What does this mean? Should I do it occasionaly? Will it speed up my computer or something?
I have an Intel P4, 2.4 Gig, Intel motherboard
BIOS date 9/9/02, 512 Gig
My computer works fine but if I can crank a little more out of it, why not?
Please advise.
Flashing your BIOS is updating software that controls it. The first thing you’d have to do is go out to the manufacturers website and see if there’s an updated firmware. Then you have to read all the notes between your version and the current one and decide if any of the changes are worth it to you. If there are changes that are worth it to you OR you’re having a problem with your computer and you’ve decided flashing your BIOS may fix it then go ahead and do it. But you really never want to flash the firmware in anything unless you need to. The problem is that if something goes wrong (ie you lose power, your computer hiccups, someone trips over the cord etc…) during the flash, you’ve just killed your motherboard.
Hmm… I’ll give it second thoughts then. Thanks.
Also, if you’ve got a MV-4500 SC-AR board (doesn’t exist. I think), and you inadvertently download and use the ROM for the MV-4500 SC-A, then you might brick your board in that case too.
If you want to investigate it more, check out cpuz, which will tell you (with a high degree of accuracy, but I’d crack the case and double check before committing myself) the make/model of board you have, which you can use to see if there’s anything interesting and new for you.
My work PC has been a little flaky recently, so I’ll check mine right now… seems I already have the latest BIOS, but if I didn’t, the changelog:
wouldn’t make me want it, since I don’t use 64 bit windows, and don’t use the TV-Out.
If I was going to flash it, I’d download the BIOS image and the flash utility (found somewhere else on the site). I’d then read the instructions twice, back up the current BIOS to a floppy or a different PC, double-check I had the right hardware and file, read the instructions again, then start it and hold my breath. 
The BIOS tests the memory in the computer to figure out how much is there. It then goes looking for other devices attached to the system (hard drives, floppy drives, CD rom, bootable ethernet, etc) and configures everything on the PCI bus so that each device has unique addresses, I/O ports, etc.
Once that is done, the BIOS looks for something to boot. It goes down through its boot list, and looks for a valid boot signature. As soon as it finds one, it loads the boot sector and executes it. After that, the BIOS generally doesn’t do much in your computer. It’s basically just there to get things started.
Most modern operating systems don’t go through the BIOS to access devices. They use their own device drivers instead. Computer problems are almost never fixed by flashing the BIOS because once the computer boots, it’s almost never touching any BIOS code. You can’t enhance the computer’s performance by flashing the BIOS.
There is very rarely any good reason to flash a BIOS. One good one is that if you get a new whiz bang super duper big hard drive, and the existing BIOS doesn’t recognize the disk because it’s too big (often a problem on older computers, rarely a problem these days). Sometimes there will be a BIOS update available that will allow the computer to recognize the drive.
Generally, if your computer boots, don’t touch the BIOS. It rarely provides a benefit, and if something screws up, the computer will no longer boot and fixing it can be difficult, if not impossible (i.e. can you unsolder the flash chip from the board, stick it in a prom burner, create a new image, and solder the chip back onto the board?). Some motherboards have a jumper you can set to undo a BIOS update, which is a feature added to many modern motherboards because too many clueless users tried to flash something for no damn good reason and turned their computer into a boat anchor.
That isn’t always the case. Read up on System Management Mode, which is commonly used to handle power management. The motherboard can force the CPU into SMM at any time, at which point it saves the current state and executes system management software included in the BIOS. When complete, it restores the saved state and resumes execution of the operating system. This is independent of the operating system running on the computer. The operating system no longer has complete control over the hardware, it has to share the CPU with the BIOS.
Some modern motherboards have Windows-based BIOS update utilities that don’t trash your machine if they go wrong halfway.