The Death of DOS and BIOS Updates?

Mike Hicks asks: "The release of Windows XP was heralded by Microsoft as the Death of DOS. No longer is everything riding on command.com and friends. However, most BIOS update utilities -- whether for motherboards or DVD drives -- are still written to work under DOS. Certainly, a lot of DOS boot diskettes are squirreled away all over the place, but they are going to disappear over time. What will we be using in the next few years to update firmware? Do adequate non-DOS solutions exist now?" I would hope that maybe BIOS updates would then be distributed as disk images that would boot you right into the update utility, however more than likely there will be a Windows XP utility to do this. Here's hoping, however, that an OS-neutral solution presents itself in the future.

Comments

Old old old problem

[iankerickson]

Welcome to NT! Enjoy your stay!!!

You only just now noticed a problem with NT-based operating systems (like XP) and the PC: DOS utilities. To NT admins, this is old news. This problem is at least 5 years old, as long as you had to boot NT from an NTFS partition in order to gain most of its benefits (like security, automatic compress, maybe SFM).

Most people here are going to say "use floppy disks" which is cheap, but kind of reckless. You'd better make 2 or 3 copies stored in different places away from CRTs, TVs, fridges, and stereo speakers. If your machine won't boot, you can't go download a fix if your "rescue floppy" is bent up, scrambled, or moonlighting as a lint motel. As the BSD gurus have said: relying a $1 disk to fix your PC is fine if you have only $1 worth of data or your time is only worth $1. Or if you only have $1. ;-)

You have lots of options:
- DOS Bootable removable media: Zip, LS-120, and even CD-R. Keep them out of the light and don't feed them after midnight.
- DOS boot floppy with NET.EXE if you have a LAN.
- A bootable FAT hard disk partition where XP can't mess with it and a 3rd party boot loader.
- Some vendors (like Dell) include a "reference partition" for their diagnostic utilities that the BIOS will boot with an F8 before NT gets a crack at even asking you. You may be able to grow the partition's size and stash all your driver installers, MBR tools, BIOS utilies, etc in there.
- Sysinternals (http://www.sysinternals.com/) has a DOS tool to read/write from NTFS partitions (not free).
- The "official" MS way... is um, well, just forget it. ERD in the dictionary should say "noun. (Jargon) A false hope. Potential security risk. Something seemingly crucial, yet useless misplaced, maybe on the bus. See 'Placebo'."

That's a completely incomplete list. Read some NT sites and you'll find some more ways other people have worked around this moronic position NTFS boot disks puts you in. Or read the Cryptonomicon and pay attention to the repeated theme "Use a little ingenuity."

By comparison, Linux or *BSD are trivial to fix if they won't boot or you want to keep a DOS partition of BIOS tools and drivers to boot into without hassle. NT though has issues and an agenda. MS doesn't want you using DOS, and NT almost can't be fixed without 3rd party tools if you can't boot all the way into NT. Its like the filesystem has a built-in self-destruct mechanism that's too easy to accidently set off (like running CHKDSK, defragging, or not facing your desk towards Redmond, WA). Don't get me wrong -- I actually (ahem) like NT. A little accelerated video and lot of RAM and its a great desktop OS. But the boot sequence/fixability and support for DOS utilities is pretty raw. But hey, quirky OSes create jobs, and after all this balony about being profitable, isn't that what really matters? Hrm. That sounds like an "Ask Slashdot" waiting to happen.

Does all this apply wholesale to XP? If you don't know, NT4 is where I'd start and see what will carry over. Or just don't buy it -- it's amazing what kinds of problems a little well-placed frugality can solve. I know guys who'd pay $200 to mess up their PC so their spouse will give up trying to use it. I guess that's those "honeypots" they keep talking about...