Speaking Of BIOS Updates..

[Zema Bus]

After finishing with work tonight I let "my" work Windows 10 laptop update itself (I always wait until the end of the week). I thought it was just going to be routine Windows updates so I got it going and walked away. I walked by later and noticed the laptop screen was bright white, I'd never seen it do that before. Turns out it was flashing it's own bios and updating firmware.

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The first thing I thought of was that if this automated flash goes horribly wrong I'm going to have a bad week to look forward to lol! It finally finished and after it rebooted I put things back how they're supposed to be for my workflow..and then it want's to install updates AGAIN! This time it was the actual Windows updates.

[Grogan]

That sounds like the vendor submitted shit to Windows Update for that, but boards nowadays can drop a driver on your windows filesystem, which executes an updater. I had such a setting in my new BIOS and I disabled it (though that wouldn't be able to do anything to a Linux filesystem I wouldn't think, but still that gives me the creeps to the point of fight or flight). That's like rootkit behaviour (though it would be a signed driver and allowed)

That is completely inappropriate. That setting should be looked for, and disabled wherever it exists.

[Zema Bus]

In the case of this laptop unfortunately it's too locked down for users to access anything outside of user space including the bios.

[Grogan]

Speaking of BIOS updates, there is one haunting thought I had, that I meant to share with you.

It may be a good thing that I bought an alderlake CPU that was a little behind the curve. Think of it like this. I buy a motherboard, having no idea that it's older stock and has a BIOS from Jan. 2021. Buy handy dandy CPU that is expected to work in that board, and find that you don't have the microcode to run it

When I bought my last board, my nehalem Corei7 was going to be a newer stepping, and I specifically chose that Gigabyte board ($400 expensive one with half the shit on it turned off because I don't use it lol) because it specifically listed that CPU.

It can be the chicken before the egg.

[Zema Bus]

I've had to have older CPU's installed on boards just long enough to flash the BIOS so that it supported the newer one I wanted to use. It helps when you have something lying around to do that with (AMD tends to stick with the same socket for multiple generations) but it's a problem when you don't. Some of the newer boards have the ability to flash the BIOS without a CPU installed, so that would be one way of doing it, but I wouldn't like flashing a BIOS blind.

[Grogan]

I'd be dead if that happened. I'd probably send the board back and buy another one if it did.

(Mine was fine, but probably needed that BIOS update for proper control. Why I said it was haunting is, I didn't even think of that this time, I just assumed "modern MSI board, modern CPUs" thinking the board would have a current bios. That's the problem buying from big retailers like Amazon)

[Zema Bus]

In this case it was the first gen processor for this socket with the board introduced around the same time, but when I'm not sure I'll look up the specs for a board I'm considering to see what processor series it supports.

[Grogan]

I knew that it did support the series (so probably would at least boot up with all models) but not all 12th gen alderlakes are the same.