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BIOS update from Dell
I've done the Windows 7 Microsoft Updates for January. Now Dell is
offering a BIOS update for my computer model to deal with the Intel security issues. I've never updated the BIOS before, and I wonder if there are any problems I might encounter with this kind of update. The only thing I see at the Dell website is to make sure I don't turn off the computer or lose power during the update. Also, Dell says to verify the checksum value of the download but doesn't say how to do it. Is this something that will become obvious when downloading? And if not, what do I need to do? The details for the BIOS update of my model are at http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/...driverId=FPCF7 -- Thank you, Jo-Anne |
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BIOS update from Dell
On 1/13/2018 11:20 AM, KenW wrote:
On Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:12:36 -0600, Jo-Anne wrote: I've done the Windows 7 Microsoft Updates for January. Now Dell is offering a BIOS update for my computer model to deal with the Intel security issues. I've never updated the BIOS before, and I wonder if there are any problems I might encounter with this kind of update. The only thing I see at the Dell website is to make sure I don't turn off the computer or lose power during the update. Also, Dell says to verify the checksum value of the download but doesn't say how to do it. Is this something that will become obvious when downloading? And if not, what do I need to do? The details for the BIOS update of my model are at http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/...driverId=FPCF7 I did it once without a problem and didn't check the check sum. They make it easy. DO THIS WITH THE POWER SUPPLY CONNECTED and NOT on battery. KenW Thank you, Ken. I always do updates with the computer connected to the power supply. I figure the battery might help, though, if there's a power glitch. -- Jo-Anne |
#3
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BIOS update from Dell
On Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:12:36 -0600, Jo-Anne
wrote: I've done the Windows 7 Microsoft Updates for January. Now Dell is offering a BIOS update for my computer model to deal with the Intel security issues. I've never updated the BIOS before, and I wonder if there are any problems I might encounter with this kind of update. The only thing I see at the Dell website is to make sure I don't turn off the computer or lose power during the update. Also, Dell says to verify the checksum value of the download but doesn't say how to do it. Is this something that will become obvious when downloading? And if not, what do I need to do? The details for the BIOS update of my model are at http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/...driverId=FPCF7 There are dozens of utilities to check hashes and checksums, but if you don't want to install one just upload the BIOS file you downloaded to Virustotal or Jotti and see if their checksums match the ones on the download page. If they match, and dozens of sirens don't go off, you should be OK. I believe this BIOS update just updates the backdoor. The old version got hacked. But I've always been a little paranoid. []'s PS Yes, a BIOS update can brick your computer. Make sure you are offline and that you are not running much in the background when you do it. -- Don't be evil - Google 2004 We have a new policy - Google 2012 |
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BIOS update from Dell
On Sat, 13 Jan 2018 16:27:30 -0200, Shadow wrote:
There are dozens of utilities to check hashes and checksums, but if you don't want to install one just upload the BIOS file you downloaded to Virustotal or Jotti and see if their checksums match the ones on the download page. If they match, and dozens of sirens don't go off, you should be OK. If she's got 7-Zip installed she can use it as well. Simply rightclick CRC SHA SHA--1. -- s|b |
#5
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BIOS update from Dell
Jo-Anne wrote:
I've done the Windows 7 Microsoft Updates for January. Now Dell is offering a BIOS update for my computer model to deal with the Intel security issues. I've never updated the BIOS before, and I wonder if there are any problems I might encounter with this kind of update. The only thing I see at the Dell website is to make sure I don't turn off the computer or lose power during the update. Also, Dell says to verify the checksum value of the download but doesn't say how to do it. Is this something that will become obvious when downloading? And if not, what do I need to do? The details for the BIOS update of my model are at http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/...driverId=FPCF7 "Updated to the latest CPU microcode to address CVE-2017-5715" https://www.cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cv...name=2017-5715 The Spectre branch target buffer microcode amendment is borked on a couple families of processors. If you know for certain your processor is something else, then go right ahead. Symptoms include reboots. 