How to update latitude bios

Hello, I recently acquired a 10 year old latitude CPX J650Gt laptop that looks almost new. It has XP Pro. SP3 installed and works OK but it appears many of the drivers had never been updated. I plan to use just for basic email and web surfing. I've updated all the device drivers but the one I'm struggling with is the bios update from A09 to A016. Evidentally, the only way to do it is with a floppy disk. Problem is, it didn't come with a floppy disk. I do have a USB floppy and tried using that. I was able to load the bios update to the USB floppy but when I tried to set the bios to load from the USB that choice doesnt exist. I tried setting the bios to boot from every possible device it listed to see if one would work to no avail. My machine sees the A floppy in "my computer" but it won't boot. Has anyone ever done one of these and how did you accomplish it? Thanks for any and all information.

 

AFAIK Dell BIOS updates are executable files that are run in Windows. Go to support.dell.com and punch in your service tag and go to BIOS.

 

Thanks for your response, but as stated in my post I already have downloaded and installed the bios update to the floppy disk as requested by the Dell download website for this model of laptop. It's getting it loaded into my system that is the problem. Evidentally, the only way to update the bios on my particular model of laptop is via floppy disk. However, as stated in my original post, my bios doesn't give the option of using a usb floppy to boot from. The bios legacy is enabled.

 

Did you first create a bootable floppy disc (I suggest DOS 6.22 see see www.bootdisc.com) and then copy the BIOS update onto that disc?

John

 

John Ratsey, thank you for your reply. The laptop does not come with a floppy disk slot on it. I have a usb floppy and I sucessfully downloaded and installed the bios update onto the usb floppy disk from Dell.com. However, when I restart the computer it just boots into xp normally and the update did not occur. I got into the bios and changed the "first boot option" to everything that it shows in the bios. The bios does not show that I can boot from the usb or the floppy disk. It just shows hdd, cd-rom, pcmcia as boot options. As stated, the bios update is on the usb floppy disk now, I just cannot get the laptop to boot from it. I hope I am explaining this properly. Please help!

 

Given the age of the notebook, it doesn't look like it supports booting from USB.

 

I assume that you don't have the optical drive either. In which case either putting in a different HDD which contains DOS + the BIOS update or creating a DOS partition on your current HDD then booting from it may be worth trying. Or you accept that the A09 BIOS is good enough.

John