[S-99]

Had to do that today. It was retarded how a motherboard from 2003 was asking for a windows boot floppy to be able to flash the bios. That motherboard is from back in the day of course. But it seems to me that bios flashing using a more modern method was slow on the uptake for motherboard manufacturers.

During a time when the floppy was being phased out because no one was really using it anymore like they use to since the advent of thumb drive and burnable media, and you still found motherboard manufacturers requiring a windows98/me boot disk to flash your bios when everyone's using xp (of course not everyone did, but xp didn't require boot floppies, and a lot of people had xp).

Bootable thumb drives, bootable cd's and dvd's, and still being asked for a windows 98/me boot floppy. A motherboard from 2003 asking for a windows boot floppy i can let that slide (but i'm still not happy). The worst i've had was a biostar motherboard from 2006 that was only able to have the bios flashed with nothing but a floppy (at least the only requirement to flash a bios that didn't require a tie to needing windows in some fashion). I couldn't let that slide, but i had to do it anyway back then.

The alternative to flashing with a windows boot floppy would be using a cd, dvd, or thumb drive. And most preferable to flash the bios by going to the bios to do it (at least the biostar motherboard had this). Or if motherboard manufacturers could make their own bootable bios flashing utilities. I could see them making mini bootable linux live cd's for this purpose, or something more proprietary. It can be either as long as it's host operating system dependless, and storage type flexibility. I don't care if a motherboard manufacturer makes a deal with microsoft for something bootable to get their stuff done. As long as it's not a goddamned floppy disk, doesn't cost extra money (cost for the bootable flash utility would be included in the price of the motherboard if microsoft based), and doesn't involve me doing more than burning an image, or extracting to a thumb drive, and restarting the computer. Then waiting for flash utility to boot, or go into bios and start the process.

There are some things that need to be said. Everyone's sort of lucky windows boot floppies can be converted to iso's, because people are sort of ****ed when there's no floppies or floppy drives. Granted i haven't flashed a modern day motherboard, but i find in 2006 requiring a floppy to flash a bios is slow on the uptake for easier methods.

[Nuke]

i have a self booting copy of msdos on a flash card that lets me do stuff like this (as well as play really old games). its still an archaic way of doing a flash. some mobo manufacturers have windows based flash utilities, but not all of them do this.

its entirely possible to put a very simple os on the bios itself. you only really need basic disk access. ive seen some asus bioses that let you load and save data to flash cards or usb drives, i cant remember if you were allowed to flash the bios in this sort of way (it was mostly meant for loading and saving bios profiles for overclocking). but it would be nice if you could just stick the bios image on a thumb drive, plug it in, go into the setup program and issue a command to install the bios.

[Klaustrophobia]

the last 2 Abit boards i used had a windows flash utility.  i haven't flashed on my current one because there's really no need to, even though there is a new bios version, but the old one i ended up not using it anyway (back in the socket A days).  back then everywhere seemed to say using a floppy was safer.  what drives me nuts more than bios flashing with a floppy is installing SATA drivers with a floppy.  i COULDN'T restore my laptop with an XP disk because of it. 

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Lucky you can use a windows floppy.  Most BIOS flash utilities required either a MS-DOS 6.22, DRDOS, or came with some other DOS of their own along with a big warning not to use Windows DOS. 

Personally I still put floppy drives in all my computers.  They are useful at times.  For those of you that don't think so have that BIOS flash fail in the middle and see what you will need to do to restore it.  Bet it involves hooking up a floppy drive. 

And a follow up.  Remember if you can flash the bios from windows so can a virus.

[Nuke]

id trust a usb thumb drive or sd card before id trust a floppy any day. you can make them bootable through the windows command line, though there are utilities that make the process faster. ive used something called WinSetupFromUSB, which makes usb flash drives (or sd cards through a usb card reader) bootable, and can also copy install files for various operating systems and self-boot utils. its free and is mainly used to install oses to netbooks. big thing is when doing a flash of the bios to make sure your using the version of dos they recommend using. dont go and use freedos when it wants msdos 6.22, and so on.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

One issue with that is there are a lot of boards that don't support booting from usb drives still around.  Heck I still see systems that can't boot from CD unless it's SCSI.  Boot options A, C, SCSI.

[Nuke]

some mobos have ****ty boot options too sometimes. my current mobo i actually had trouble figuring out how to boot from flash. if you leave the device in it will boot every time once its set up. of course the first time you boot with the device absent, it will go back to default. so you have to configure the bios boot settings each time you attach the drive and want to boot from it. of course  i also have a cf card -> ide adapter for situations where usb boot is not available. the bios sees the card as a normal ide drive, so i can just run the flash utilities from there. there are also flash drives with a sata interface which no doubt work in the same way.

it really just comes down to the fact that if your mobo has ****ty features/utilities, you will have a hard time flashing it.

[Admiral LSD]

I haven't flashed a BIOS from a floppy drive in years. After removing the floppy drive from my old Athlon XP it was always too much hassle to dig one up again just to update the BIOS. You had the find the drive in the first place, balance it outside your case and then go on a holy grail type quest for the single reliable floppy you have in your possession. I just used the Windows utility because it was quicker and easier than dealing with that. More recently though, I just use the functionality built into the BIOS itself: put the BIOS image on a USB stick, reboot with it plugged in, press F12 on the POST screen and you're away.

[S-99]

In order to not require a floppy. I downloaded a windows 98 boot disk that was converted to an iso. That saved the day. But still, better things could be done. The best way i think is to just plop the flash update onto a thumb drive or cdr and use a utility inside the bios for flashing. This would get rid of the need for what i see as unnecessary flashing utilities to say flash the bios from within the operating system.

[Admiral LSD]

The best way i think is to just plop the flash update onto a thumb drive or cdr and use a utility inside the bios for flashing. This would get rid of the need for what i see as unnecessary flashing utilities to say flash the bios from within the operating system.

A lot of modern boards do just this. It's what I was describing at the end of my post. Gigabyte call it Q-Flash, but different mobo manufacturers will have different names for it.`

[Nuke]

The best way i think is to just plop the flash update onto a thumb drive or cdr and use a utility inside the bios for flashing. This would get rid of the need for what i see as unnecessary flashing utilities to say flash the bios from within the operating system.

A lot of modern boards do just this. It's what I was describing at the end of my post. Gigabyte call it Q-Flash, but different mobo manufacturers will have different names for it.`

some mobo manufacturer's boards arent so easy to flash. right now im using a dfi board that has windows flash utilities but they are only compatible with xp, but it does not appear to be compatible with windows 7. i mean it might work but im not gonna risk it because my bios runs fine and doesnt need to be flashed. if i did find a problem and i needed to do a flash, i would just use the dos utils. i know dos inside and out and its just not a problem for me.