4th gen processor is Haswell https://ark.intel.com/products/75128...up-to-3_70-GHz Why this wouldn't be seen on other brands of computers, is a mystery. Currently Lenovo is the only one showing a warning. Intel should have released the same microcode to everyone. ******* https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018...t-performance/ Spectre IBRS ("indirect branch restricted speculation") protects the kernel from branch prediction entries created by user mode applications; STIBP ("single thread indirect branch predictors") prevents one hyperthread on a core from using branch prediction entries created by the other thread on the core; IBPB ("indirect branch prediction barrier") provides a way to reset the branch predictor and clear its state. https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/len-18282 "Withdrawn Broadwell & Haswell CPU Microcode Update" https://newsroom.intel.com/news/inte...reboot-issues/ ******* For MD5 and SHA1 checksums, Microsoft offers "fciv.exe" from their site. And 7-ZIP has a right-click menu with SHA1 and SHA256. http://www.7-zip.org/ MD5 is pretty fast to calculate. If you need to store local checksums for an entire disk, computing MD5 ones is good. It detects unintentional edits, like say a bad disk sector. However, for Internet downloads, files hacked by hackers, it's possible to modify the MD5 protected file so it gives the same MD5 as before. Takes a minute with a P4 processor, to compute the right bytes to modify to do that. Whereas SHA1 and especially SHA256, make it harder to edit and corrupt files, without the end user running the checksum and getting a completely different result. You don't even need to compare the entire string of numbers. Even if a single bit changes in the file, the string of numbers will be entirely different. Just comparing a few of the digits reduces your odds of accepting a counterfeit, by a wide margin. And if you're lazy, *upload* the file to virustotal.com, as they will list checksums for your file, for you. If Virustotal already has the file, it won't upload your copy, and will just give info about the file on their web page. There should be a page there listing various checksums. Dell says this: MD5: e247faf09270731297491baf7bd18f48 SHA1: 9520fcb970f242c35a0151d0a9864ecae2ec20ea SHA-256: e207e888445d2d34f6c42f8cb1fa3e2ea466efd66cd8b525d1 3df62cee350323 You can see the virustotal numbers match. The Details tab has two of them, the main page has one of them. https://www.virustotal.com/#/file/e2...0323/detection Paul |
#7
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BIOS update from Dell
On 01/13/2018 2:11 PM, pjp wrote:
In article , says... On Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:12:36 -0600, Jo-Anne wrote: I've done the Windows 7 Microsoft Updates for January. Now Dell is offering a BIOS update for my computer model to deal with the Intel security issues. I've never updated the BIOS before, and I wonder if there are any problems I might encounter with this kind of update. The only thing I see at the Dell website is to make sure I don't turn off the computer or lose power during the update. Also, Dell says to verify the checksum value of the download but doesn't say how to do it. Is this something that will become obvious when downloading? And if not, what do I need to do? The details for the BIOS update of my model are at http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/...driverId=FPCF7 There are dozens of utilities to check hashes and checksums, but if you don't want to install one just upload the BIOS file you downloaded to Virustotal or Jotti and see if their checksums match the ones on the download page. If they match, and dozens of sirens don't go off, you should be OK. I believe this BIOS update just updates the backdoor. The old version got hacked. But I've always been a little paranoid. []'s PS Yes, a BIOS update can brick your computer. Make sure you are offline and that you are not running much in the background when you do it. Every motherboard BIOS update I've seen require you to create a special boot media, either CD/DVD or USB flashdrive. You boot using that to do the update. There's nothing else running AT ALL. Add-On cards, DVD firmware etc. can be patched with the OS running but NOT the BIOS. The OS depends upon the BIOS for functionality so it can't be "changed" while being used. That'd create havoc and for sure a crash and likely a bricked system. Newer and some older systems can be flashed directly under windows, My Asus X58 Sabertooth does and many others can do it. and I have done it twice in the past, Progress you know. :-) Rene |
#8
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BIOS update from Dell
On 01/13/2018 01:39 PM, KenW wrote:
On Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:35:59 -0600, Jo-Anne wrote: On 1/13/2018 11:20 AM, KenW wrote: On Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:12:36 -0600, Jo-Anne wrote: I've done the Windows 7 Microsoft Updates for January. Now Dell is offering a BIOS update for my computer model to deal with the Intel security issues. I've never updated the BIOS before, and I wonder if there are any problems I might encounter with this kind of update. The only thing I see at the Dell website is to make sure I don't turn off the computer or lose power during the update. Also, Dell says to verify the checksum value of the download but doesn't say how to do it. Is this something that will become obvious when downloading? And if not, what do I need to do? The details for the BIOS update of my model are at http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/...driverId=FPCF7 I did it once without a problem and didn't check the check sum. They make it easy. DO THIS WITH THE POWER SUPPLY CONNECTED and NOT on battery. KenW Thank you, Ken. I always do updates with the computer connected to the power supply. I figure the battery might help, though, if there's a power glitch. Intel just came out with 'do not update microcode' warning, so I would wait. This stuff has not settled down enough. KenW I did it to my dell also and it was seamless. Windows 8.1 would not run on my 15r until I did the upgrade. I took weeks to find the bug, minutes to do the flashing of the BIOS. |
