HN Explorer

Dell is reflashing the bios automatically on reboot now?

15 points by donbatman ↗ HN
We rebooted the computer of an employee here and somehow the machine automatically flashed a bios update on there. When did this start? Seems like a good way to brick a computer to me. What if the power goes out?

14 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 44.9 ms ] thread
lax4ever
Did you reboot the computer a second time to see if it flashed the BIOS again? Once is a scheduled BIOS update, possibly triggered by an administrator. Twice is more concerning...
donbatman
I am the administrator. The update worked but a heads up would be nice.
lax4ever
In theory there should be a setting within the BIOS that should allow you to disable any sort of automatic BIOS updating. Unfortunately, I can't speak to Dell machines, but the HP ones I manage have a "Lock BIOS Version" setting I can use.
Shared404
If it's running Windows then sometimes BIOS updates can be delivered through Windows update.

Yes it's just as bad an idea as it seems.

Source: Dealt with it occasionally at a computer repair shop I worked at.

buescher
I am pretty sure I have seen it on Ubuntu also.
Shared404
I've not seen it yet on Ubuntu, at least not through the default update path - occasionally I'll see a pop up for "firmware update available" though.

Windows will automatically deploy the BIOS update along with any other automatically deployed updates.

That being said, I rarely use vanilla Ubuntu and rarely use Dell, so maybe I've just not seen it and it does happen.

taubek
This is such a bad idea. For large systems/companies there are management platforms.
dogma1138
Large companies manage windows update.
jcrawfordor
Most firmware updates on motherboards today happen via A/B partitions, so a power failure during update is automatically recoverable on the next boot. This has been done specifically to enable automatic updates triggered from the OS, as e.g. MacOS has done for some time. The difficulty of firmware updates has become a real practical problem since the more complex firmware used today is more likely to need fixes for system stability, and support gets tired of handling a dozen cases a day that are problems already fixed in newer firmware.

Automatic firmware updates have become pretty common on hardware from big OEMs for several years now.

alyandon
What a ridiculously bad idea. :-/

As an anecdote, MSI's dragon center utility bricked my motherboard trying to apply a BIOS/UEFI update which required me to use the flashback recovery method and wait in terror for about 15 minutes to see if I would have a working computer again.

After that experience, I will only use the usb thumb drive + booting into BIOS/UEFI method for applying updates.

lax4ever
Yeah, I have an MSI Mobo in my home PC and an older model Stealth. Get rid of Dragon Center. It's an, albeit smaller, resource hog whose functions can be managed through the actual tools as opposed to Dragon Center.
milsorgen
I purchased yet another SFF PC off eBay recently, these things are great btw. Cheap, small, powerful and very reasonable on power usage... And I noticed this HP unit had a BIOS update in its initial Windows Update run. Granted it was under 'optional' updates but there are no warnings or even descriptions as to what it could or will do. Seems like it should at least provide some info on potential consequences for a regular user. But things have been trending this way for a while, I remember when the SOP was to never attempt a flash under Windows yet I haven't seen that warning/advice in ages.
dogma1138
Windows update has been pushing bios and firmware updates for years now since Windows 7.

Also even if you loose power it won’t brick anything the firmware can and will recover from failed updates.