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[SOLVED] BIOS upgrade through Wine

Posted: Thu Oct 23, 2008 4:00 pm
by SiKing
Hi.
Has anyone tried upgrading their laptop BIOS through Wine? Is this a completely crazy idea?
My laptop does not have a floppy, and the manufacturer (Lenovo-ThinkPad) produces only .exe or a floppy .img.

TIA for any thoughts / opinions.

Re: BIOS upgrade through Wine

Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 5:14 am
by Husse
I would never ever try that
This is a procedure that can irrevocably destroy your lappy and to do that in such a way seems utterly risky
You could try to make a bootable CD that acts like a floppy - takes a bit of googling to find out how and I don't recommend it but it might be possible

Re: BIOS upgrade through Wine

Posted: Fri Oct 24, 2008 11:55 am
by SiKing
I was thinking about this last night. In terms of the code involved, the upgrade should be extremely simple: open the BIOS for writing (probably one assembly command), take this block of code and write it to such and such address, and lock the BIOS. Since it is probably written in assembly, Wine would only need to interpret the .exe structure. I'm thinking this should be perfectly safe. :?
On the other hand, I am right now in a situation where I am completely dependent on my lappy and have no backup. A few day ago I was even worried about the kernel upgrade that got released. I think for the time being I will heed the warning in your sig. :lol:

Re: BIOS upgrade through Wine

Posted: Sat Oct 25, 2008 9:38 am
by Husse
Theoretically you're right - but that's one thing and the reality another
It's not that long ago you only could do this in DOS or similar
You have to protect the procedure from being disrupted by something running in the operating system and as Wine somehow is a layer on top of Linux you have a bit to care for
And my signature is from bitter experience - when I had a small computer business I saw a few things :)

Re: [SOLVED] BIOS upgrade through Wine

Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2008 12:35 pm
by SiKing
In case anyone is actually reading this, it would not have worked. I did the upgrade today through Windows{tm}{c}{R} (just before upgrading to Mint 6). The BIOS upgrade utility basically saves all work, and then shuts down the GUI, before running the entire system in equivalent of single user text mode. Wine was not able to make this switch.