Update BIOS?

  • Thread starter Thread starter phugoid
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phugoid

hmmmmmm...........

thanks guys, looks like I'll hold off on upgrading my BIOS. dont really
have any problems, so Im gonna keep well enuff alone!
anyone out there done a BIOS flash?.... was it a good or bad thing?

like I said before, I just dont want that sick feeling in my stomach
when I turn my comp on and I get either all black, or the infamous blue
screen of death............so for now, my Dell XPS will stay w it's
present BIOS... :)

thx for the tips guys

ps..... those who said to upgrade, have ya done a BIOS upgrade before?
good? bad? mixed results?
 
phugoid said:
hmmmmmm...........

thanks guys, looks like I'll hold off on upgrading my BIOS. dont really
have any problems, so Im gonna keep well enuff alone!
anyone out there done a BIOS flash?.... was it a good or bad thing?

like I said before, I just dont want that sick feeling in my stomach
when I turn my comp on and I get either all black, or the infamous blue
screen of death............so for now, my Dell XPS will stay w it's
present BIOS... :)

thx for the tips guys

ps..... those who said to upgrade, have ya done a BIOS upgrade before?
good? bad? mixed results?
Click to expand...

Hi,

I have an XPS Gen2 and I updated mine with no problems. If Dell has an
update, you can use it, just be sure that you got the correct one according
to your Service Tag ID.
 
I've done plenty on my hardware as well as for others. *When I've had to*.

To repeat, don't flash the BIOS unless you have a compelling reason and are
in a position to replace the motherboard and your data when things go splat.

BIOS flashing is risky. Don't do it unless you must.
 
hmmmmmm...........

thanks guys, looks like I'll hold off on upgrading my BIOS. dont really
have any problems, so Im gonna keep well enuff alone!
anyone out there done a BIOS flash?.... was it a good or bad thing?

like I said before, I just dont want that sick feeling in my stomach
when I turn my comp on and I get either all black, or the infamous blue
screen of death............so for now, my Dell XPS will stay w it's
present BIOS... :)

thx for the tips guys

ps..... those who said to upgrade, have ya done a BIOS upgrade before?
good? bad? mixed results?
Click to expand...

I've done this many times but each and every time I've held my breath until
the job was completed. Had a failure once but I was lucky to be working
with a board/chip that was capable of "rolling back" to the old BIOS
version.

Whenever you make any change to the system, have a contingency plan in case
things go wrong. Think about how to get back to where you started. Once the
safety net is in place, proceed with the change. Or if recovery is more
than you want to deal with, scrap the project.

In the case of a failed BIOS update that can't be uninstalled (and a good
alternative for the faint of heart), there are companies that sell
replacement chips with the updates already in place.
 
phugoid said:
hmmmmmm...........

thanks guys, looks like I'll hold off on upgrading my BIOS. dont really
have any problems, so Im gonna keep well enuff alone!
anyone out there done a BIOS flash?.... was it a good or bad thing?

like I said before, I just dont want that sick feeling in my stomach
when I turn my comp on and I get either all black, or the infamous blue
screen of death............so for now, my Dell XPS will stay w it's
present BIOS... :)

thx for the tips guys

ps..... those who said to upgrade, have ya done a BIOS upgrade before?
good? bad? mixed results?
Click to expand...

I've done a number of them but always with the knowledge that if something
went wrong in the midst of things, I could end up with a dead motherboard.
And it's not a blue screen of death, it's so dead that you can't boot from
floppy, cd, or anything, so there's no way to repair conveniently.

I've never had one go horribly wrong though. But I have had to re-flash to a
previous version or roll back when the new bios broke one thing while it
fixed something else.

Usually the bios upgrade information will tell you why the upgrade is being
released. If it's nothing that affects you, there's no reason to do the
update. If you decide to do the update, be aware of the risks. And it's not
just that you could do something wrong; if the power goes out in the middle
of the flash, or someone trips over the power plug, you've probably got a
dead computer.
 
I don't think it's a problem anymore. I've upgraded hundreds of BIOS' without
failure. Most motherboards that I have worked on for the past 5 years or so
have had a reset jumper on it. Even my old Packard Bell 100 MHz has one on
it. The Dell XPS machines are so advanced, I can't imagine that the board
would become garbage after flashing it during a power failure. I've done a
couple when the power failed, restarted them with the disk in and
successfully recovered both times but maybe that was just luck.

But then again, if you're a person who constantly has bad luck, you might
want to take that into account.
 
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