BIOS Update using USB Stick.
There may be times when your PC BIOS may have a update provided by the vendor. To physical update the motherboard BOIS chip the PC has to be booted in MSDOS and then the vendor supplied flash program can be executed to apply the new bios.bin file to the motherboard BOIS chip. This was all fine and dandy when all PCs had floppy drives. But in today’s world PCs are not manufactured with floppy drivers any more and MS/XP and newer Windows
systems have no option to create bootable MSDOS media. That leaves you with two options. Create a MSDOS bootable USB Stick or create a bootable CDROM.
Creating a bootable MSDOS USB stick (flash drive) is simple.
But it has it’s own set of problems depending on how old the PC is.
It’s not un-common for PC’s manufactured before 2008 to have BIOS that lack
the option to boot from USB devices or may even fail to recognize USB media
as bootable.
First thing is to determine if your current bios have option to boot from USB devices. During power on enter BIOS setup menu and check the boot device order for option to boot from USB. If it’s absent this procedure won’t work for you.
If your PC BIOS has a option to boot from USB, configure the first boot device to be from USB and the second from cdrom and the third from the hard drive. If there is no bootable usb device plugged in and no bootable CD in the CDROM/DVD drive then you will default to booting from the motherboard cabled hard drive.
There are three files you have to acquire before starting this process.
1. A bootable floppy image. Download the floppy.img from http://www.daemonforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=300&d=1267845079
You may have to click the link a second time to get the save download box. Once you have it downloaded, rename it removing the .zip suffix. In this case the floppy image contains the basic programs to fix any fat32 drive, IE. [fdisk, format, scandisk, edit, chkdsk, more, find, command.com, sys.com, io.sys, msdos.sys] files and was created using Windows 98. Note: This forum has
restrictions which severely limit the size of attached files which the 1.4MB floppy size exceeds. Forcing me to point you to another forum which will host the floppy.img.
2. The MS/DOS flash.exe utility provided by the BIOS vender used to update the BIOS chip.
3. The vender supplied bios.bin file used to write over the old PC BIOS chip’s content.
Warning: Using the wrong flash utility or wrong update bios.bin file can result in
irreversible damage to your motherboard BIOS chip making your motherboard un-usable.
Make a memory disk of the floppy.img
Code:
mdconfig -f /path/floppy.img
mount_msdosfs /dev/md0 /mnt
cd /mnt
ls
Now you see all the files in the floppy.image. To this you have to add the
2 vendor supplied files used to update your motherboard BIOS chip.
Code:
cp /path/flash.exe /mnt/
cp /path/bios.bin /mnt
ls
Now you will see your BIOS update files are added to the floppy image.
Now back out.
Code:
cd /root
umount /mnt
mdconfig -d -u md0
Write the floppy img to the USB stick
Code:
dd if=/path/floppy.img of=/dev/da0
Before powering on the PC that’s to have it’s BIOS updated
Plug in the USB stick you just created. The USB stick will boot and
put you at the MSDOS command line as drive A:
To display the contents of drive A: issue
Code:
dir
Then key in the program to update the system BIOS chip and
follow the vendors instructions.
Code:
Flash
When completed, remove the USB stick and reboot the PC.
If your PC doesn’t boot then you know you have a very big problem. The BIOS update you just ran didn’t work or the update bios.bin file was not the correct one for your bios chip. Your only remaining option is to buy a new motherboard from a know vendor who provides technical support for their equipment.