Hardware Analysis Community Forums http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/69090/ 2008-10-10T20:34:45-05:00 http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/69090/ http://media.hardwareanalysis.com/halogo.gif text/html 2007-10-18T15:32:00-05:00 dark41 http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/69090/?l=1#514775 Gerritt,<br /> Fair enough. I'm not at 1000 BIOS updates via Windows yet, and rarely use Vista. But so far none have failed through Windows. Can't say that about updates via floppy disk, but then to be fair, I have no way of knowing if the update itself was corrupt or it was due to something with the process. Whatever works, I guess. I just think people should know that the updates work pretty well through Windows as well. <img src="http://media.hardwareanalysis.com/smilies/smile1.gif" width="14" height="14" border="0" alt=":-)" title=":-)"> text/html 2007-10-18T05:42:18-05:00 CrAsHnBuRnXp http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/69090/?l=1#514732 Vitaliy (Administrator) said: <div class="quote">dark41 said: <div class="quote">Sorry, but I think this advice is old school. Years ago I'd have agreed with it all, but not anymore.<br /> <br /> Gerritt said: <div class="quote">Don't update BIOS from Windows.<br /> </div><br /> Why not? I've been doing it daily for 2 years and never had one fail.</div><br /> I've done it numerous times on my desktop EPoX board.<br /> <br /> </div><br /> Ive done it a few times as well. text/html 2007-10-18T03:56:26-05:00 Gerritt http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/69090/?l=1#514726 dark41,<br /> <br /> You're right, I'm old school.<br /> <br /> I've heard variations on your argument many, many times from folks that just turned off thier power instead of doing a software controlled shutdown, or from folks with RAID controllers without a battery backed memory cache. Yes you can do it sucessfully 999 times out of a 1000, but that one time can bite.....HARD.<br /> <br /> When doing something that may brick your HW, my experience has taught me to eliminate as many variables as possible.<br /> A DOS/Linux environment off of a bootable floppy eliminates many of the possible points of incompatibility, thus is, in my eyes, is a better approach.<br /> <br /> Granted, in a healthy system, the utilization of a GUI flash utility holds little or no risk above and beyond what you may get in a minimalist CLI based utility, but, there are times when attempting to repair an issue with a marginal system, that a BIOS upgrade is indicated, but it may be other additional issues; such as a weak PSU; that eliminating this system overhead may preclude a system being bricked.<br /> <br /> Working with 10s of thousands of systems, the extra precaution of doing the minimal system CLI based approach has probably saved me a lot more heartache than the convinience of a GUI upgrade utility.<br /> <br /> Once again, just my eyes/opinion, but an informmed one.<br /> <br /> Gerritt<br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> <br /> text/html 2007-10-18T03:18:26-05:00 dark41 http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/69090/?l=1#514723 Big Beavis said: <div class="quote">Vitaliy (Administrator) said: <div class="quote">For the record, the particular BIOS update in this article had only one &quot;fix&quot; in it - something related to what happens when notebook is removed from its docking station. I don't have one.<br /> </div><br /> <br /> There's a perfect example of an update I would <i>not </i>install. dark41, I don't know if you're deliberately misreading my posts or what, but in the case of &quot;F4 2007/05/11 Enhance memory performance and add Turbo options&quot;, that <i>is</i> a reason to update, and one I'd almost certainly take advantage of. Clear enough?</div><br /> <br /> I don't believe I've ever replied directly to you, so no need for you to take my posts personally. My replies that are not directed to an individual are intended as general feedback with my opinions.<br /> <br /> Plenty clear, although F5 with &quot;enhanced system performance, Fix dual BIOS issue (Sometimes recovery from backup BIOS may fail) , and Fix PS2 keyboard compatibility issues&quot; is probably an even more necessary update than F4 since the backup BIOS failure could also leave you with a dead system. It will be too late to update if the backup BIOS fails. Then there's that performance enhancement too.<br /> <br /> I have no problem with not upgrading to features that you don't use. As I said, most BIOS upgrades include a performance enhancement of some type. In this particular example 2 out of 3 did. I wouldn't upgrade to F6 either myself to fix a PCI device option ROM compatibility issue that I don't use. But for our customers' systems, I would upgrade because I have no way of knowing who would and who would not be utilizing this feature. Thus, I also need to install it myself to make sure it's a good working BIOS before installing it on my customers' systems. <img src="http://media.hardwareanalysis.com/smilies/smile1.gif" width="14" height="14" border="0" alt=":)" title=":)"><br /> text/html 2007-10-18T03:07:58-05:00 dark41 http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/69090/?l=1#514722 Vitaliy (Administrator) said: <div class="quote">The reasons I suspect Windows was partially at fault is because I was running Vista which most likely has better safeguards against blatant hardware alterations such as BIOS flashing, particularly because this notebook has a TPM chip in it. It's possible that Lenovo hasn't fully tested BIOS flash utility under Vista with hardware security enabled. (For the record, this paragraph is purely my speculative suspicion).