Table of Contents

1. What is a BIOS?
   • Why would I Need to update the BIOS?
   • What do I need to update the BIOS?
2. Identifying your Motherboard
3. Windows was unable to complete the format

What is a BIOS?

A BIOS is a piece of software that always resides in your motherboard that contains essential instructions for how other components in your system should start up and operate, including the CPU, RAM, USB ports, etc. It sits on a physical chip, separate from other disks you have in your system. Because of this, sometimes it requires a set of steps to update.

Why would I need to update the BIOS?

Sometimes, manufacturers do not release their products in a finished state for many reasons. So, they provide updates over time when they or customers find issues with the product and need to fix them.

What do I need to update the BIOS?

All motherboard vendors do things a little bit differently, but one thing is universal - you need a USB storage drive to update it. If you do not have one, you may need to purchase or ask someone around you for one. If you do have one but it's in use, be sure to move what files you consider important off somewhere else so you do not lose them.

In order for the motherboard to understand what is on the USB storage drive, it may have to be in a specific format. The filesystem format most commonly understood is called FAT32, and you can format your USB drive right from Windows. Once you have your USB drive, plug it in and make sure Windows recognizes it.

If your USB drive is new or has been erased, Windows should present you with an option to format it.

Be sure to select "FAT32" as the option. The size of the new file system could be whatever you want below or up to the capacity of your USB drive, but a safe and common option is 4GB (which is the same as 4096MB).

Your disk should now look like this if you right click the disk and select "Properties".

Once you get your USB drive set up, you can now put files on it. The next step is to correctly identify which motherboard you have.

Identifying your motherboard

The way motherboard vendors provide BIOS files is through the product page of your motherboard online. The product page is named exactly after the model name / product name of your motherboard. Luckily, every version of Windows comes with a tool called "System Information" that displays a bunch of information about your computer on screen. You can run System Information by typing "msinfo32" into the Windows search bar, and running it.

You should now see a window that looks like this with your computer's information - highlighted is our computer's motherboard name. It should be under "BaseBoard Product":
So, the product name in the screenshot is "Pro Q670M-C" - and we will use that as an example when searching for a BIOS.

To search for a motherboard online, go to Google and enter the name we found from msinfo32:

Double check if the top search result is right for you!

You are looking for a page that says "BIOS" or "firmware", for example:

This is the page we are looking for! It contains the download link to the new BIOS for all of the new stability fixes. Let's proceed to download the file and look for it in the folder you downloaded it to and extract it:

Right click on the file and select "Extract All", and click "Extract". You now should have a folder with contents similar to this:

That's the BIOS file! It should be a larger file that is a couple dozen megabytes in size. Now copy it over to your USB drive:

We're now approaching a point where you will need to shut down your computer and then enter BIOS. Be sure you have this article opened on another device to follow along.

An easy way to enter BIOS is by holding the shift key while clicking restart in the start menu (both Windows 10 and Windows 11):

Upon restarting, you should click these series of options:

Troubleshoot -> Advanced Options -> UEFI Firmware Settings

Here is the BIOS screen for the motherboard that's being used as an example. Your BIOS menu may appear different.

What's important here is going to the spot where you can install a new BIOS. Here's a list of what each motherboard vendor calls their BIOS installation feature:

MSI: M-Flash
Gigabyte: Q-Flash
ASUS / ASUSTeK: EZ-Flash
AsRock: Instant Flash
NZXT: Instant Flash
BioStar: BIO-Flasher

If you don't know where it is exactly - don't worry. You can safely navigate the BIOS using the arrow keys to look around. Most BIOS do not support using a mouse, only a keyboard.

On my BIOS screen, you can see I already have the option highlighted for BIOS installation. With the USB drive still plugged in and pressing enter, you may see a screen like this (zoomed in):

You can see on the left there are several entries starting with "FS". These are all of the storage drives your motherboard sees - USB drive or not. For me, the first entry "FS0" clearly has the BIOS file that we copied over from Windows. Using the arrow keys, we can navigate to it and press enter to begin the installation process:

It should start checking if you have the correct BIOS, and immediately begin installation of the new BIOS. It will take a couple of minutes, and when finishing it may appear that the computer isn't turning back on for some time as well. If it said that it specifically will not restart after finishing, you may press the power button to turn it back on. If it did not, make sure the motherboard isn't showing any signs of activity before pressing the power button.

Upon restarting, it may take anywhere between a few seconds longer than usual to a couple of minutes for anything to show on screen. When booting, it may ask you to press a button in order to proceed into BIOS to change some settings. Find and press the necessary key to restore to default settings, and then save and exit. After this, you should now be booting back into Windows. 

The following sections are now for listed scenarios where things didn't go to plan

"Windows was unable to complete the format."

FAT32 isn't an option to format with!

If you run into either of these issues, you may follow the following steps:

Search for either "Disk Management" or "diskmgmt.msc" in Windows Search. When you open it, you should see a screen like this:

This is a detailed view of all of the storage disks on your system. If you have your USB drive plugged in, you should see something similar to the example image where a disk is marked "Removable". This is most likely the USB drive that you have plugged into the computer. However, this tool itself may have issues. There is a better tool that works more reliably called "diskpart". For this, we are going to have to use the command line.

Type in "diskpart" into Windows Search, and run it. You should see a window like this:

In this example image, all of the commands are already typed out for you. Let's explain each one:
the "list disk" command lists all of the active storage drives connected to your system. As you can see, the disk numbers from the disk management utility and this tool are the same. So if you identify that disk #1 is your removable USB drive, it will be the same number in diskpart.

Once you have identified which disk number is your USB drive, you may replace the numbers in the following commands that you run. Modify and run the following 3 commands as needed:

select disk <YOUR NUMBER HERE>
clean
create partition primary size=4096

After that is done, we can go back to the disk management utility and see that a new 4GB (4096MB) partition has been created.

From here, we can format it. Right click on the "4.00GB RAW" area, click "Format", and now you should see this:

That's all you need. Click OK.

You are done! You may proceed with the rest of the regular installation steps as usual from where you left off.