Ubuntu 17.10 corrupts BIOS, bricks some Lenovo + Acer notebook models

Josey Wales said:

This could not happen with Legacy BIOS, I don't believe.

Sure it could. In fact it is easier.

I run a .exe to update my legacy BIOS on a X201 Lenovo. It reboots a few times and updates BIOS firmware.

I also update the track one (of mbr disk so BIOS is not really a correct term in this case) on my old MBP to override the startup settings when running Windows. Updating the track 1 on a mbr disk overwrites what would be BIOS settings and I do that to allow AHCI SSD...

I'm not sure if more modern PC would require BIOS update to be done from USB (rather than just be recommended) but certainly you can update BIOS from userland program on old machines. Secureboot would stop (or at least limit ) this sort of tinkering on EFI machine I guess.

Hi,

I'm not sure if more modern PC would require BIOS update to be done from USB (rather than just be recommended) but certainly you can update BIOS from userland program on old machines. Secureboot would stop (or at least limit ) this sort of tinkering on EFI machine I guess.

On my most current devices (one Gen. 4, one Gen. 6 and one Gen. 7) I can update the Bios (UEFI actually) either from within the UEFI menu itself or from within Windows. Secureboot does not need to be disabled but the CPU's Txt extension does for some reason unknown to me.


MEI FW updates I flash from within Windows, TPM updates needed to be written to USB. The files were unvisible from within Windows but from the way it acted I suspect it runs after POST and prior to OS loading.
Pretty much like a these multi-boot overlays from years ago.

All these machines are Fujitsus and I recall flashing BIOS's from within Windows since the mid nineties when I was still working for them (Siemens-Nixdorf then).


Either way, odd how they released an OS that can write to BIOS so easily and brick it in the process.....


Cheers,