Almost all motherboard manufacturers offer a utility that will give you the exact model and BIOS revision date of your board. MSI has their "Live Update" program, Aopen their "Aoconfig" software, and so on. Generally this utility will come included on the CD bundled with the board, but failing this, you should be able to download the company specific software from the manufacturer's site under the 'utilities' or 'tools' category.

Here's some links to Asus, MSI, ABIT and Gigabyte's BIOS support pages to get you started. If you don't know the website of your motherboard manufacturer, have a look below, or run a search through Google.

Motherboard Manufacturer Websites
Albatron	http://www.albatron.com.tw	Soltek	http://www.soltek.com.tw/
Abit	http://www.abit.com.tw/	Tyan	http://www.tyan.com
Asus	http://www.asus.com.tw/	Transcend	http://www.transcend.com.tw/
Gigabyte	http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/	Shuttle	http://www.spacewalker.com/
Soyo	http://www.soyousa.com/	Epox	http://www.epox.com.tw/
MSI Computer	http://www.msicomputer.com/	DFI	http://www.dfi.com.tw
Iwill	http://www.iwillusa.com/	DTK	http://www.dtk.com.tw/
Aopen	http://www.aopen.com.tw/	ECS	http://www.ecs.com.tw
FIC	http://www.fic.com.tw/	Biostar	http://www.biostar.com.tw
Chaintech	http://www.chaintech.com.tw/	Acorp	http://www.acorp.com.tw
Intel	http://www.intel.com	Foxconn	http://www.foxconnchannel.com

Once you find the website for the maker of your motherboard, look around for their BIOS update tool, if they have one. If they do, download, install and run this program to find the exact make and model of your board.

As an example of what to expect, at right is a screen shot from MSI's software to give you an idea of what you are looking for.

Once you have the exact BIOS revision number which is currently being used by your PC, we next need to find out what BIOS revisions are available for your motherboard. In most cases, you can go directly to the manufacturer's product page for the board for a link to the available BIOS downloads. Also check the downloads, or support sections of their website.

Some of the software utilities, for example MSI's Live Update, will search for BIOS and driver updates for you, and handle the downloads.

For the most part though, you'll have to take the information you have learned about your motherboard model, and BIOS revision and go hunting through the manufacturers website. When you find the page with the BIOS updates for your particular motherboard, select the latest update and download it to your desktop. Generally speaking, if your board is using BIOS revision 3.10, you will want to download a later revision; this could be 3.10b, or 3.22 as an example.

< Previous Page

© 2010 PCSTATS.com Please respect the time and effort that went into creating each PCSTATS Beginners Guide, do not illegally copy. Thank you.

Next Page >

Toss Some Change into The Tip Jar For less than the cost of a latté you can let the hardworking staff who write and maintain the GUIDES at PCSTATS know that we've helped you out of a jam, or dished out a bit of great tech advice. Toss in $3 bucks, or whatever spare change you like.

Pg 1.  Beginners Guides: Flashing a Motherboard BIOS  Pg 2.  Why do you need to upgrade?  Pg 3.  — Automatic BIOS Update Programs  Pg 4.  Procedure: Flashing the BIOS in DOS mode  Pg 5.  Manually flashing BIOS under DOS  Pg 6.  Final Steps: Checking the Update SEARCH PCSTATS NEW - TRY IT OUT! Use the power of Google to search all of PCSTATS and the PCSTATS Forums. Tell us what you think of this new feature - FEEDBACK?