Ubuntu – How to update the BIOS in Ubuntu

13.04bios

How to update my BIOS for my Asus notebook? This is the download page for the BIOS updates. I am currently at BIOS update 216. Should do all the updates or just do the newest one? And what program should I use to do this?

Best Answer

Before we go through the potentially harmful process of a BIOS upgrade we have to answer the following questions with yes:

  • Do I really need the improvements the new BIOS version offers?
  • Had I made a full backup of my data?

You may find that a newer BIOS will not really add any better performance to our exisiting and running system.

In case we suffer from a BIOS bug that was resolved, and we need the BIOS to be upgraded we then need to know which OS is supported.

  • Some mainboard BIOS have the capability to upgrade from USB without the need of an additional operating system.
  • Few manufacturers even offer a Linux software to perform the flash upgrade.

Both sadly seems not to be the case for your ASUS notebook. We are offered various versions of the Windows software to upgrade our flash memory. This software may run with a repair Windows CD (see this answer for details) but the better way to go here is to use the DOS utility allflash2 which is also available for download from ASUS. This utility can be run after booting FreeDOS. How to do this was further elaborated in an answer to the following questions:

Obvious notes in addition:

  • Do not flash BIOS from Wine.
  • Flashing BIOS from a virtual machine is not possible.
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