Just a quick article on how to find out BIOS version and how to get an update, and finally how to upgrade it.

I’ve recently done exactly this on my Dell E5550 laptop.

First, my BIOS version was A06:

$ sudo dmidecode -s bios-version
A06

Next question is how to find out if there’s a new version for my laptop. I had to first get a serial number of my machine:

$ sudo dmidecode -s system-serial-number
xxxxx # don't want to make it public

Then on Dell website, I copy-pasted my serial number and let the system find new updates.

Surely, there was a new BIOS version A21.

It’s always an .exe file, no matter what OS you have. There’s also a good tutorial on how to upgrade BIOS on Linux machines. The tutorial there is for Ubuntu since that’s an OS Dell delivers on its machines.

Then, I had to do a few more things:

  1. I downloaded the .exe file
  2. I verified checksums of the downloaded file against what Dell has on their website
  3. I formatted a usb flash drive, it’s important to use FAT 32 In my case, I used fsdisk and mkfs.fat tools, but it’s possible to use some other tools, e.g. GUI tools present in your distro.
  4. I copied the .exe file onto my flash drive

Then it’s all about rebooting, pressing F12 and selecting BIOS Flash Update. The rest should be automatic and if there’re no problems, the BIOS should be upgraded to a new version (in my case A21), which I can confirm either in BIOS setup or after boot in my OS:

$ sudo dmidecode -s bios-version
A21