You’ve got your PRO laptop or desktop…, ready, set, go.. but wait. Do you have to flash the BIOS or ME Firmware?
Created on: Oct 22, 2007 12:44 AM by Josh Hilliker - Last Modified: Oct 22, 2007 12:47 AM by Josh Hilliker
One of the key steps in getting started with a PRO laptop or desktop is that you may need to flash the BIOS or ME. While this seems like a trivial task, sometimes it can be a bit painful If you haven’t prepared for the task. Here are the key gotcha’s that we found out that may help you in your setup of AMT.
#1. Make sure you have a USB Flash drive, any FAT-16 formatted (limitation of 2GB) USB drive will work, but the under 1GB devices will ‘auto boot’ at floppy devices versus having to setup the BIOS to boot to USB
#2. Download the latest BIOS & ME firmware (see your OEM’s site for the latest packages) ~ or you can check out the quick start guide to see the OEM specific web sites.
#3. Download a USB boot utility – Example: – What is nice about this site is it has a link to the Windows 98 files you will need.
#4. Then follow the prompts on the utility & you should be on your way to creating a DOS bootable USB flash drive. After you’ve completed the steps you will want to move the BIOS and ME Firmware files to the drive. Then you are ready to go to the new PRO laptop /desktop & boot up into the drive, run the update files & that should do the trick.
The next question will be “When is a setup.bin file too large?”.. check out what Terry Cutler wrote on the following discussion thread.
Let me know if any questions or if I should add screen shots above.
Josh
Josh Hilliker
says
in response to Josh Hilliker:
Follow on. We are learning new information that it is best to NOT do this if you are going to use the key for the SETUP.BIN file. I am obtaining the latest information on the BKM & will post out.
Josh
Nice writeup Josh! There's a really great tool out there that's available to make a bootable flash drive (if you want to ensure you have a fully cleaned USB flash device) - Plus it's very helpful for any IT technician/administrator for day-to-day boot options for any lower level maintainence you'd like to perform.
Here's a link to the tool http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197
It's pretty self explanatory, but be sure to format as FAT-16 and use some of the DOS or Win98 based OS files to get a good base-level utility...