How to upgrade BIOS on a linux system with no floppy?

Question

I got a Dell 1150 laptop. THe problem is that is supposed to be able to boot off usb and although usb is set to first boot option in my BIOS it does not boot off of it. Under the F12 menu there is no usb. Weird i know. I think newer bios releases fix this?

My BIOS IS A04. Which one is the latest that i need?
Is it possible to make a bootable cd rom off a exe file and if yes how?

Also, i found this page. THis guy has made iso images of all BIOS for Dell's

http://www.bay-wolf.com/flashbios.htm

Not sure which one i need as he does not list a 1150

thanks

tdexter · Answer

If you do in fact need to upgrade the BIOS, and you can get the bios update on a floppy disk image file (more on that later) it's easy to make a bootable CD using it (what's called an El Torito bootable CD) using mkisofs.

Let's say you have the bootable floppy image file named floppy.img in a directory named floppydir (with nothing else in the directory). The following command will make a bootable CD image file named bootcd.iso:

mkisofs -o bootcd.iso -b floppy.img floppydir

You can them burn that bootcd.iso to a CD just as you would with any CD image file. Booting from that CD will give you an A: prompt and you will see the contents of the original floppy image.

As far as getting the update in an image file you can get the 'non-packaged' bios updater from dell (this is just the executable bios updater). Then find any minimal dos boot floppy image. You can add the bios updater to that image by mounting it (as root) to any empty directory using the loop option:

mount floppy.img /path/to/dir -o loop

...and then copy the file:

cp bios_whatever.exe /path/to/dir

...then unmount it as root with:

umount /path/to/dir

Hope this helps. This stuff is good to know with floppys becoming increasingly rare (especially on Dells).

Tom

Alessio.Signori · Answer

You can use an USB KEY to boot from. Usually recent DELL laptop support this feature.

To make the USB KEY bootable you can use one of the many software that you can find on internet. Just look with Google, and you'll find it.

ToddR · Answer

Not all USB keys will work.   The BIOS 'expects' the key to emulate a hard drive vs. a zip or floppy device.  I have several keys some work, some do not.  All the keys from Dell will work provided they are formated properly with a bootable operating system.  The OS needs to be DOS or possibly FreeDOS for the BIOS update program to work.  Don't use any memory managers, just make things as simple as possible.   I hope this helps point you in the right direction.

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How to upgrade BIOS on a linux system with no floppy?

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