</div><br /> <br /> Ah, that would explain a lot. As a disclaimer I should probably add that I've never run a BIOS update with Vista. Vista collects dust on my dual boot drive until more of the problems on it are worked out. <br /> text/html 2007-10-18T02:54:27-05:00 Paul Smith http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/69090/?l=1#514719 Well, last spring, the gaming PC I built almost three years before (and upgraded since then) refused boot windows. All I got over the speakers was &quot;Error: CPU Failure&quot; repeating over and over again from the ASUS motherboard POST bios system.<br /> <br /> Well, the MB was 2 years, 11 months old. Same for the CPU (AMD Athlon 64 3200+) . Both were under the 3 year warrenty. After hearing me explain the problem, the ASUS tech said that it could be motherboard or CPU. very hard to tell. I also called AMD and got pretty much the same answer. So I decided to replace CPU and see if that was the issue.<br /> <br /> Since I had saved the original packing from when I built the PC there was no need to AMD to send me a box to ship it in. Got an RMA number, and off it went to the AMD facility. A week later a brand new, AMD Athlon 64 3700+ arrived. Not only had my 3200 been replaced, it had been upgraded! <br /> <br /> I eagarly plugged the new CPU in and after double checking all the connections, powered up the machine only to hear the same horrible message. &quot;Error: CPU Failure!&quot;.<br /> <br /> Called ASUS, and got the same tech as before, she said they would overnight a shipping box for the MB so I could return it. Got the box the next day and I sent off the MB the following morning. A week later, the replacement MB arrived. Took my time and installed it, the new AMD Athlon 64 3700+ CPU chip. Powered it up only to hear the same horrible message...Error: CPU Failure. <br /> <br /> I thought for a few and then decided to try some thing completely different. Could it be power supply? I dragged out another older PC, moved it close enough to plug it's power leads into the MB, Low and behold, the system booted perfectly! Good news in the end, I got an upgraded PC, warrenties on the MB and CPU extended another three years and a good friend had a spare 500w PS he sold me cheap to complete the repair.<br /> <br /> Korg sends<br /> text/html 2007-10-17T19:03:21-05:00 Orange Juice http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/69090/?l=1#514637 Nice to hear about a really good experience with the warranty <img src="http://media.hardwareanalysis.com/smilies/smile1.gif" width="14" height="14" border="0" alt=":)" title=":)"> i for one purchased a Lenovo ThinkPad some time ago and experienced some issues with it too.Usually i don't really see the security related software preinstalled on laptops as a really necessary thing. They are not very easy to use by the common user, and i'm sick and tired to be called to assist my fellow colleagues in troubleshooting that. Well, this once i must admit i was curious enough to configure that fingerprint reader software.<br /> To my surprise all worked fine. For a couple of days, that is. When i needed to log in the computer administrator account again it failed to recognize my fingers (any of the 4 i enrolled in the software). Luckily i had also put in a regular password. My choice at that time was to simply erase the stored fingerprints and work that again from scratch.<br /> Few days later the machine would freeze in &quot;checking embedded security chip&quot; stage (or something very similar to that, and it made no difference if i changed it's status to active, hidden or disabled in the BIOS). Well at this point i found that the facilities that the blue ThinkVantage button lets you use are working very nice, e.g. i managed to completely back-up the data onto an external hard drive. Restored OS from the image on the hdd and i simply gave up on the security chip ever since.<br /> As for the warranty.. i gave up on that. I live in Eastern Europe, Romania to be more precise, and although we're importing a lot of IT related products, seems we have a problem with the warranty. Called the store, they directed me to an authorized servicing IBM partner, and the prognosis was about 2 weeks (minimum). In that time the guy that used the laptop should have resorted to pen and paper probably, so i simply gave it up and hope for it to work with that part disabled.<br /> Don't think it's about a single ThinkPad, no, we can be talking about 30.000$ worth of HP printing equipment too. I've had quite a few mishaps with part shipments for DesignJet models, older or top of the line, brand new ones. I sometimes wonder why do they sell in areas where they can't provide the appropriate support for these. I know about an HP customer that bought a scanner that needs it's mainboard replaced. It'll be here in Romania on December 27'th. If we think a bit about this prognosis... it's either sent by a sailboat, or it's simply going to enter production in a month or so.