upgrading bios on a laptop with no o/s

hey guys, i was just wondering if anyone knew how i can upgrade my bios on my dell latitude without putting an o/s on it. i put windows xp home on it, but the bios wasn't up to date, which i know now. it is one version old. how can i flash it? do i need to reinstall windows and flash it before it freezes up on me? thanks guys. all advice is welcome and greatly appreciated.

eric

 

you need to goto http://www.support.dell.com/ from another computer. enter the service tag of the laptop you want to flash and download the floppy version of the flash utility. Then use that to flash the laptop.

 

That is, unless you cannot boot into Windows, you said it freezes up?

The old fashioned way ( ) is to boot from a DOS disk or a WIN98 boot disk or something. Got any of those laying around?

Someone here posted a link to place where you can make one....geeks?

 

yeah thats my last resort. i am trying to put windows back on it and see if i can flash it before it freezes. the flash is supposed to fix the freeze problem. we'll find out hopefully. i was making sure that i was doing this right. i downloaded the floppy stuff onto my other dell machine but it wouldn't open. i apprecaite it guys.

eric

 

ok i flashed it on the laptop. so mission complete. thanks guys for your help. i just hope it does save the freeze ups.

eric

 

well that flash didn't stop the freeze ups. this is really starting to piss me off. i have tried everything. i quit. thanks everyone for all your help with my POS dell laptop.

eric

 

ok. disregard that last post. it still freezes up but i need to fix this, so if any one has any suggestions on how i need to trouble shoot this i would really apprecaite it.

eric