Thinkpads Forum

Need to upgrade the BIOS on my 600e, only problem is that out of the 5 computers I own, they're all floppyless. Is there any way to make a bootable cd that contains the update files?

I've given it a shot using nero, but my ideas didnt work..

so, is it possible?

sure, it's possible.
where did you run into trouble?

actually booting from the CD?

do you have another newer computer you can try the CD in, just to see if it boots there?

well, i didnt have a floppy iso or anything, i just threw IBM's floppy maker onto a cd and tried to extract it to a virtual drive in DOS which didnt work at all.

can you give me a more step-by-step method that actually works?

All the major brands of CDR software like Roxio, Nero, etc. can make bootable cd's but will generally ask for a source for the boot files such as a Windows XP system disk (floppy), or in this case the IBM generated floppy.

For that reason you will probabally need to have access to another computer that has both a floppy and a burner. Simply make the IBM floppy according to the IBM instructions then provide that when creating the CD.

If you find that you have to launch the BIOS update manually the executable will probabally be named something fairly obvious like UPDTFLSH.EXE or QKFLASH.EXE.

Good luck!

alrighty, i guess i'll have to get crafty and go borrow a school library USB floppy.. thanks for the help though!

whenever I try and run the update, i get "Error" "memory cannot be allocated, and the process did not complete" in a red box.

any idea why this is happening?

It's important that memory managers and dos drivers aren't loaded. In general, that means no emm386 or cdrom.sys or similar loaded in config.sys

Need specifics.

Are you booting from the IBM Bios Update Diskette version floppy in a USB drive?

Are you booting from a CD made from the IBM floppy? Or are you trying something else?

ah, nevermind i got it.. just to let everyone else know, using nero to make a boot cd doesnt work for the bios update.