Aspire 5102 bios

I'm looking into some firewire problems with the Acer 5102 and notice that there is a fairly recent bios upgrade. My current bios is 2.60, and the update is ver 3.13.
3.13 comes with a text file saying "update from 3.12 to 3.13 is only possible in DOS mode".
Does this mean anything important? Is it sufficient just to run the batch file straight off the hard disk (this seems to invoke PHLASH16 to install a wph file).

As is obvious, I haven't flashed a bios since the days of floppies and crossed fingers.

 

As long as you are not running Bios version 3.12 (which wasn't released to the public via acer's FTP) you can flash your bios from inside of windows. All you need to do is download version 3.13 and then run the flash32.exe file in the bios package. There are 17 blocks in an aspire 5100's Bios and all of them will be zeroed out and then reprogrammed when you flash the Bios.

As always when flashing a bios (especially from inside of windows) close or suspend all anti-virus, anti-malware and firewall programs as well as any other programs you have open as you don't want anything to interfere with the bios flash process. Also plug your notebook into an AC outlet do not attempt to flash while on battery.

 

Thanks for that. It worked well in spite of some (expected) scary moments.

I'll leave testing to see if it has made any difference for another day.