A bios flash is something you may need to do periodically with an older computer—but I didn’t look to have to do it on one only a couple of months old.
Get this: here I am trying to sync my Ancestry and Family Tree Maker trees…since my tree, combining mine and Jane’s, is 17,000 people—yes, this isn’t rapid.
But it’s been slow. Way slow. It can take 2 hours when it (or Ancestry) is in a bad mood.
I was thrilled last night when, just as the process was within 15 minutes of finishing, Seishi nudged the computer with one of his head-butts, and it restarted.
It was being incredibly slow. Well, turns out in the middle of this process, Dell was trying to get my attention, and was pinging my computer, and doing a slow feed of data in the gaps between.
At 1 am, I finally got the sync to work, as a square saying ‘Dell Update: urgent: click…’ kept flashing.
Why not? I click the thing.
Bios flash.
Now, I’m really glad Dell’s doing it this way. In the old days, you could have a bios outdated for a year or more and not find it out until something went really wonky and you were down to esoteric fixes.
But I really wish I’d gotten, in advance, an e-mail from Dell saying: “Hi! A bios flash will be coming your way Monday night!”
At least it all went smoothly.
And for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, just say—interrupting that process is Not Good.
Now it’s up to date and ok.
I usually have to do it myself. Neither of my Dell computers (an XPS desktop) and an Inspiron 15R tell me when a BIOS update is available. I have to go to Dell’s support page and see if there’s a new update available. I don’t mind, but if the service to automatically update is available, I’d like to know when new updates are available.
NOooooo! Oh, that was unfortunate timing! 🙁 The rule is: If your computer is not crashing, and you haven’t tried to connect and use some new hardware, then you don’t need a BIOS update. 🙂 Ths BIOS’s job is to manage and interface the hardware. Same old hardware, same old BIOS!
OK, you have a maintenance contract with Dell, that might mean their update is legit. But it’s also one of the favorite scams to get malware on some trusting soul’s computer! 🙁 So such request needs to be examined with a jaundiced eye and handled with kid gloves.
Know this: Computers do not slow down as they get old! (Humans do. 😉 ) I still run the 486/33 I bought in 1991 daily, and it runs just fine! 😉 What causes computers to appear to slowdown is all the extra helpful software, and just plain malware, that we install or sneaks onto Windows based machines. Got NortonAV on there checking everything for infection before it runs, and every email that comes in? That takes machine cycles and time!
p.s. Do not fear the new seasonal, mobthly avatar. 😉
Lol! Love the avatar!
Well, I’m sure of Dell itself: it and I have a working relationship going back years and I have the super-dandy no-fault service policy, so it’s ok. If somebody screws it even through my stupidity, they have to fix or replace it.
Next month’s avatar will be no surprize. 😉
Everybody should be aware that reflashing a BIOS is rarely necessary on a normally functioning system.
I am a retired member of the “Guild” (Association for Computing Machinery) of my profession. 😉 If one may say so, one believes you should be more concerned about the threat this posed. There is an entirely non-negligible probability that malefactors would try to masquerade as the manufacturer of the system in an attempt to plant malware. Sure Dell would repair/replace the hardware/software, but if the malware had snooped through your system and identified sensitive information, such as online banking accounts, then the system itself might be the least of your problems. Please be more careful, nadi!
It sounds as though this happened through an existing, already-known-to-be-installed Dell update mechanism. *Hopefully* it’s such a thing and is secure. If not… well, whatever it is is already running locally, which would make the barn door already a large fraction of the way open before any of this happened.
I second the part about BIOS updates being rarely necessary. I think I *might* have updated a machine at home once or twice in the past fifteen years. (A few more times at work, but only with specific reasons to do so.)
Doing a BIOS update as a “push” like that sounds risky to me. If something goes wrong, with the user having little choice or knowledge… ick.
“And for those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, just say—interrupting that process is Not Good.” No indeedy!
So Seishi was being inadvertently helpful in a roundabout way. This is good.
My Goober spent the afternoon being “temporarily unavailable for service.” However, all is well, he returned, somewhat the wiser, we hope. Well, maybe he is. We’ll see.