#9
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BIOS update from Dell
On 1/13/2018 12:39 PM, KenW wrote:
On Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:35:59 -0600, Jo-Anne wrote: On 1/13/2018 11:20 AM, KenW wrote: On Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:12:36 -0600, Jo-Anne wrote: I've done the Windows 7 Microsoft Updates for January. Now Dell is offering a BIOS update for my computer model to deal with the Intel security issues. I've never updated the BIOS before, and I wonder if there are any problems I might encounter with this kind of update. The only thing I see at the Dell website is to make sure I don't turn off the computer or lose power during the update. Also, Dell says to verify the checksum value of the download but doesn't say how to do it. Is this something that will become obvious when downloading? And if not, what do I need to do? The details for the BIOS update of my model are at http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/...driverId=FPCF7 I did it once without a problem and didn't check the check sum. They make it easy. DO THIS WITH THE POWER SUPPLY CONNECTED and NOT on battery. KenW Thank you, Ken. I always do updates with the computer connected to the power supply. I figure the battery might help, though, if there's a power glitch. Intel just came out with 'do not update microcode' warning, so I would wait. This stuff has not settled down enough. KenW Could you provide a link to the warning, Ken? I found this one: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/11/inte...ome-chips.html Is it what you're referring to? -- Thank you, Jo-Anne |
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BIOS update from Dell
On 1/13/2018 12:27 PM, Shadow wrote:
On Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:12:36 -0600, Jo-Anne wrote: I've done the Windows 7 Microsoft Updates for January. Now Dell is offering a BIOS update for my computer model to deal with the Intel security issues. I've never updated the BIOS before, and I wonder if there are any problems I might encounter with this kind of update. The only thing I see at the Dell website is to make sure I don't turn off the computer or lose power during the update. Also, Dell says to verify the checksum value of the download but doesn't say how to do it. Is this something that will become obvious when downloading? And if not, what do I need to do? The details for the BIOS update of my model are at http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/...driverId=FPCF7 There are dozens of utilities to check hashes and checksums, but if you don't want to install one just upload the BIOS file you downloaded to Virustotal or Jotti and see if their checksums match the ones on the download page. If they match, and dozens of sirens don't go off, you should be OK. I believe this BIOS update just updates the backdoor. The old version got hacked. But I've always been a little paranoid. []'s PS Yes, a BIOS update can brick your computer. Make sure you are offline and that you are not running much in the background when you do it. Thank you, Shadow. I think the easiest thing for me is to check the download at Virustotal, which I'll do as soon as I work up the nerve to update the BIOS. -- Jo-Anne |
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BIOS update from Dell
Rene Lamontagne wrote:
On 01/13/2018 2:11 PM, pjp wrote: In article , says... On Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:12:36 -0600, Jo-Anne wrote: I've done the Windows 7 Microsoft Updates for January. Now Dell is offering a BIOS update for my computer model to deal with the Intel security issues. I've never updated the BIOS before, and I wonder if there are any problems I might encounter with this kind of update. The only thing I see at the Dell website is to make sure I don't turn off the computer or lose power during the update. Also, Dell says to verify the checksum value of the download but doesn't say how to do it. Is this something that will become obvious when downloading? And if not, what do I need to do? The details for the BIOS update of my model are at http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/...driverId=FPCF7 There are dozens of utilities to check hashes and checksums, but if you don't want to install one just upload the BIOS file you downloaded to Virustotal or Jotti and see if their checksums match the ones on the download page. If they match, and dozens of sirens don't go off, you should be OK. I believe this BIOS update just updates the backdoor. The old version got hacked. But I've always been a little paranoid. []'s PS Yes, a BIOS update can brick your computer. Make sure you are offline and that you are not running much in the background when you do it. Every motherboard BIOS update I've seen require you to create a special boot media, either CD/DVD or USB flashdrive. You boot using that to do the update. There's nothing else running AT ALL. Add-On cards, DVD firmware etc. can be patched with the OS running but NOT the BIOS. The OS depends upon the BIOS for functionality so it can't be "changed" while being used. That'd create havoc and for sure a crash and likely a bricked system. Newer and some older systems can be flashed directly under windows, My Asus X58 Sabertooth