How to update BIOS on a system that only use Linux as OS.
Asking this because some clowns at Acer decided that they will only provide BIOS updates through Windows Update.
Edit: I’m not talking about installing the BIOS file. They don’t even provide BIOS file in the first place.
If you go onto the Acer forums, it looks like those super helpful forum members will tell you that you don’t need BIOS updates anyway, they don’t seem to be of much help.
If you can get your hands on the Windows Update, you can probably extract the BIOS file from there and load it into the BIOS manually. If you can’t load it into the BIOS, make a Windows installer drive from the ISO you can find on MS’ website and also copy the update .exe over. Boot it, pick a language, hit shift+f10, and run the update from the command prompt.
HOWEVER: based on the information at the bottom of this page, it looks like this laptop is just a Clevo that Acer stuck their logo on. Maybe you can ask Clevo if they can provide you with update files? I can’t find the exact model on their website, it seems like Acer produced this device as a low-cost deal specifically for the Indian market and decided to just… not support it?.
Classic corporate tech forum behaviour.
How?
Which is very dumb.
What .exe are talking about exactly? Is there some exe inside windows iso?
And idk what clevo is. Maybe a mass manufacturer of low quality computers (from my low effort search)
It’s been a while since I’ve needed to do this, but back in my Windows days you could look up a Windows update by its KB number and download a file you could use to install locally. Those files are weirdly structured archives (I think CAB files with a different extension).
Agreed. Feels borderline illegal where I live.
Most BIOS updates come with a firmware file and a .exe to flash it. You’d need to extract those from the Windows Update file if you can find it.
Clevo is a company that designs and builds laptops. They generally don’t sell directly to consumers. Many Linux friendly laptop resellers use Clevo to get the basic laptop down and then modify the base model to be Linux friendly. Cheap laptop companies all over the world also have Clevo produce laptops for them. Some Clevos are quite nice, but a lot of them are built as cheaply as possible, like for instance your laptop. Normally the base model can be found back on their website, but that doesn’t seem to be the case for your model.
Looks to me like Acer took a standard Clevo device, put a slower AMD CPU into it, and now you end up with a laptop where neither party seems to be willing to have anything to do with it. It’s still possible that Acer has Clevo make the device for them with their spec, but that’d still leave Acer responsible for updates usually.
You say there are supposed to be BIOS updates on Windows Update, how do you know they exist? Did you find anyone mentioning the updates anywhere? With how little support Acer is willing to provide, I sort of doubt that there are any updates at all…
Sadly in my case, iy doesn’t.
Sorry, I wrongly remembered. It’s my other laptop which has a new bios update.
I think they’re saying the Windows update file will contain the firmware binary.
You can find Windows update files here: https://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Search.aspx?q=Acer
But you’ll probably have to check each update and see if the “Supported Hardware IDs” match some sort of UUID in
dmidecode. I’m not sure if those are supposed to match though.Then there are some generic firmware update tools for Linux that might work, or might brick your laptop.
Thank you.