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I own a Dell optiplex gx260 PC and I got bios revision a03 and want to go higher like a09. I tried the Dell support page using the Wine program down loader after a little configuring and set up on Install Shield Wizard I get the message :

Unable to obtain required information about your system...
Setup cannot complete.

The PC doesn't have a floppy diskette drive any more and the other option using download manager is only executable via Windows Internet explorer I don't blame wine or anybody else but this is frustrating.

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    See if my answer Here help.
    – Mitch
    Sep 10, 2012 at 6:31

2 Answers 2

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Boot a floppy Image with your bios upgrade files directly from GRUB

I never have floppies (or a floppy drives) and don't like booting into Windows to create a bootable USB floppy with the Dell utility.

GRUB can actually boot from floppy disk images.

First:

sudo apt-get install syslinux

  • Download a bootable floppy image from the FreeDOS website. (Take a 2.88 if the Dell bios is bigger than a 1.44 MB floppy.
  • sudo mkdir /tmp/floppy; sudo mount -o uid=1000 -o loop FDSTD.288 /tmp/floppy (We mount the floppy image in a folder, so you can copy the bios upgrade stuff to it.
  • sudo cp /usr/lib/syslinux/memdisk /boot/ (This is needed for grub to boot of the image.)
  • Copy the floppy image file to /boot.

Then:

  • Reboot the computer and press c to get into the GRUB command line.

  • Run the following commands: 

    kernel /memdisk
initrd /yourflopp.img
boot

You now have booted the floppy image directly from grub. Allowing you to run the flash utility from FreeDOS.

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Mitch is right. But cuz you have no floppy drive the easiest thing you can do (and the I think best way would be you organise one - either USB or internal one)

Then download a floppy bootdisk from here:

floppy bootdisk images

Create this bootdisk and copy the flash util and the BIOS update file on it.

Boot from this disk and write the BIOS image to your BIOS. If the floppy seems to small then remove unneded things ...

Be careful - If you stop the BIOS writing precessing cuz of power failure or similar (software failure) then your PC might be dead.

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  • This doesn't really have more information than @tomodachi's answer. Duplicate answers are frowned upon.
    – nanofarad
    Oct 1, 2012 at 22:02
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    @ObsessiveFOSS The dates on the posts indicate that this answer was actually posted first, about 2 hours before tomodachi's answer.
    – Eliah Kagan
    Oct 3, 2012 at 0:45

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