Feeling bored, I wondered if I should upgrade my BIOS, don't ask me why.
The first step, of course, I reasoned, would be to identify the current BIOS installed in my 4-year old Packard Bell PC. Should be easy, I thought.
I rebooted my PC, went into the BIOS, which informed me that it was American Megatrends, AMIBIOS 3.31a. See, that was easy wasn't it?
I then went to the AM website, where I could find no mention of upgrades or anything remotely similar. A bit of Googling later told me that I should not expect to get any upgrades from the BIOS manufacturer, only from the Motherboard manufacturer. OK, so how do I determine which Mobo I have? More Googling led me to a utility from AM which determines this. I ran the utility which told me that the PC was NEC International!! Confused.
I next tried the Packard Bell Help menu in the Start Menu. It had a System Information button, which revealed no motherboard name, but told me the BIOS were AMBIOS 2.0g (what!!!). I frantically used MSINFO, which also told me the BIOS were AMBIOS 2.0g.
Eventually I found the Packard Bell support site, I typed in my Serial Number which told me my machine was an I Xtreme 9053 (this is written nowhere on the PC casing, just to be helpful). Under Support for this PC I clicked on the Tab for BIOS and was told there were two downloads available:
Columbia II / Columbia IV BIOS 2.0U WinXP 02-06-2003
Columbia II BIOS 2.0J WinXP 22-10-2002
There was no information on what differences either of these two downloads had compared with the existing BIOS in my PC (AM 3.31a or AM 2.0g, whichever you believe), so I am not in a position to assess whether the download is a step forward or two steps back.
And look at the dates, 2002 and 2003, not exactly up-to-date are they?
So I've decided not to upgrade my BIOS, a hiking holiday through central Iraq seems much more appealing.
Wibs
