can bios be updated for this computer

I have never updated my own bios. Recently, a friend asked for help updating his bios and I tried to help but couldn't. I am not even sure if it's possible. He has a gateway bought around 1999. It has sdram and an intel motherboard. I tried to use the gateway site and it states there is an upgrade for his system bios but after trying with a cd and floppy, according to the instructions, it failed. The only thing i got with the floppy was remove disk to startup warning, and with teh cd i got something called caldera or whatnot that gives weird options none of which seem like a bios update. Any advice.

 

I'm not convinced that you got a BIOS update. Last I heard, Caldera was involved with other operating systems such as Unix & Linux, etc. I hope you didn't confuse "operating system" with "BIOS". They're not the same thing at all.

Can you provide us with the following:

• the exact model of the Gateway computer involved;
• the link(s) you went to to get the stuff that didn't work.

With that information, someone might be able to confirm that you can update your BIOS and where to get it, and/or confirm that you went to some other place, so no wonder it didn't work.

 

I went to gateway's site and used system identifier which provided this updated bios dl. I have a gateway 500 desktop and it's about 5 years old at this point. I was thinking of doing a clean install, would I have to update my bios to do one to use win xp. not sure? If so, at what point, before or after? I don't know.

 

A BIOS update probably isn't needed. Other hardware limits are more likely to be a problem.

Check Microsoft's page at <http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;314865>. It seems that WinXP will run on a Pentium 233 or better if there is sufficient memory and hard drive space.

BIOS updates can make a motherboard useless if they go wrong. The likelihood of that is much lower than it used to be, but it's still not risk-free. I'd suggest that you leave the BIOS alone unless you need the update to fix an identified problem. Gateway's site should provide release notes that tell you what problems were fixed in any given BIOS update.