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can u flash BIOS with a USB pen drive?

My CMOS can load it straight off a floppy (no need to boot on floppy), but no options for a USB flash drive. Quite surprising though, seeing as a lot of PCs these days don't come with a FDD, and if a BIOS is capable of booting from a USB hard drive I see no reason why a similar interface for flash updates isn't implemented.
 
If you can get, say a Windows 98 boot sector onto your flash drive and then stick a DOS flash tool on it along with the BIN file, then maybe it'll work.

Flash drives though have to be made bootable-compatible. These drives are typically shipped with software that can copy a boot record/sector and the necessary files to the device. Those that came standalone are likely not bootable.
 
Sure. Make it a bootable DOS USB drive, copy the flash utility and the BIOS firmware over, and then just execute the flash utility pointing it to the firmware just like normal. Should be no trouble.
 
Ain't always that easy - USB flash devices need to have a specific hardware configuration and format before it can be made bootable. Not many of them are like that. By all means try, but don't keep your hopes up.

It's not as universally easy as using a USB hard drive or a floppy.
 
Originally posted by: xtknight
Sure. Make it a bootable DOS USB drive, copy the flash utility and the BIOS firmware over, and then just execute the flash utility pointing it to the firmware just like normal. Should be no trouble.
Click to expand...

how do i make it into a bootable dos usb drive???
 
You can! I did it with my rather old 128MB noname pen drive years back. It shouldn't be different nowadays.

Although it's not the web site I looked up the info back then I gave it a quick check and it indeed mentions (and provides link to) the same HP utility that can make your stick bootable. (Your stick doesn't need to be HP brand, not sure if they even exist actually.)

Here is the info, you might have to scroll down a bit cause the guy explaining the stuff really made the short story long:
http://home.graffiti.net/jaclaz:graffiti.net/Projects/USB/USBstick.html

As for the BIOS settings it's quiet simple. In the boot order menu set "USB/ZIP" (or similar to this one) to be the first one. Even if it called something else you should be able to find out quickly as to which one is your stuff.
 
I heard this guy in dallas at quakecon say that he has sli but both card are different and he use this pendrive to flash both card together
 
Not all USB ports are the same, as far as bootability. On some motherboards, only the USB ports adjacent to the PS2 ports are bootable.
 
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