[Discuss] Risks of BIOS (actually UEFI) updates

[Jean Taggart]

Maybe I like living on the edge, but during my 10 years or so of being a computer repair technician I *always* updated bios / UEFI. Always with the goal of increasing stability. These updates always addressed memory stability issues, added features, made every thing better overall. All of my systems, both new and old run the absolute latest bios revision.

Where did you hear that running an updated bios caused issues? I can think of a very limited cases, but something as new as Ryzen, that would of been the first thing I did.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 10, 2018, at 3:17 PM, Alan W. Irwin <Alan.W.Irwin1234 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> From my last post, it turns out I might need to do a BIOS (actually
> UEFI) update for my "newish" Ryzen 7 1700 computer to solve its random
> lockup issues.
> 
> When I bought that custom system from Mother Computers they told me
> they went out of their way NOT to apply BIOS updates since they felt
> that was a last resort.  But if after 6 months of instability and if
> the kernel measures I just discovered to deal with such lockups are
> not working, then I am sure I could convince them to do a BIOS upgrade
> now, but likely at my own risk since from my experience with them I
> think it is a fair to say that Mother Computers are uncomfortable with
> any Linux-only issue.  So I will definitely ask them their take on
> such risks before authorizing them to go ahead with it.
> 
> However, I would also like to ask the same question here.  For
> example, my experience with much older boxes was it was common for
> assemblers not to apply BIOS upgrades.  But is that attitude still
> common for modern PC's?  Or is the consensus here that BIOS upgrades
> for modern PC's should always be done and reverted back to a previous
> BIOS version only if the latest version works worse than previous?
> 
> Finally, I would appreciate comments on the worst-case scenario, where
> the BIOS update turns the computer into a brick.  What are the
> chances, and if that scenario happens, does that mean I would have to
> get Mother Computers (or some other vendor) to reassemble my new
> computer components around a brand-new motherboard, or are there
> easier ways for computer shops to deal with a modern PC with
> non-working BIOS?
> 
> Alan
> __________________________
> Alan W. Irwin
> 
> Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
> implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
> Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
> software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
> (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
> and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
> __________________________
> 
> Linux-powered Science
> __________________________
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