bios...

[PhutureX]

hi i have a acer timelineX 1830T with 8gb ram, 256gb m4 ssd, and a i7 cpu..... acording to acer ther's a new bios out for this model yet everything is windows based so im stuck.... what can i do now?

[xenopeek]

Where did you find the BIOS update? This support page doesn't show any updates for this model: http://support.acer.com/us/en/product/d ... delId=2433

[PhutureX]

the version i have is the 1.20 and it says 1.24 first see on the bios tab
....http://support.acer.com/us/en/product/d ... delId=2433

[xenopeek]

Ah, well it is showing only "there are currently no drivers for this system" when I first go there. Visiting the website a second time suddenly shows content.

You may explore your BIOS if there is any option to load a BIOS update from a USB thumb drive. I'm not big on laptops, but I always by motherboards for my desktop that support this feature. It may be common enough by now to be supported on your laptop.

Alternatively, if you open the BIOS 1.24 zip file and go into the BIOS_Acer_1.24_Windows directory, you'll find it has a DOS and a winflash directory. The DOS directory contains the files to flash your BIOS from DOS. There is a project called FreeDOS, which many people have used to create a bootable DOS compatible disk image from which they then boot and flash the BIOS. I'm not sure what guide is best for that, as I've only found guides to make a bootable floppy and that won't be big enough to fit the BIOS flash files.

Or you could burn the DOS directory from the BIOS 1.24 zip file to a CD, and then make a bootable DOS floppy image that you put on a USB thumb drive. Then boot from the USB thumb drive, and start the BIOS flash from the CD. Perhaps here is something helpful for that: http://www.bootdisk.com/

[PhutureX]

well i did it the hard way and just used my bros hd (owns the same exact pc) and booted from it and flashed the bios.... all is well now i guess.... anyone know why i can use mint but no other linux from usb? i've used unetbootin and a few other programs and nothing will boot but if i try mint on same usb drive and the same program it works....

[xenopeek]

Well, that was a good option also

Not all ISOs are also fit to be used on a USB thumb drive, so check the distro's website whether it is a hybrid image or not. As for Unetbootin, I've never managed to get a bootable USB thumb drive with that program. Usually the distro's website also shares how you can copy the hybrid image to a USB thumb drive. Generally you can do that with the dd command, as shared here for example for Linux Mint: http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/744