Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
Note
BIOS and motherboard manufacturers began adding USB boot support during 2001, so if
your system dates from around that time or earlier, it might not be able to boot from a USB
drive.
When setting up a system to boot from a USB flash drive, the flash drive must be plugged
in prior to restarting the system and entering the BIOS setup. In the BIOS setup startup se-
quence (boot order), the USB flash drive might appear as either a “generic” storage device
hard disk or as a type of removable drive, which you should set as the first device in the boot
order. In most systems, when the USB flash drive is unplugged, it is automatically removed
from the boot order on the next restart.
After the USB flash drive is formatted as a bootable drive, you can add the BIOS flash
utility and image file for the motherboard. Plug the bootable USB flash drive into the sys-
temyouwanttoupgrade,andthenrestartthesystem,runtheBIOSsetup,andsettheUSB
flashdrivetobefirstinthebootsequence.Afteryousaveandexit,thesystemshouldboot
to DOS from the USB flash drive. At the DOS command prompt, you can then run the
proper command to reflash your BIOS.
Tip
Before you start the flash BIOS upgrade process, you should disconnect all USB and IEEE
1394(FireWire)devicesexceptforyourkeyboardandmouse.IfyouarebootingfromaUSB
flash drive to perform the upgrade, make sure all other USB drives are disconnected. On
some systems, leaving additional external drives connected prevents a BIOS upgrade from
working properly.
IfyouhaveByteMergeenabledintheBIOSSetuponanAwardBIOS-basedsystem,disable
this feature as a precaution before you perform the BIOS upgrade. This is recommended be-
cause on some older systems, leaving Byte Merge enabled during a BIOS upgrade can cause
the upgrade to fail, corrupting the BIOS in the process. You can reenable this feature after
you complete the upgrade. Some BIOS upgrades contain fixes for this problem so it can't
happen in the future.
Emergency Flash BIOS Recovery
When you perform a flash BIOS upgrade, you should normally see a warning message
onscreen similar to the following:
The BIOS is currently being updated. DO NOT REBOOT OR POWER DOWN until
the update
is completed (typically within three minutes)...
If you fail to heed this warning or something interrupts the update procedure, you can
be left with a system that has a corrupted BIOS. This means you will not be able to re-
