How to: Update your BIOS and firmware for your MSI notebook. (A guide)

Hey guys,

Before giving it a bit of research, I was thoroughly intimidated by the prospect of updating my MSI's BIOS because I'd heard that if you messed up in even the slightest way, your notebook was done for. In retrospect, the process was incredibly simple and easy, and I think anyone who has the slightest of computer knowledge can do it with ease.

Things you will need:
-A USB flash drive
-Access to the internet
-Your MSI notebook


Step 1: Making a bootable flash drive
To update our BIOS, we will need to be able to boot into DOS. To do so, we will need to make our flash drive bootable so that our computer recognizes it without having to boot into windows. Insert your flash drive into your computer and press Windows Key + R and run "CMD". This will bring you into command prompt. We'll go from there -

Type " Diskpart" and press enter.

Type " List disk" and press enter. From here, command prompt will show you which disks are currently installed on your machine. Your flash disk will almost always be listed as "Disk 1".

Type " Select disk 1" (or the corresponding disk number if your flash drive is NOT listed as disk 1) and press enter.

Type in " Clean" (this will wipe your flash drive clean, so MAKE SURE TO COPY AND MOVE ALL YOUR NEEDED FILES OFF THIS DRIVE). Press enter.

Type " Create partition primary" and press enter.

Type " Select partition 1" and press enter.

Type " Active" and press enter.

Type " Format fs=fat32 quick" and press enter.

Lastly, type " Assign" and press enter. You now have a bootable flash drive!



Step 2: Installing DOS on your bootable flash drive
Now that we've got a flash drive our computer will recognize at boot, we need to install DOS, a utility we'll use to install our BIOS updates. To do so, we'll need to download it from UNetbootin - Homepage and Downloads. Click "Download for windows". Once the file is done, run the EXE.

Once the file has loaded, under "distribution" drop down and click "FreeDOS". Make sure that your usb drive is selected at the bottom menu and then click "OK".

Once DOS is loaded onto your flash drive, it is not necessary to reboot.


Step 3: Downloading and extracting your BIOS Files
Now that we have DOS, we can download and extract the BIOS or Firmware files needed for the update onto our Flash drive. Visit MSI Global ? Welcome to the Download Center and find your appropriate notebook model, Once found, download and DO NOT YET EXTRACT them.

In order for the BIOS to update properly, we'll need to make sure we extract the files to the flash drive, out of the folder that they came in when downloaded. You can do this by either extracting each file individually or extracting the whole folder, cutting the files inside, pasting them into the flash drive and them deleting the empty folder. Once the files are extracted, we're ready to begin the update process!


Step 4: Updating your BIOS through DOS
First things first, we need to make sure your computer boots to the USB drive first. Restart, and at the BIOS menu, press F11. From here, drop down and highlight your flash drive and then press enter. Your computer will reboot.

Now we should be in DOS. Scroll down to option number 2 - "FreeDOS Safe mode". Highlight this and press enter.

MAKE SURE YOUR NOTEBOOK IS PLUGGED IN FOR THESE LAST STEPS

Type "B:" and press enter.

Type "Flash.bat" if installing your BIOS updates and press enter.
Type "FlashEC" if installing your firmware updates.

If all prior steps were done correctly, your notebook should now be updating it's BIOS. Make sure to not power off your notebook (duh).


Last Step: Finishing up
Once the BIOS update procedure is done with, power off your notebook. Unplug the power adapter from it and remove the battery for 10 seconds. Your notebook's BIOS is now updated! Congrats!


If anyone has anything else to add to this, please post it. The Msi guide on how to do this was pretty poorly written and did not include how to make a bootable flash drive, so I figured I'd write a start to finish guide on it. hopefully this guide proves helpful!

 

I only have one thing to add:
Login
http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=108079.0

That tool is nice.

 

What is it? It's prompting me to login to the MSI forums.

 

ok just google "msi forum bios update". There is a tool there which does everything for you.

 

You need to register to access this little gem.

 

What's the reasoning behind dumping the directory to which the BIOS update is decompressed?

 

When I flashed, DOS wasn't able to locate the flash.bat file while it was in the folder.