Why do we need to power down our machine before a BIOS update?

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Please help me understand.

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7 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because in order to access the BIOS settings screen you can’t have an operating system running. There are several cases where you can change the firmware/BIOS while booted, because it is just a small reprogrammable memory chip that is loaded upon boot. Usually consumer motherboards don’t allow the OS to access that chip because it could be abused by malware. One notable case is if you have a Chromebook and want to install Linux or Windows you have to replace the stock “only chrome” BIOS/firmware with a custom one, which is done in Chrome OS itself. It takes effect after you restart.

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