How to flash a BIOS when only a Windows binary is provided?

Question

I want to update the BIOS on Toshiba QOSMIO-G30. The exe file that i downloaded from the manufacture web site suppose to be OS independent! Yet using Wine Loader could not execute the file. Is there any way to update the BIOS using UBUNTU?

Answer 1

I would highly recommend not flashing a BIOS with an .exe using Wine. Flashing a BIOS can potentially turn your computer into a large paperweight if something goes wrong.

Some manufacturers (I know Dell does for example) have alternative BIOS upgrade methods for Linux.

However if Toshiba does not offer any Linux compatible options, your best bet is to:

1. Determine if you really need to do the update. If you aren't having any problems with the BIOS currently and don't require any new features from it you can probably safely ignore the update.
2. If you do require the update, either create a DOS boot disk (Mitch's answer links to a good how-to for doing this), install DOS/freeDOS etc. onto a new partition, or -gulp- install Windows. If you have an extra old hard drive around you could also install this hard drive, put windows on it, flash the BIOS and then switch back to your hard drive with Ubuntu on it.

Answer 2

That's not going to work.

Depending on the tool provided by Toshiba, you must either:

• run the exe file on a real Windows
• create a DOS boot disk

If Toshiba is providing an exe file for the second option, you can try creating a FreeDOS image to run the file. I found a description for Gentoo how to do that.

Answer 3

This site explains how to go about doing a BIOS update under Linux.

Quoted from the same site:

So you've finally made the move to a Windows-free computer, you're enjoying your brand new Linux OS, no Trojans/viruses, no slowdown, everything is perfect. Suddenly, you need to update the BIOS on your motherboard to support some new piece of hardware, but typically the motherboard vendor is offering only DOS based BIOS flash utilities. You panic! Fortunately, this problem is easy to solve...

Below are the steps to follow:

Step 1: Download FreeDOS boot disk floppy image

Step 2: Copy your BIOS flash utility and new BIOS image to the mounted floppy disk image

Step 3: Burn a bootable CD which will emulate floppy device for use

Step 4: Reboot, flash, reboot, enjoy your new BIOS

^{Source: linuxinsight.com}

Answer 4

There is no such thing like OS-independent binary executables. As "exe file" probably means "a file whose name ends in .EXE", that's most likely either a Windows Portable Executable or an MS-DOS executable.

BIOS upgrade are really supposed to be something low-level you can do with a simple system, such as MS-DOS or FreeDOS.

So the first step here is to check whether the executable is an MS-DOS executable or a Windows executable. If it is a windows executable and it does not run under Wine, try to see if it is somehow extractable using an archiving tool (sometimes unzip may be able to help here), so you get the flash image and maybe MS-DOS flash tools (it would not be the first time MS-DOS tools are packaged inside a windows-only installer).

With no flash tools, there are generic flashers like Uniflash that are worth a try. If you want to run it and it is windows only, a good choice is probably to get a Windows Preinstallation Environment live CD, which has the basic system and will be able to run the flash tool, but unfortunately that requires a Windows license.

If you're lucky and you get a set of MS-DOS tools, just grab some FreeDOS live CD or floppy image and boot into FreeDOS to use the tools (although you will need to have the tools in a separate floppy/pen/CD). If you are even luckier, you may get a ready-to-boot disk image (as many people pack floppy images inside floppy image writers, that's possible, too).