<br /> &quot;Yes sir, we know it broke down, but we first have to make another 2000 pieces of that scanner and after that we'll start producing spare parts. Thank you very much for your purchase.&quot;<br /> There's even a particular large printer model that has a flaw somewhere, the internal hard drive breaks repeatedly. My firm pays for that thing every time it breaks (you guessed right, it's no longer covered by warranty) but the servicing guys tell me that it's a worldwide problem with that model, they don't know where it comes from, but it happens everywhere. So they stock up on that spare hdd's and change them every time they break. Every 3-4 months, that is. Clever way to sell spare parts, don't fix the problem <img src="http://media.hardwareanalysis.com/smilies/smile16.gif" width="14" height="14" border="0" alt=":/" title=":/"> text/html 2007-10-17T15:40:17-05:00 Phil http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/69090/?l=1#514619 RMA'd a 2 day Old Foxconn LGA775 Board and Pentium LGA 2165 CoreDuo CPU b'cus they wouldnt work<br /> <br /> Supplier Suggested i RMA'd them so i did, a week later they returned back with comment 'Returned due to secured with Brown Tape. None restockable item' <img src="http://media.hardwareanalysis.com/smilies/smile9.gif" width="14" height="14" border="0" alt=":|" title=":|"> <br /> <br /> altho not strictly a Warrenty War, it was a war on the phone to supplier lol text/html 2007-10-17T15:12:55-05:00 Beavis Khan http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/69090/?l=1#514616 Vitaliy (Administrator) said: <div class="quote">For the record, the particular BIOS update in this article had only one &quot;fix&quot; in it - something related to what happens when notebook is removed from its docking station. I don't have one.<br /> </div><br /> <br /> There's a perfect example of an update I would <i>not </i>install. dark41, I don't know if you're deliberately misreading my posts or what, but in the case of &quot;F4 2007/05/11 Enhance memory performance and add Turbo options&quot;, that <i>is</i> a reason to update, and one I'd almost certainly take advantage of. Clear enough? text/html 2007-10-17T14:21:03-05:00 Vitaliy (Administrator) http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/69090/?l=1#514612 dark41 said: <div class="quote">Most BIOS upgrades are for a good reason. Even though you may not realize you have a problem, the upgrades usually make things better, and very rarely make them worse.</div><br /> For the record, the particular BIOS update in this article had only one &quot;fix&quot; in it - something related to what happens when notebook is removed from its docking station. I don't have one.<br /> <br /> Historically, I've updated BIOS &quot;once in a while&quot;, maybe once a year if there is a significant number of fixes that sound even remotely relevant.<br /> <br /> On the other hand, there are BIOS updated that have been available for years for servers running this very site but we haven't installed them because, mostly, it's too logistically complicated, but also because fixes are not relevant to us and machines have been running great. text/html 2007-10-17T14:16:32-05:00 Vitaliy (Administrator) http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/69090/?l=1#514610 Mark Allen said: <div class="quote">I have no warranty war stories. I simply just buy a new part and ditch the old. I rarely ever RMA.</div><br /> This is my 2nd time using warranty, ever. I think most of the time I upgrade before things break.<br /> <br /> The first experience was with an Abit motherboard which died within first year, which was just annoying. The replacement board died within months and took a few components with it. I think it's still collecting dust somewhere in the basement. text/html 2007-10-17T14:14:32-05:00 Vitaliy (Administrator) http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/69090/?l=1#514609 dark41 said: <div class="quote">Sorry, but I think this advice is old school. Years ago I'd have agreed with it all, but not anymore.<br /> <br /> Gerritt said: <div class="quote">Don't update BIOS from Windows.<br /> </div><br /> Why not? I've been doing it daily for 2 years and never had one fail.</div><br /> I've done it numerous times on my desktop EPoX board.<br /> <br /> The reasons I suspect Windows was partially at fault is because I was running Vista which most likely has better safeguards against blatant hardware alterations such as BIOS flashing, particularly because this notebook has a TPM chip in it. It's possible that Lenovo hasn't fully tested BIOS flash utility under Vista with hardware security enabled. (For the record, this paragraph is purely my speculative suspicion). text/html 2007-10-17T14:06:29-05:00 dark41 http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/69090/?l=1#514607 Sorry, but I think this advice is old school. Years ago I'd have agreed with it all, but not anymore.<br /> <br /> Gerritt said: <div class="quote">Don't update BIOS from Windows.