Bios - to update or not??

Question

I have a Latitude E5470. This is really a general question - but I couldn't figure out how to post to Laptop category. My BIOS is about 3 years out-of-date. Most recent BIOS update shows CRITICAL. Best I can tell it's Intel Security updates. But I can't really tell what they are or if I need them - too technical for me to figure out.

I generally am in favor of updating my devices and proceed with caution when updates come out for Windows and IOS, waiting until the initial bugs are worked out. However, I'd rather not update the BIOS. Too risky for an average user such as myself.

Most advice I have seen says - if it ain't broke, don't fix it! (Same for driver updates). Update the BIOS if you are having problems, else leave it. But what about security updates and how do I know if they really apply to my machine? And are the BIOS updates cumulative (I think yes), so I would do just the most recent one.

Do I have to update the BIOS? And, if so, how often should I do that? If not, I'll just let it be.

jphughan · Accepted Answer

@Vandelay Industries Yes BIOS updates are cumulative, although in some very rare cases, some BIOS updates require you to already be running at least a certain release. So for example if BIOS release A18 says you need to be running at least A10 and you're only running A05, you'd need to update from A05 to A10 first, then up to A18. But again that's pretty rare.

The security vulnerabilities discovered in Intel CPUs over the last few years have been quite significant. Most of them are variations of the Spectre vulnerability. The exploit is admittedly quite technical, and to my knowledge there have been no "weaponized" versions of these exploits in the wild yet. Right now they've just been proven to be feasible in labs and such. However, there have also been some very serious vulnerabilities discovered in the Intel Management Engine, and there HAVE been real world exploits for that.

If it makes you feel better, Dell systems for a while now have had a "BIOS Guard" feature that allows a new update to be flashed alongside the existing code so that if the update fails midway through, the old code is still there as opposed to having been partially overwritten. So the risk of updating the BIOS isn't as significant as you might think. Frankly, these days I consider Microsoft's updates to Windows 10, especially the feature releases, to be much higher risk than BIOS updates. They can't seem to stop breaking new things while fixing others.

I'm not an advocate of updating just for the sake of updating, especially when release notes that explain the changes contained in an update are available in order to help you make an informed decision. But I'm also not a fan of pure "If it ain't broke" theory either. Given the number of security issues in the last 3 years since your current BIOS was released and the safeguards Dell has implemented into their BIOS update mechanism, I personally would suggest that you update.

Vandelay Industries · Answer

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I will update the BIOS. But, I have only ever updated using Windows .exe file download. How does this work? I would prefer to use windows since I am not familiar with how to flash.

Dell systems for a while now have had a "BIOS Guard" feature that allows a new update to be flashed alongside the existing code so that if the update fails midway through, the old code is still there as opposed to having been partially overwritten. So the risk of updating the BIOS isn't as significant as you might think.

Frankly, these days I consider Microsoft's updates to Windows 10, especially the feature releases, to be much higher risk than BIOS updates. They can't seem to stop breaking new things while fixing others. - Agree 100%!! Apple too, btw!

jphughan · Answer

@Vandelay Industries  With the Windows-based updaters, you just launch the utility, and it displays some info about your current firmware version and the one contained in the updater package.  (On some older BIOS updaters, you had to manually right-click the EXE and choose 'Run as administrator', but I don't think that's true for your system.  But if you see an error message after launching it normally, run it as admin.)  Then if you choose to proceed after reviewing that readout, the updater loads the new BIOS code into the system firmware so that it will install at the next reboot, and then it automatically reboots your system to perform that installation.  So make sure you don't have anything running when you choose to proceed with the update.  The BIOS update process will occur during the initial system boot and takes about 2-3 minutes, during which time I believe on that system you'll see progress bars for multiple components in succession.  Also note that you're required to have the system connected to AC power to perform the update.

jphughan · Answer

@Vandelay Industries  Glad to hear it went ok.  I've seen some odd discrepancies with dates.  Sometimes an old update will have a very new 'Last Updated' date, possibly because they corrected a typo on the release notes page, and that will cause that old update to look new.  But in your case my guess is that the BIOS release may have been completed in August from a code standpoint but wasn't actually published until October, with pre-release testing occurring in between.

Vandelay Industries · Answer

So I just updated my BIOS. It went fine, though it did not follow the video/written instructions from the Dell website. I did not see 'reboot now?' at the end of an install with green progress bar. It went to a black screen and showed the updates that were being made with a progress bar (red) at the bottom of the screen, as each element was updated. But that went fine - it's been 3 years since I updated, so I figured it was updating what had to be done.

I checked System info and it shows the BIOS - 1.23.3 dated 8/4/20. The Dell support page says BIOS 1.23.3 was released 10/20/20. I checked the file name and it's correct! I don't know why the date would be wrong??? Thanks for all your help & support.

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Bios - to update or not??

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