Update bios question

[MadCatz900]

Hi, there is a new bios update available for my motherboard (asus p7h55-m) and i want to update. Should i use the asus update utility to do this or is there a safer way? also what can i can to prevent or recover if the bios update goes wrong?

Cheers.

 

[jbschmerge]

There really is no *safe* way to update the bios... if for some reason the writing of the image to the chip fails, you've bricked your box.

That being said, Asus's utility is probably the safest thing you can use to update your bios image. In addition to their windows utility though, Asus offers on their newer mainboards a way of writing the bios from the early boot environment (i think you hit 'f2' at the post screen).

One thing I will mention is that there is another open-source utility called 'flashrom' that can be used to read & write the chips from quite a few mainboards... I'm not sure if supports newer intel-based boards, but it is quite nice to use if you're comfortable with the Linux command line. I like using it to make a byte-for-byte copy of the bios on boards that i can use it on so i can look at binary diffs

 

[buzznut]

I have found the windows utilities to be iffy. For the last several years I have done BIOS updates with a thumb drive through the BIOS. I rarely have system crashes in windows 7 (non-game related), but there is that chance that windows could crash at just the wrong moment.
I find the BIOS environment to be the safest for this personally. Probably the safest would be to have a motherboard with dual BIOS function. Beyond that, make sure you are following the instructions implicitly.

 

[MadCatz900]

Ok thanks for the replies guys I made a backup of my current bios on a usb stick then updated my bios in the bios ;p, all seems to be working.