ubuysa
The BSOD Doctor
This is from a respectable site and yet IMO it's completely and utterly wrong.
https://www.xda-developers.com/please-for-the-love-of-all-things-holy-update-your-bios/
It seems to me to have been written by someone who has just discovered how to flash their BIOS and thinks they need to tell everyone else what fun it was. Many of us on here, and in the other fora to which I contribute, know perfectly well from long (many decades in most cases) experience that only a very tiny percentage of user's problems end up being caused by an out-of-date BIOS. And I do mean a tiny percentage.
It is true that there are times when a BIOS update is important. The recent Intel i9-14900K and i9-13900K voltage regulation issue is a case in point. But these BIOS updates are communicated widely and are applicable to everyone. I honestly cannot remember the last time I saw a problem that was fixed by updating the BIOS. There are a handful I'll grant you, but not many.
Most end user problems are caused by the end user. Either misconfiguring software and/or hardware, installing the wrong drivers, not installing drivers at all, messing with the hardware when they don't know what they are doing, and by blindly following any and all advice they find on the Internet - much of which (like this article) is just plain wrong.
All of us on here, when diagnosing a problem focus first on those things that are the most obvious cause, based on the problem information we can see. We then peel away the layers, like an onion skin, slowly drilling down into less likely causes, again based on addition problem information that we may ask for. An outdated BIOS is at the very (very!) bottom of that list, simply because it's rarely the root cause of problems. Blindly updating the BIOS as the first thing you do, based on zero evidence, is what we call poke-and-hope, and that's no way to go about troubleshooting.
If your car won't start in the morning you don't, for example, immediately update the engine management software. It's far more likely that you have no fuel, a bad battery, a clogged air filter, etc. etc. It's the same with PCs - you always look for the obvious causes first, based on the information you have. And that's almost never the BIOS.
I'm not saying that you should never update the BIOS of course, but suggesting it should be the first step in problem determination, as the article says here...
Opinions?
https://www.xda-developers.com/please-for-the-love-of-all-things-holy-update-your-bios/
It seems to me to have been written by someone who has just discovered how to flash their BIOS and thinks they need to tell everyone else what fun it was. Many of us on here, and in the other fora to which I contribute, know perfectly well from long (many decades in most cases) experience that only a very tiny percentage of user's problems end up being caused by an out-of-date BIOS. And I do mean a tiny percentage.
It is true that there are times when a BIOS update is important. The recent Intel i9-14900K and i9-13900K voltage regulation issue is a case in point. But these BIOS updates are communicated widely and are applicable to everyone. I honestly cannot remember the last time I saw a problem that was fixed by updating the BIOS. There are a handful I'll grant you, but not many.
Most end user problems are caused by the end user. Either misconfiguring software and/or hardware, installing the wrong drivers, not installing drivers at all, messing with the hardware when they don't know what they are doing, and by blindly following any and all advice they find on the Internet - much of which (like this article) is just plain wrong.
All of us on here, when diagnosing a problem focus first on those things that are the most obvious cause, based on the problem information we can see. We then peel away the layers, like an onion skin, slowly drilling down into less likely causes, again based on addition problem information that we may ask for. An outdated BIOS is at the very (very!) bottom of that list, simply because it's rarely the root cause of problems. Blindly updating the BIOS as the first thing you do, based on zero evidence, is what we call poke-and-hope, and that's no way to go about troubleshooting.
If your car won't start in the morning you don't, for example, immediately update the engine management software. It's far more likely that you have no fuel, a bad battery, a clogged air filter, etc. etc. It's the same with PCs - you always look for the obvious causes first, based on the information you have. And that's almost never the BIOS.
I'm not saying that you should never update the BIOS of course, but suggesting it should be the first step in problem determination, as the article says here...
...is just plain wrong.
Opinions?