does and many others can do it. and I have done it twice in the past, Progress you know. :-) Rene In days gone by, Windows flashing had a very poor reputation. They did some stupid things, like downloading the file at the same time they were flashing, then if the network connection broke, the Flash would stop half-way, and the board would be bricked on the next reboot. Windows flashing is better today. But consider this. What if your AV is active, and happens to not like what the Windows flasher is doing ? What if heuristic detection cuts in half-way through the flash operation and quarantines the flasher. Or, say the flasher and the AV get in a "fight" and the desktop stops updating and freezes. These are the corner cases for Windows flashing. With MSDOS flashing, usually the Flash file was already present (you staged it on C: and used a FAT32 capable version of MSDOS floppy), and no AV would be running. That makes things marginally safer. The "USB stick" and "press a button to update BIOS" on my newest machine, now that's a low-risk way of doing it. As long as you have two USB sticks, and can insert the one with the old BIOS, if you get in trouble :-) I don't flash the BIOS all that much, because I don't have a collection of BIOS Saviors to plug in. Only that new machine, would it be worthwhile messing around. As the Flasher is a separate chip and is autonomous from the main CPU. You don't even need a CPU on that motherboard, to run the push-button flasher. Paul |
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BIOS update from Dell
Jo-Anne wrote:
On 1/13/2018 12:39 PM, KenW wrote: On Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:35:59 -0600, Jo-Anne wrote: On 1/13/2018 11:20 AM, KenW wrote: On Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:12:36 -0600, Jo-Anne wrote: I've done the Windows 7 Microsoft Updates for January. Now Dell is offering a BIOS update for my computer model to deal with the Intel security issues. I've never updated the BIOS before, and I wonder if there are any problems I might encounter with this kind of update. The only thing I see at the Dell website is to make sure I don't turn off the computer or lose power during the update. Also, Dell says to verify the checksum value of the download but doesn't say how to do it. Is this something that will become obvious when downloading? And if not, what do I need to do? The details for the BIOS update of my model are at http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/...driverId=FPCF7 I did it once without a problem and didn't check the check sum. They make it easy. DO THIS WITH THE POWER SUPPLY CONNECTED and NOT on battery. KenW Thank you, Ken. I always do updates with the computer connected to the power supply. I figure the battery might help, though, if there's a power glitch. Intel just came out with 'do not update microcode' warning, so I would wait. This stuff has not settled down enough. KenW Could you provide a link to the warning, Ken? I found this one: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/11/inte...ome-chips.html Is it what you're referring to? Isn't yours a Haswell ? Have you run the part number through ark.intel.com yet ? I guess it depends on your trust in Dell, as to whether this was "just the usual Lenovo issue", or it's a more common situation that would be seen across all brands. Because they won't tell us why it's rebooting, it's pretty hard to guess which brands it affects. A reboot because of a kernel panic should affect all brands equally. But there could be other reasons it's happening, and until they admit the cause, we won't know. I'd want another Dell owner of the same model, to test this update for me :-) Paul |
#13
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BIOS update from Dell
On 1/13/2018 1:08 PM, Big Al wrote:
On 01/13/2018 01:39 PM, KenW wrote: On Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:35:59 -0600, Jo-Anne wrote: On 1/13/2018 11:20 AM, KenW wrote: On Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:12:36 -0600, Jo-Anne wrote: I've done the Windows 7 Microsoft Updates for January. Now Dell is offering a BIOS update for my computer model to deal with the Intel security issues. I've never updated the BIOS before, and I wonder if there are any problems I might encounter with this kind of update. The only thing I see at the Dell website is to make sure I don't turn off the computer or lose power during the update. Also, Dell says to verify the checksum value of the download but doesn't say how to do it. Is this something that will become obvious when downloading? And if not, what do I need to do? The details for the BIOS update of my model are at http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/...driverId=FPCF7 I did it once without a problem and didn't check the check sum. They make it easy. DO THIS WITH THE POWER SUPPLY CONNECTED and NOT on battery. KenW Thank you, Ken. I always do updates with the computer connected to the power supply. I figure the battery might help, though, if there's a power glitch. Intel just came out with 'do not update microcode' warning, so I would wait. This stuff has not settled down enough. KenW I did it to my dell also and it was seamless.Â* Windows 8.1 would not run on my 15r until I did the upgrade.Â* I took weeks to find the bug, minutes to do the flashing of the BIOS. I wonder if HP also comes up with a firmware patch for the AMD CPUs it used in its HP Pavilion notebooks. |
#14
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BIOS update from Dell
In article , says...