I like Paul’s new avatar. I’ve been watching the new Sleepy Hollow, and well, a penguin with a pumpkin is quite the thing. 🙂
And your sync fails and you have to go up, log in, and tell it to cancel the update-yes-I’m-sure. I’ve had sync failures often enough, for no apparent reason, that I know what to do. (35,000 people, since 1500CE. They think 4000 is a lot? Little do they know…there are files out there that have hundreds of thousands of people.)
Oooo…. Flashbacks from when I was a system administrator. I haven’t had to do a bios update in years. The real fun is when you have to flash bios on a device that is not a computer but has multiple computers within its boundaries as a system.
You all know what the penguin in my avatar means, right? 😉
Got “the phone call” rather late this evening. A guy with a thick Indian accent asked, “Are you the owner of this phone number?” Curious. “Who are you?” “I’m calling from Microsoft. We have been getting messages on our servers about errors in your Windows computer. I’m calling to fix everything for you.[click]” “Hello? Hello?”
Perhaps his database had finally come up with a record that they’d called before and perhaps I’d blurted out after stringing them along a ways that I use Linux. He didn’t even try to fix my computer. 🙁 I’m so disappointed!
With respect nadiin-ji, never let anybody who contacts you convince you to do anything about/with/for your computer!
That you are always ready and willing to attend a formal event?
Alas (or is it “thankfully”?), no. I’m a blue jeans and flannel shirt kinda guy. (errm, different shirt in summer.) And, as an aspie, I’m not at my best in social crowds.
“Tux” is the Linux mascot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tux
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/Tux.png/220px-Tux.png
(So the story goes, Linus Torvalds was once bitten by a penguin and didn’t like them much.)
Since I make my own idiosyncratic versions of Linux, I have adopted the slightly skewed version of Tux.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8e/Tux-G2.svg/109px-Tux-G2.svg.png
Heck, the spousal unit is an MIT black magic, which is to say computer, graduate, and even he is discouraged from messing with my machine!
Well, we’re running well, at least. 😉 If vile malware folk attempted to invade this particular machine they’d at least not lay hands on any finance nor even anything too critical except (gasp!) the current novel and my endless genealogical notes. But–warning taken!
“David” from “Microsoft” called again last evening! 😉 He wanted to “help” me fix my “Windows” computer. I couldn’t understand much of what he was wanting me to do, his Indian accent was so thick. Perhaps a good thing. 😉
I think it’s a safe bet that somewhere online where I had to “register” with my phone number (not too many of those) has been hacked and there’s a fair chance credit card numbers are loose. Guess I’ll be calling Customer Service a few places and getting new cards.
Obviously eBay/Paypal is a target with crucial customer financial information, and presumably equally adept at confronting attacks; almost certainly better than the run of the mill online merchant. When I ordered those Breadalbane scarves the merchant offered Paypal, which I used this time. I think I had better make sure to use it whenever available in the future. 😉
BofA is uncooperative. It advises me not to change account numbers until there is fraudulent activity. Not only “advises”, refuses. I will take that under advisement. 😉
This is an opportune moment to change banks. Do you have a local bank or credit union relatively handy?
Yes it’s a pain in the tush – we had to change when our checking accounts were hacked a couple of years ago. We still feel that it was someone at the bank because our old account numbers were unusual and grandfathered in from a bank that was bought out. They would have always shown up at the top of the list.
Oh, I’am already at a local Credit Union. This is just a card that went to BofA when the banks were on a buying spree several years ago. (BofA bought Countrywide, to their regret. 😉 )
The card I use regularly is branded with the Linux Fund, and has the official Tux on it. 😉 🙂
I may cancel, but that has a deleterious effect on one’s Fair-Issac credit score, so I’d probably take on another first. I only use it for a few weeks a year to keep it “active”. But if the only way to make sure fraudulent activity is noticed is to not use it myself, so be it.
One is most gratified, aiji-ma, if one’s warning was beneficial.
An article on the dangers of an unpatched WordPress system is here:
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2052596/failure-to-patch-leaves-many-wordpress-sites-vulnerable.html#tk.rss_all