Hack #10. Upgrade Your Flash BIOS
Sometimes only after a product gets to market and is used in a lot of different situations can a vendor learn of problems or limitations. Nearly every system board and PC system on the market undergoes at least one significant revision of the BIOS after the product has been released for sale.
Most of us think nothing of seeking out the latest patches and updates for our application software and hardware drivers in hopes of solving a problem, gaining a feature, or boosting performance, but rarely do we think of updating the software and internal drivers that make our system board tick—the system BIOS.
I highly recommend visiting the web site of the manufacturer of your PC system or system board, or even Unicore's web site, to learn what the latest revision of BIOS is for your PC and the issues the revision addresses. You may find one or more clues that can help you solve problems or gain new or proper functionality of your system for a few minutes of browsing and downloading time.
Tip
Do not bother visiting the BIOS makers' web sites looking for BIOS updates. AMI and Award/Phoenix supply only the tools and services for system-board and PC-system makers to create their own BIOS code specific to each individual system board.
You wouldn't think of calling Microsoft, makers of the Visual Studio program development tools, about support or upgrades for software made by Adobe, Intuit, Symantec, or other software makers who use the Visual Studio tools. Nor ...