If you want to be 100% on the safe side then just get a second BIOS chip. (Dirt cheap - just a couple of bucks.) Since a mainboard also happens to be an EEPROM writer, nothing can go wrong that way. (If the user is careful.) Procedure (short version) 1) Boot mainboard with good BIOS to get system online 2) Remove original BIOS chip, insert second chip 3) Flash modified BIOS onto second chip, reboot 4) If mod-BIOS = uh-oh!, shutdown system, remove bricked chip, insert original chip, boot mainboard 5) Repeat from 2) until mod-BIOS = yeah! Needless to say that this shouldnt be done by people with two left hands. (If you know what i mean.) Since you are swapping chips on a running system you should know what you are doing, otherwise let somebody else do it.
BIOS chips are usually socketed these days...only very old boards have them soldered directly to the board.
Even on laptops MB ? If yes I'm learning something today, and that's opening new perspective to me. Thanks for that.
This should apply to laptop mainboards as well, alone for the fact that soldered BIOS chips would make the lifes of service personel a living hell. There might be exceptions, though, i dont know.
Are we talking about hot swapping here, I've read about it and thought about it but came to the conclusion.....bad idea for my part. I'm extremely shaky when it come to these things, it's a wonder I built the rig myself. The shakiness is a result of nervosity of handling all these expensive parts. But hot swapping sound good in theory but much could go wrong ending up with a total mess and worthless rig.
Actually the proper term for this is 'hot flashing'. 'Hot swapping' is not exactly wrong either, though, because in essence thats precisely what you do with the BIOS chips. (Swapping them while the system is online.) As for the risk of breaking something; there are extractor tools specially made to pull these chips. With one of these, and a little care, everyone should be able to do it without messing something up. But like i said, when in doubt, better let somebody else do it. After all you wouldnt want to replace one risk with another...
Yeah you're right about that. So I finally installed my new MSI mobo and everything else last night but ended up with buying two new case fans, the two I have came with the case (NZXT M59) wasn't really good and besides the molex connectors broke on me.....god I really hate molex connectors. The two new Noctua 120mm fans have three pin connectors, just plug it in in Sysfan1 and Sysfan2. Now I won't touch an Bios update again, guess I won't have to since it came installed with the latest anyway...lucky. I have had so much bad luck with this rig the last couple of weeks, when I look back on it now it's a wonder everything went well despite the horrors. It was to be an easy upgrade of RAM, GPU and CPU but ended up buying a new CPU cooler, a new PSU and new case fans. Well I built it and I'm so proud of myself now.