George, The BIOS flashing utilities are almost always DOS or Windows based and are motherboard dependent. Typically, you will need a bootable DOS floppy or CD with the flashing utility installed along with everything needed to boot DOS. I usually make a bootable DOS CD using syslinux and one of the DOS images found on the web. Then boot the CD and run the flashing utility from the DOS prompt. BIOS updates are usually needed to implement new features, like ACPI, hyperthreading or larger disks. Or, to fix bugs in the previous versions of the BIOS. It would be nice if the BIOS manufacturers built the flashing utility into the BIOS itself, but there are space limitations and no everyone has the same complement of storage devices, such as a floppy. As I understand it, Linux uses info from the BIOS for initialization, thus the need for the occasional update. Bob... Thanks Bob. I'll keep my fingers crossed and give it a try.
