Solved How do i update my Bios version A03 to A11 or A10?

[Diabolical]

Hey i have a alienware Area 51, with a bios version of A03, how do i update it to A10? or A11?

 

[Zomby88]

First you have to go to whatever site it is for your pc and see if there is an update. If there is download it then run it.

Some free advice. If your bios is working fine, and there`s no need to update it, then dont.

It could make things worse.

 

[bobkn]

You download the BIOS updater from Dell:

Drivers & Downloads=

(laterst version:A11, 10/17/2011).

It appears to be run from Windows. Not my favorite means of doing a BIOS update, but it's all that they offer.

 

[Mark Phelps]

Just make sure that BEFORE you do the BIOS upgrade, the following are both true:
1) You can save off the current BIOS in a way that it is later restorable
2) The BIOS update app provides a way to restore from a saved BIOS version

If these are not true, then upgrading the BIOS is risking turning your $4000 PC into an electric brick.

 

[bobkn]

Just make sure that BEFORE you do the BIOS upgrade, the following are both true:
1) You can save off the current BIOS in a way that it is later restorable
2) The BIOS update app provides a way to restore from a saved BIOS version

If these are not true, then upgrading the BIOS is risking turning your $4000 PC into an electric brick.

Dell offers older versions for download:

Dell - Support

They're probably of limited value. Even if the utilities permit an older version to be installed over a newer one, the circumstances under which you'd want to do that and could still boot into Windows seem to me to be very limited.

The third-party motherboard makers (such as Asus) seem to be forbidding reverting to an older BIOS, even if it's done outside of Windows. Doing the update seems riskier now than it was a few years ago. I hope that trend reverses.

 

[Mark Phelps]

Dell offers older versions for download ...

I wouldn't use an older version. I was referring to saving the Current version off somewhere so I can be restored if the BIOS upgrade goes bad or the new BIOS has problems.

The third-party motherboard makers (such as Asus) seem to be forbidding reverting to an older BIOS, even if it's done outside of Windows. Doing the update seems riskier now than it was a few years ago. I hope that trend reverses.

Last ASUS board I used was three years old -- and their BIOS utility allowed me to save and restore BIOS versions.

Current board is six months old Gigabyte and it has a BIOS update builtin function that also allows me to save and restore BIOS versions. Came in handy recently when a BIOS update caused major problems -- and I was able to restore back to the earlier version.

 

[bobkn]

Last ASUS board I used was three years old -- and their BIOS utility allowed me to save and restore BIOS versions.

Current board is six months old Gigabyte and it has a BIOS update builtin function that also allows me to save and restore BIOS versions. Came in handy recently when a BIOS update caused major problems -- and I was able to restore back to the earlier version.

I guess the only safe generalization is that I can't generalize.

My current board, and Asus P8Z68-V Pro, requires a different DOS-based (my preferred method) updater for its UEFI firmware than the older BIOS based systems. It can save a copy of the existing firmware, but apparently it won't permit it to be installed over one with a higher version number. That was an issue recently for those who tried a beta BIOS (902) and found that they couldn't install the latest released version (801) over it. The older afudos utility was similar, except there was an engineering copy floating around that had a switch that caused the installer to ignore version numbers.

I'm not certain, but I believe that the Dell updater for the Alienware machine is easy to use but lacks flexibility. I mentioned the older versions in the event that the original poster wanted to be able to revert to his/her current version, if that's allowed.