How safe are windows based BIOS flash ulitities?

C

Ciggarilo Himself

Limp Gawd
Joined
Nov 22, 2006
Messages
464
How safe are windows based BIOS flash ulitities? I dont have a floppy drive so this is my only option, is windows based flash safe to use. Are there any precautions i should take? The reason I want to flash my bios is cool and quiet doesnt work and other problems.

Thanks:)
 
windows bases BIOS flash programs are dangerous. there is a lot of ppl that get them to work ok, but there are a lot that have screwed there boards up because the flash didn't take properly. Your other option since you don't have a floppy would be to create a CD to flash your BIOS and boot off that.
 
I've flashed three different boards (PC Chips, ASUS, and MSI) with windows based programs, and all three were fine. As said, there are those who don't have my luck, and have lost a perfectly good board because an issue rose up.

Turn everything off, even try doing it in safe mode if you can. I just do a restart, close down all programs that I can so i'm running bare, and do the flash.

Aren't we to the point where we can start flashing from USB flash drive? Honestly, that'd be a great use for an older 32/64/128MB flash drive.
 
I was one of the lucky ones, I basically was cheating motherboard death using the Abit utility w/ my old NF7-S.. I would flash in OS, and take no precautions. Modded BIOSes, flashing while overclocked, sometimes while w/ heavy system loads (ie: folding). It would have sucked if it caused me to brick my board, but luckily enough, nothing ever happened - doesn't mean it's a good idea not to take precautions though ;). Worst case scenario: you kill the BIOS chip, and you have to buy a new one - shouldn't be more than about $10; you may even be able to con them to send you one free.
 
Never had a problem with Abit boards and a windows flash , but I try and do a dos/floppy flash when ever possible (to be safe) .

One board that should never be win flashed are AsRock's !!!
 
Depends on the board i have done it at least a dozen times on my current board and only one time did it mess up. Gigabyte dual bios FTW!
 
I've had very good results with ASUS boards using the ASUS Bios Update utility.

It is always safer to do a BIOS upgrade using the floppy or bootable device if given the chance.

NEVER EVER use winflash on an ECS board. I still do not know or understand why ECS still posts winflash along with their BIOS update when the majority of of BIOS updates using winflash kills their board.
 
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