Build a Bootable UFD for Flashing AMI BIOS : 12 Steps

A good way to find BIOS versions and info is to use Google to search using strings like "download BIOS" for complete systems, or "download for motherboards. Thus, for the MSI PR200 notebook I just updated, I searched on "download MSI PR200 BIOS." This took me right to the MSI product page for the PR200 where the latest BIOS versions for Vista and XP were both available.

You'll also need a USB Flash Drive (UFD) formatting tool that can create a bootable DOS image on that drive. This requires a special formatting tool, and DOS source files to make the drive bootable. For this task, your best bet is a tool called the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool, V2.1.8. It not only formats UFDs to FAT or FAT32, it can also copy DOS boot files from any target directory you supply to this tool. Extreme Overclocking has a readily available download link. The .exe file is self installing, and adds the program to your Program Files directory by default.

Of course, that means you also need a minimal set of DOS boot files (command.com, io.sys, and ms.sys at a minimum). Extreme Overclocking also makes the Windows 98 system files available in a downloadas well. Grab these files and put them in their own directory. I called mine DOS-boot.