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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?

Brandon Morgan
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  • Bios update 216 not 126. – Brandon Morgan Aug 29 '13 at 07:20
  • Nice.. I also want to know it.. – Saurav Kumar Aug 29 '13 at 07:20
  • I don't know about your laptop (this is why I don't write this as an answer), but with nearly all Asus desktop mainboards, you don't need any special program to flash the BIOS. You can do it directly in the BIOS setup menu if you put the update file on a FAT formatted USB drive. – soulsource Aug 29 '13 at 07:36
  • Compared title to title, this is certainly not a duplicate question, but very valid in of itself (how to flash the binary image data, however extracted, into the BIOS/CMOS devices via Linux) – Marcos Nov 20 '14 at 13:15

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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.
Community
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Takkat
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  • The information is highly valued over the lecture. This is a very proper general question (outside of Asus notebooks too) and need to keep on searching for more native answers, if available. – Marcos Nov 20 '14 at 13:10
  • @Marcos: the good news is that more and more BIOS manufacturers include a flash utility so we don't need any OS to be able to update. Having two linked Q&A on the same topic is not a bad thing, it will direct users to the right direction. Whenever we need to add valuable new information we can do so in the linked "master" Q & A. – Takkat Nov 20 '14 at 15:11
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You can update your BIOS using a DOS. There is a FreeDOS operating system which is DOS compatible. I have successfully updates many ASUS notebooks this way.

Alvar
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Symin
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