Flashing your BIOS

Before you start performing the tweaks outlined in this guide, I highly recommend that you flash your BIOS with the latest revision, as found on your motherboard manufacturer's website. The updated BIOS fixes bugs in previous versions, occasionally increases performance and sometimes adds more options to customize. There are a few risks involved with flashing your BIOS, so I recommend that you backup important data before doing so. Here are some steps on flashing your BIOS:

1. Download the latest BIOS from your motherboard manufacturer's website. On the same site you will most probably also be able to download a flash utility that is required to flash the BIOS. I recommend that you download Award's Flash Utility.

2. Make a bootable floppy, which for Win9x users will be your startup disk that you created when installing your operating system. Windows 2000 users will have to download a boot disk program to make the boot floppy for them. The best bootdisk source in my opinion is BootDisk.com. Look for a Windows 98 bootdisk.

3. Place the .bin BIOS file onto the bootdisk along with the flash utility.

4. Reboot your system with the boot floppy in the drive and it will take you to a command prompt. Once there, type "A:\" to access the floppy drive and then, use the flash utility to update the BIOS. If you downloaded the Award Flash Utility, type "AWDFLASH.EXE".

5. The BIOS flash utility will then ask you to enter the name of the BIOS file (e.g. "bios.bin").

6. The BIOS will then be updated and you will be told when the update has been completed. When this happens, remove the floppy disk from the drive and reboot your PC.