meant that the 2nd PC had to be booted up at the time so I could I remove its original chip and stick the foreign one in to flash it. Compared to doing that kind of thing a normal update in windows is a bit so what.

[GoNz0]

USB stick and motherboard utility.

same here, it should be a poll option tbh

[Funkstar]

Turns out you can't really update a bios from windows when running a 64bit edition.

PITA that one.

[narz]

I use the @Bios tool that came with the mobo. It's worked both times I've used it no problems.

+1 for the @Bios tool, easyyyyyyyy as Load bin and hit flashhh !

Turns out you can't really update a bios from windows when running a 64bit edition.

PITA that one.

64bit of ?

Ive successfully flashed within 64bit XP Pro. Gigabyte P35 DQ6

[Andi-C]

USB through BIOS.

[Biscuit]

i just do it in the os.... it did crash during once but it still booted up misteriously. I couldnt get into bios to adjust anything but i managed to do another update once booted into windows. I was extremely lucky!

[Shooty*]

Right, I'm the luddite.

Simple answer: I don't

That's it. I don't bother. But then, I'm getting old now, and have stopped tinkering. I'm totally out of step with these tri core processors and gaming what nots, and concentrating more on my server.