Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Backing Up Your BIOS
Before updating aBIOS,itisgenerally agoodidea tosee ifitispossible tosave abackup
copy of the existing BIOS. That is because some motherboard manufacturers only offer
thelatestBIOSforagivenmotherboard;sometimesanewerBIOSmaycauseproblemsor
haveconsequencesyouarenotreadytolivewith.Byhavingabackup,youcangobackto
the previous version. To make the backup, run the BIOS upgrade program for your board,
andchecktoseeifthereisanoptiontosavetheexistingBIOStoafile.Ifthatoptionisnot
available, check to see if your motherboard manufacturer offers older versions (including
the one you have) for download.
Ifthereisnomenuoptiontobackupandnoolderversionscanbedownloaded,theremay
be other ways to make a copy of the BIOS, such as by using the DOS command-based
BIOS upgrade software usually found on the BIOS upgrade floppy or CD for the mother-
board. For example, if your motherboard has a Phoenix or Award BIOS, you can create a
backupusingtheawdflash.exeprogramfoundontheBIOSupgradediskforyourmother-
board with the /sy (Save Yes) and /pn (Program No) parameters, as follows:
awdflash /sy /pn
When the program runs, you are prompted to enter the backup file's name (for example,
backup.bin). Press Enter to save the file.
Backing Up Your BIOS Setup (CMOS RAM) Settings
A motherboard BIOS upgrade often wipes out the BIOS Setup settings in the CMOS
RAM.Therefore,youshouldrecordthesesettings,especiallyimportantonessuchashard-
disk related settings and parameters. Some BIOS Setup programs offer the ability to save
and restore CMOS settings, but unfortunately this capability is not universal. In some
cases the new BIOS offers new settings or changes the positions of the stored data in the
CMOS RAM, which means a backup and restore won't work.
Althoughitsoundslikeasimpleconcept,actuallysavingtheBIOSSetupsettingsissome-
what difficult technically because the amount, type, and even location of information
storedintheNVRAM(nonvolatileRAM)canvaryconsiderablyfromonemotherboardto
another. That being said, there are some possibilities, but they generally won't work with
all types of systems.
For example, Lenovo provides both Windows and DOS-based BIOS Settings Capture/
Playback Utilities, but these work only on newer ThinkPad laptops. For other systems
there are more generic solutions that might work, such as the following:
CmosPwd www.cgsecurity.org
CMOSsave/CMOSrest www.mindprod.com
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