BIOS update

Having read Morten's comment about the BIOS update to 1.11 for my 6214W I have been to the Zepto site and downloaded it.

Unfortunately I have been unable to find instructions on how to actually go about the upgrade, and have found numerous scare stories around the net about the terrors of doing so.

I am now in two minds as to whether to go ahead or not.

Even updating the graphics drivers seems far more complicated than on my desktop. I frequently do that but the laptop ones seem a bit more involved and so I haven't dared yet

RB

 

Burn the bios image .iso to a cdrw or dvdrw.

Reset the bios to default settings.

Boot off the cd/dvd and everything will go automatically from there.

 

Thanks Shnoob, sounds very easy.

I hope it is

RB

 

As I dont have a zepto i got a bit worried when it started doing everything automatically lol.
Shouldnt have any problems tho.

 

i created a dos usb key then extracted the iso contents to it, then booted to dos and ran the batch file

jobs a goodin

 

That sounds much more complicated Juan, was there a reason that you did that?

By the way, the boot order is a BIOS setting isn't it? How do you get the PC to boot from the disc if the BIOS is set to defaults and the default is to boot from HDD first?

Thanks

RB

 

Change the boot order then or look for the setting which enables the boot menu, F8 or F12. Wont effect anything during flashing.

 

OK Bit the bullet and it's done, thanks to Shnoob and Juan.

Everything went smoothly until the very end when the "Everythings gone fine" message came up and disappeared before I could read all of it. The PC then shut down. I fired it up again and then thought '****, it's going to try to flash again', and whipped the CD out before it could. The boot up seemed to take an age, and then demanded to reboot again.

Now I get a message that I didn't get before, it comes up before the Zepto boot screen and tells me that it is an engineers BIOS not for product use or something.

Is this correct?

Everything is now in order, I just hope it stays that way, now to try and work out how to update the graphics drivers!

BTW my keyboard has been much more responsive than before whilst typing this, the BIOS can't have effected it, could it? Wierd , perhaps it's just because it is on a desk and not on my lap as usual.

RB

 

Yes - it's just a string they forgot to delete. I've seen this in many BIOSs.

Yes it could. There are some settings in the BIOS concerning the keyboard - maybe they have set it to proper default values with 1.11.

 

not complicated at all for about 1 month I have had no dvd drive.

I have a spare little usb stick so I made it a win98 boot to dos disk, basically there is a utility out there that copies floppy boot disk files to anything.

so I can have lots of 3rd party dos utilitys on the usb stick, like harddrive recovery etc

 

updating graphics driver isnt too hard.

check my thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=72290

 

Hi Insats,

Yeah having looked into it a bit more it looks pretty easy. One question though, should I uninstall the old drivers first?

Thanks


RB

 

Quick question about the BIOS update. Ive just received my laptop back from Zepto due to a fault. I think they might have changed the BIOS because a new screen appears when I start up the laptop (see the attachment). Is there anyway in which I can see if I have the new BIOS update?
cheers

 

Hi Rich,

That's exactly what I see now I have updated my BIOS so I think they have almost certainly done yours.

I guess you could go in and look at the startup to be certain, but I doubt there's much point.

RB

 

It seems that you have the last vga bios. Someone said he got the same message with the updated vga bios. Try a search on the forum.

 

I think it was Ruber bullets LOL

 

By the way Rich: where could i track the bulding of my "3 days ordered" NB??

 

Yup don't search too far, it was me, in this very thread )

RB

 

It is correct that the most recent BIOS 1.11 shows an Engineering Release message at the startup, and yes it makes the bootup longer. It is not because we forgot to remove this message. It was the fastest way to be able to fix some issues for our customers, and provide the best support possible. In this case it meant having to release an Engineering release of the BIOS for the 6214W to solve some issues that affected the gaming part of the 6214W pretty severely.
As new BIOS versions become available they will be put up for download on our FTP Site:

ftp.zepto.dk

 

Im just about to get a 6214W for games ect.. does this mean i will have the BIOS already updated when it gets to me or will i have to do this to?

Is the BIOS whats responsible for all the falts with bf2 and all the other games i have read about in this forum?

(this will be my first real computer so im sorry if this is a stupid question )


Laptop: Zepto Znote 6214W
14" WXGA 1280x768
1.83 GHz Intel® Core™ Duo T2400
2048MB (2x1024) DDR2 PC5300 - 667MHZ
Geforce Go7600 512MB
80GB 7200rpm. SATA Hitachi

 

If you haven't gotten the laptop yet, then yes it will come with the 1.11 BIOS installed (or a newer version if a new version is released and tested before your laptop gets through production/assembly/testing fase).
Yes there was an issue with the previous BIOS resulting in lots of graphical errors in games, BF2 in particular, and that's why we would rather release an engineering BIOS that would fix it, than wait for a final version, that might not have been released for months, thus resulting in a lot of unhappy customers because their laptop didn't work as promised.
Phew that was a long sentense, probably too long, but anyway. We try and give our customers the best experience with our products, and we work hard to keep it that way.