Updating BIOS from initramfs

[woodsonoversoul]

Hi all,
Recently my desktop/media center went down for unknown reasons. Now when I boot I get error messages saying that it can't find certain directories such as, "/sys on /root/sys", and it brings up an initramfs prompt . If there's a way to recover the system that's cool, but I'd be fine with a complete re-install. I've tried making a start-up flash drive, but the BIOS is too old I guess, and doesn't have a USB option in the boot priority menu. The initramfs command prompt allowed 'wget', so is there a way to d/l the BIOS from somewhere and update them from the initramfs CLI?

[ajgreeny]

I don't think so. You should be able to do it with Free-dos which you can download and install.

Have a look at http://www.freedos.org/ for all the info. I have never used it and it is so long ago that I used any of the *dos systems (ms-dos) that I have no idea how you would proceed. Be careful when updating the BIOS, however, as if it goes wrong, you could end up with a large paperweight, and be unable to put things right again.

[woodsonoversoul]

Thanks for the heads-up on the dangers of updating the BIOS. I can set it to boot from cd-rom, but all my other machines are netbooks w/o optical drives. I guess I'll just ask a friend to burn it for me. Don't want to totally lose the machine