Troubleshooting and Upgrading the BIOS

9 Comments


A CompTIA A+ certified professional needs to recognize when a BIOS upgrade may be needed, the precautions to take when upgrading a BIOS, and what to expect when the upgrade is underway. In this video, we’ll take you through each upgrade step and show you how some simple planning can make your BIOS upgrades run smoothly from start to finish.

9 thoughts on “Troubleshooting and Upgrading the BIOS”

  1. Jeremy Rice

    When you were running the Checksum program, how did you know that the checksums you needed to check were 16 and 32? Also when looking to do a BIOS Upgrade, the core component we should look for is what Motherboard we have as opposed to what the make of the computer is right?

    1. Professor Messer

      Jeremy –

      To determine the appropriate checksum for the file, you can check the documentation that is included with the file, or posted on the web site. Whoever posts the file will almost always add the checksum type to their checksum value, and even if it’s missing you can try some different checksum types until you find the correct one. Since you’ll almost always match the checksum, the process isn’t as hit-and-miss as you might think.

  2. scrappy2

    very helpful info. i never new about checksum and had recently download a bios file and installed it.It was just an old laptop i was fooling with, but everything went fine.

  4. Lolo

    I got a little intimidated by this. I guess that’s normal when your talking “techie”. One this I got out of this video is that the BIOS configurations are not something to play around with unless you definately know what you are doing and why your doing it. Considering that the BIOS is the “brain of the computer”, there is a lot of technical considerations to keep in mind. Thanks.

  5. Raymond

    Great lesson! The nice thing is that many motherboard manufacturers now allow you to recover from a bad BIOS upgrade. Unfortunately that wasn’t always the case and still isn’t on some motherboards.

    I remember one good thing that I learned years ago after I got overconfident and careless with a BIOS upgrade. You never again in your entire life forget about the need to be extremely careful! Especially when you have to explain to your wife why you have to buy a new motherboard for what used to be a perfectly good computer.

    :~/

  6. Xavier

    IS there no other way to recover from a power failure during a BIOS upgrade…other than your PC becoming a BRICK. Maybe physically removing and purchasing a new CMOS chip?

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