<br /> </div><br /> Why not? I've been doing it daily for 2 years and never had one fail. We're talking several hundred BIOS updates over that period of time. The lone one that did fail was done via floppy disk a few years ago (GA-K8NXP-SLI). Whether it fails from Windows or from a floppy isn't going to make any difference as you won't be able to get into BIOS to flash again. Either way you should be able to see if it worked correctly or not, but if it fails via the flash utility in DOS you won't have a computer to check for info online or download any fixes. From Windows you have a working computer, at least until you reboot. <br /> <br /> But I agree that backing up first is a good idea in case you decide to go back to the old version for some reason later on. That can also be done through every Windows BIOS update program that I've seen lately, which also allows you to format the floppy disk again if need be, or change to a different disk if you get a bad one (that happens to me fairly often, and I'd have no way of doing anything about it from DOS).<br /> <br /> Gerrit said: <div class="quote">The problem you may run into is that a bootable FDD does not have the space for both your old and new BIOS images.</div><br /> <br /> It's just DOS. BIOS utilities which are run from a floppy will allow you to swap floppy disks to formatted disk for backup, then swap back to flash. Once the DOS flash utility is started, it only reads and writes whatever disk is in there. At least that's how Asus, Gigabyte, and Intel boards have been for the past couple years.<br /> <br /> Gerrit said: <div class="quote">Sometimes you can recover RAID and other settings by reincorporating the same settings; which will most likely need to be reentered after a update/upgrade.</div><br /> Again, most BIOS udates used to load with the default settings. But lately every update I've done on those 3 board manufacturers has saved the current settings, including RAID.<br /> <br /> <br /> I'm not trying to convince anyone who doesn't want to upgrade to do so. I just find it baffling that anyone would choose not to if they're comfortable with the process.<br /> <br /> EG: Here's the last 3 BIOS updates for my P35-DQ6. Every one has some performance advantage included:<br /> <br /> F4 2007/05/11 Enhance memory performance and add Turbo options <br /> <br /> F5 2007/08/20 Fix 1394 device can't work when system resumes from S3 mode. <br /> Enhance system performance <br /> Fix dual BIOS issue (Sometimes recovery from backup BIOS may fail) <br /> Fix PS2 keyboard compatibility issues<br /> <br /> F6 2007/09/07 Fix PCI device option ROM compatibility issues<br /> <br /> The board worked fine with the F4 BIOS that came in it. But doing the 2 updates made it even better. To each their own I guess. text/html 2007-10-17T12:50:38-05:00 S Gold http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/69090/?l=1#514598 Lenovo could not buy with any amount of advertising expendature what this column provides in terms of value to the brand. As a result of this column I will buy Lenovo. It is a false economy for manufacturers to scrimp on support since the result is unhappy consumers. Look at Dell's declining reputation and market share as an example of the combination of huge advertising expendatures and frustratingly inept support. Here's an interesting article citing Gartner data respecting Dell's market share decline. <a class="ext" href="/action/r/http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070419-dell-continues-to-take-market-share-beating.html" target="_blank">http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070419-dell-continues-t...ating.html</a> text/html 2007-10-17T11:41:59-05:00 Beavis Khan http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/69090/?l=1#514589 dark41 said: <div class="quote">The responses from people who don't update BIOS and drivers surprise me. I expect the users of this forum to be computer savy. But the &quot;not fixing it unless it's broken&quot; attitude is ignorant IMO. Most savy enthusiasts insist upon updating for a good reason. Most BIOS updates improve system performance in some way. So Frankly, in that case you wouldn't know what you're missing without the latest updates to see the difference. Sure, it's working now, but it's not working the way it's capable and intended to work. In that case, you're not really getting what you paid for.<br /> </div><br /> <br /> I'll say it again - if there is a reason to update, I'll do so. If the BIOS release notes don't mention any updates I care about, I won't update. If the company producing the BIOS is in the habit of including fixes in the new BIOS version without telling their customers, then that's a reason (for me) to avoid that company's products. You can continue to call me unsavvy and ignorant if you like, but the reason I don't update s**t willy nilly is because I've been burned by way too many &quot;fixes&quot; in the past that did more harm than good. This includes BIOS updates, Windows update, as well as driver and application. It has very little to do with the possibility of a failed BIOS update, which I agree, is quite remote. Many people here seem to think a bigger number means it's better, which is about the most ignorant thing I personally have ever heard. If pointing out how silly that is that makes me unsavvy, then, guilty as charged.<br /> <br /> And now I'll let you get back to your thread Vitaliy, sorry for the threadjack.