My favourite way to perform a risk-free BIOS upgrade is to use a second chip. Boot with the old version, swap the chips, then flash the new chip. If anything goes wrong you can just put the old one back in.

They're removable? I'm not even sure which one is the BIOS chip on the D845PT.

Is the question in the subject line supposed to be rhetorical..?

jwt27 wrote:

My favourite way to perform a risk-free BIOS upgrade is to use a second chip. Boot with the old version, swap the chips, then flash the new chip. If anything goes wrong you can just put the old one back in.

I would think that something is just as likely to go horribly wrong in replacing the chip while the board is live as it is during the flashing process itself.

Jorpho wrote:

Is the question in the subject line supposed to be rhetorical..?

Not really. I expect responses contain reasons that updating to BIOS has caused fear, or elicited any sort of emotional response.

SKARDAVNELNATE wrote:

They're removable? I'm not even sure which one is the BIOS chip on the D845PT.

If the BIOS chip is not socketed, then all you can do is cross your fingers and hope for the best (or pull out your soldering iron... 😀)

Jorpho wrote:

jwt27 wrote:

My favourite way to perform a risk-free BIOS upgrade is to use a second chip. Boot with the old version, swap the chips, then flash the new chip. If anything goes wrong you can just put the old one back in.

I would think that something is just as likely to go horribly wrong in replacing the chip while the board is live as it is during the flashing process itself.

As long as you're careful there's not much that can go wrong. Of course, you'll need to make sure the chip is lightly inserted beforehand, so you can easily pull it out.

Those rare countrywide powerfailures that happen only once every 15 years or so, keep that in mind next time your flashing, now it's suddenly a lot more scary aint it. 😜

SKARDAVNELNATE wrote:

Jorpho wrote:

Is the question in the subject line supposed to be rhetorical..?

Not really. I expect responses contain reasons that updating to BIOS has caused fear, or elicited any sort of emotional response.

They are quite capable of nigh-irreversibly "bricking" previously-useable equipment. Why shouldn't they be scary and avoided if at all possible?

I have a bricked laptop due to a bad bios flashing. That was the first (and last time) I am using a Windows flashing software. The ms-dos clean boot is safer. On the other hand, several new mainboards have a bios replacement (twin bioses) just to be on the safe side if anything goes wrong. Other than that I have flashed a lot of systems without problems (I have flashed this PC of mine eight times). Having a UPS is a nice idea too.

Well, theoretically all notebooks w/o dual BIOS or socketed BIOS have an emergency BIOS restore method.
Like "insert USB flash with Crisis disc, press Fn+Esc, press Power and wait"...
Practically - no, this method is't always working.
The trouble is - to replace a not-socketed BIOS chip - you must extract the notebooks' motherboard, de-solder the BIOS chip, etc. 1st can be done easy (practice, confidence and a service manual are your's friends), 2nd - can't.

Sadly the DOS option is not available on newer motherboards. Lack of floppy controllers and BIOS reaching 4MB make USB flashing the only viable option. Some boards have the option of a BIOS flashing program accessible from boot, but most OEM machines the only option is the dreaded Windows flash program.

I bricked a Biostar board and the AMI Aptio EFI emergency recovery procedure with a flash drive did not work. I landed up RMAing the board. Flashing with a programmer was an option as it had a socketed SPI style chip, but I don't own a programmer. For boards with soldered on chips, most programmers come with an adapter that clips onto the chip to allow you to re-flash it.

In the video card flashing community, DOS based flashing tools are ALWAYS recommended over Windows based tools. DOS based tools have a much higher success rate. The difference between the two is high enough where it's a virtual certainty that the DOS based flashing tool will succeed while Windows tools are iffy at best. There's no compelling reason to use Windows based flashing tools at all unless that's all that is available and then you just grit your teeth and pray.

I always flash via USB. Never had any issues 😀

My motherboard has the ability to flash from USB while the system is OFF, not to mention can flash from USB straight from the BIOS too, where it's less likely for something to go wrong since there's no operating system going to potentially cause a hiccup. It also loads the BIOS file from USB into memory first to ensure that it's not corrupted or anything, rather than reading it straight from the USB port while flashing.

But having had to flash my BIOS yesterday to troubleshoot something, one thing that sucks about doing it is that all of my BIOS settings revert to default, so I had to go through and turn off all the automatic overclocking stuff again. :P

I remember the first time I flashed a BIOS. It was last year, I wanted to experience a Pentium Overdrive 83mhz and the only 486 mobo I had at the time was an AT&T Globalyst 515 486. After much digging in old forums I found that I needed BIOS v2.05 or above, mine had v2.02. More searching led to an old NCR support site that still has support for AT&T globalyst machines since they are NCR class computers. Downloaded and put to floppy and booted with the new BIOS on the disk and updated to v2.08 and I was able to use a Pentium Overdrive 83mhz for the first time. I was sweating bullets while it loaded. Since then I have done 5 BIOS updates on other machines but have not done a hot flash yet, that seems really hairy.

I have read every now and then that flashing from BIOS itself isn't really advised (some board makers advise against it). I don't know why because I have done it a lot of times and never ran into any problems. And while doing so, there is no Operating System whatsoever interfering.

BIOS flashing never scared me. Even from Floppies. But then Ive never had a single failure.

The only trouble I have is with older AMI BIOS flashes. They just refuse to start, despite having the correct flasher version & binary.

eL_PuSHeR wrote:

I have read every now and then that flashing from BIOS itself isn't really advised (some board makers advise against it). I don't know why because I have done it a lot of times and never ran into any problems. And while doing so, there is no Operating System whatsoever interfering.

Maybe its because of that flashing within windows is more easier (but technical not saver) and in this world every one wants to have benefits from the word `easy`.. That`s how the world work today.. We are more lazier then ever..

Me dont bother of that `easier`.. I have learned from the past with a dell studio M1479 17 inch notebook.. That thing was only a few months old... The first bios upgrade went well.. But it seemed that this new bios had some unstability problems.. I had a lot of system crashes and blue screens.. Till a new bios came out and i wanted to fix it... Because i came very angry of those blue screens..

So i looked for a new bios upgraded.. I tried to find a dos bios upgrade program for it.. But cant find one for using it on this dell.. Then i thought to try it on windows 7..
And then it happend... When it began to flash it it give me a blue screen and the whole system was locked up.. Then i knew i bricked this nice notebook..
I couldnt solve this and was very angree and smashed it to the ground and never wanted a Dell again...

This was the first time i bricked a motherboard... Now i have learned always to flash it in dos or in the bios section if theres an option available.

I've done many BIOS flashes over the years; motherboards, graphic cards, etc.

Even though i'm comfortable doing it, there's always a stress factor that I can feel well up within me. I guess it's because it's a gamble, anything random from power failure, bad flash, or corrupted BIOS rom image can happen.