On 01/13/2018 01:39 PM, KenW wrote: On Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:35:59 -0600, Jo-Anne wrote: On 1/13/2018 11:20 AM, KenW wrote: On Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:12:36 -0600, Jo-Anne wrote: I've done the Windows 7 Microsoft Updates for January. Now Dell is offering a BIOS update for my computer model to deal with the Intel security issues. I've never updated the BIOS before, and I wonder if there are any problems I might encounter with this kind of update. The only thing I see at the Dell website is to make sure I don't turn off the computer or lose power during the update. Also, Dell says to verify the checksum value of the download but doesn't say how to do it. Is this something that will become obvious when downloading? And if not, what do I need to do? The details for the BIOS update of my model are at http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/...driverId=FPCF7 I did it once without a problem and didn't check the check sum. They make it easy. DO THIS WITH THE POWER SUPPLY CONNECTED and NOT on battery. KenW Thank you, Ken. I always do updates with the computer connected to the power supply. I figure the battery might help, though, if there's a power glitch. Intel just came out with 'do not update microcode' warning, so I would wait. This stuff has not settled down enough. KenW I did it to my dell also and it was seamless. Windows 8.1 would not run on my 15r until I did the upgrade. I took weeks to find the bug, minutes to do the flashing of the BIOS. Hmmm, perhaps that'll be the road I MUST go down in order to install Win7 on two older Dell XP's that reboot without installing anything when trying to install Win7. |
#15
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BIOS update from Dell
On 1/13/2018 4:41 PM, Paul wrote:
Jo-Anne wrote: On 1/13/2018 12:39 PM, KenW wrote: On Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:35:59 -0600, Jo-Anne wrote: On 1/13/2018 11:20 AM, KenW wrote: On Sat, 13 Jan 2018 11:12:36 -0600, Jo-Anne wrote: I've done the Windows 7 Microsoft Updates for January. Now Dell is offering a BIOS update for my computer model to deal with the Intel security issues. I've never updated the BIOS before, and I wonder if there are any problems I might encounter with this kind of update. The only thing I see at the Dell website is to make sure I don't turn off the computer or lose power during the update. Also, Dell says to verify the checksum value of the download but doesn't say how to do it. Is this something that will become obvious when downloading? And if not, what do I need to do? The details for the BIOS update of my model are at http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/...driverId=FPCF7 I did it once without a problem and didn't check the check sum. They make it easy. DO THIS WITH THE POWER SUPPLY CONNECTED and NOT on battery. KenW Thank you, Ken. I always do updates with the computer connected to the power supply. I figure the battery might help, though, if there's a power glitch. Intel just came out with 'do not update microcode' warning, so I would wait. This stuff has not settled down enough. KenW Could you provide a link to the warning, Ken? I found this one: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/11/inte...ome-chips.html Is it what you're referring to? Isn't yours a Haswell ? Have you run the part number through ark.intel.com yet ? I guess it depends on your trust in Dell, as to whether this was "just the usual Lenovo issue", or it's a more common situation that would be seen across all brands. Because they won't tell us why it's rebooting, it's pretty hard to guess which brands it affects. A reboot because of a kernel panic should affect all brands equally. But there could be other reasons it's happening, and until they admit the cause, we won't know. I'd want another Dell owner of the same model, to test this update for me :-) Paul Thank you, Paul! I just ran it through, and it's listed under "Products formerly Haswell"--which means, I guess, that I'd better hold off doing the BIOS update for a while... -- Jo-Anne |
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