i put the utility and the upgrade file onto a bootable disk. when i boot from cd i get to the part where i save the backup file and when i press enter it says error #19 disk is write prtected cannot create file...and i have a usb floppy drive hooked up and the floppy is not protected(i pushed the tab to unlock)...anybody know why it is saying this? robi1yoda1234@aim.com

is the usb floppy drive detected? did you enter the correct path? can you boot from usb floppy and run the bios flash utility from there rather than from cd?

As The_Oracle has stated it would be best if you booted from writable media. When flashing a BIOS you should always elect to save the old file. To do that you need writable media. You can't write to your CD burner while not using a burner program. Best to have an internal floppy.

Curious - why were you flashing BIOS? i_Xp/VistaUser

Dell has BIOS updates on CD so I'm sure you can get buy without backing it up. Also you may want to check CMOS to see, there is a setting to write protect the Floppy drive. Also, maybe the disk has bad sectors or maybe even your Floppy drive may need cleaning. If your computer is fairly new, then you probably don't have to flash the BIOS. If it is older than there is nothing wrong with flashing the BIOS.

ok, yes the floppy drive is detected..and i am not trying to put the file onto a cd thats why i have my floppy drive hooked up to it..and i cannot boot my computer using a floppy i tried that already(going into bios and changing the boot order) and i also disabled the floppy write protection in bios 2. robi1yoda1234@aim.com

If you are running on a FAT32 partition: Just make a dir on the HD like C:\bios and place all the flash files and bios in that dir. Download a DOS bootable CD/floppy image, or boot off of a 95/98 CD, navigate to the HD in the "bios" dir. and flash the bios. If you are running off of NTFS partition it is a bit more tricky. You will have to have either a bootable USB drive, or bootable CD image with the flash on it, if you boot off the CD and do not have a floppy, or any other writeable media, than you can't save the old bios. BUT you will still be able to flash the bios with the new file. This is just another reason why I partition my boot drive with FAT32 and not NTFS. Good luck!