Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
motherboard manufacturer supplying bootable floppy or optical disc images containing
the necessary upgrade files, which youwouldthen usetocreate the actual upgrade media.
Inthecaseofafloppy,youdownloadthefloppyimagecreationprogramfromthemother-
board manufacturer. When you run it, the program prompts you to insert a blank floppy
disk into the drive, after which it overwrites the disk with abootable image containing the
bootable OS (most likely DOS or a DOS variant) plus all the files necessary to perform
the upgrade. To perform the upgrade, you first ensure that the floppy drive is set in the
boot sequence, and then you restart the system with the upgrade floppy disk in the drive.
The system should then boot from the floppy, and the upgrade procedure should start and
run automatically. Follow any onscreen prompts to complete the upgrade; then when the
upgrade is complete, remove the floppy and reboot the system.
BecausefloppydrivesarenolongerinstalledinmostnewersystemsandtheBIOSimages
for newer motherboards are often too large to fit on a floppy anyway, many mother-
boardmanufacturersnowofferdownloadableimagesofbootableCDsforBIOSupgrades.
These are normally in the form of an *.ISO file, which is an optical disc image file con-
taining a sector-by-sector copy of a disc. To perform the upgrade, you need to write the
ISO bootable image file to a blank disc. Unfortunately, Windows versions prior to Win-
dows 7 don't include optical disc burning software that can read or write ISO images,
which means that you need a third-party program to accomplish this. Commercial optical
disc burning programs are sometimes included with new systems or optical drives, so you
might already havethenecessary software onyoursystem. Ifyoudon'talready havesuch
aprogram,IrecommendImgBurn(
www.imgburn.com
)
,whichisanexcellentfreeoptical
disc burning application.
Use your burning program to generate the disc image by copying the ISO file to a blank
disc.Toperformtheupgrade,firstensurethattheoptical driveissetinthebootsequence;
thenrestartthesystemwiththeupgradediscinthedrive.Thesystemshouldbootfromthe
disc, and the upgrade procedure should start and run automatically. Follow the prompts to
complete the upgrade and then, once the upgrade is complete, remove the disc and reboot
the system.
User-Created Bootable Media
Many motherboard manufacturers also offer BIOS upgrades in the form of a raw DOS-
based flash utility combined with a BIOS image file, which you can run manually from
anyDOS-bootablemedia.Usingthistechnique,youcanperformtheupgradefromaboot-
ablefloppy,optical disc,orevenaUSBflashdrive,regardlessofwhetherthesystemhard
drive is running Windows or Linux or even if it has no OS. The necessary files are nor-
mally contained inanarchive that youcan download fromthe motherboard manufacturer.
Unfortunately, this type of procedure is much more labor intensive than the others be-
