The amount of insight and passion on this forum is amazing! I read this discussion carefully and opted not to update my chipset driver after all. My system is fairly stable (knock on wood) and I'd hate to brick my desktop and not be able to record for several days while I sort out any issues. But I do learn a lot here! Thank again for your feedback and thoughtful responses!

CakeAlexSPS Umm destroying machines with BIOS updates. Nope.

Sorry, Alex, but I have done this. It was a notebook that wanted things done in a very particular order which I missed while reading the instructions. This is what an earlier poster meant when they referred to updating a BIOS as being 'safe' these days. In those days, it wasn't (circa 1996).

CakeAlexS
"Data has become so huge it's now impractical to back everything up."
 
Nope don't think so sorry. You can buy 4tb hard drive and a copy of acronis for under 200 pounds(340 dollars). Backing up has never been so quick and cheap, and you should be partitioning your data away from the OS.

Yeah, but it's still a hard drive.  We used to back up hard drives because there was something a bit more safe and stable for the long term.  I used to burn a dvd now and then and leave it at my mother-in-law's.  Now we're stuck with hard drives only and they're too expensive to leave copies lying around in different places.
 
So there's the cloud, but that requires a decent ISP account, and that isn't cheap either.
 
 
 
 

Atsuko

CakeAlexS
> If it aint broke don't fix it.  When it comes to a BIOS even the manufacturers recommend not updating unless it's totally necessary. 
 
Really? Please supply me the link to the manufacturer who recomends not doing BIOS updates? BIOSs nowadays are easy and pretty safe to update and rollback. If you've ever done server support for instance you will probably be doing regular BIOS updates and pushing out firmware like windows update. Even my TV and router has firmware updates pushed out from the manufacturer (automated). I generally wait an extra month though before I do it in case of any issues. In the future (maybe years away) I expect firmware and BIOS updates to be rolled out automatically like any software update), BIOS updates are no big deal any more. There you go.

Hi, CakeAlexS,
 
from the Intel site:

• Update the BIOS on your computer only if the newer BIOS version specifically solves a problem you have. We do not recommend BIOS updates for computers that do not need it. You can view all new BIOS fixes in the release notes.

https://downloadcenter.in...&DownloadType=BIOS

mettelus
I saw this in the thread earlier and want to re-iterate it. I think the majority of users fall into the "want to make music" crowd, and are not necessarily (if at all) computer savvy. Some will come in, ask a question and blindly take advice of people giving it, so please be aware of this. Because of this I refrain from recommending registry edits or BIOS updates (or even changes to BIOS). Recommending these to someone totally unfamiliar with it will look at "post count," be persuaded by that, and then potentially burn themselves unnecessarily.
 
For the record, I have changed BIOS is this machine only once (going on 3 years old now), and it was not required. In fact, the BIOS in this system (initially) was a custom build that cannot be found again... so if I had not saved the default BIOS first and that update failed, I could have easily had more issues. BIOS is one of those things that if it doesn't have a certain level of maturity, products will not ship... manufacturers cannot rely on any end-user to manually update BIOS like a software update.
 
Again, please be aware of this...

Thank you both for being part of this thread.

@rontarrant As I stated earlier the minimum qualification would be the ability to read! :) Often in the old days you could recover from a dodgy BIOS update by moving a jumper on the motherboard (I know because I did it myself as well probably around 1996 as well). Nowadays things are much easier and safer.

I do not think things being "safer" these days is what folks are concerned with. And my comment below is certainly not undermining your level of knowledge in any way. The point of concern is to understand the person with whom you are speaking, and assume (be conservative) that they do not understand (at all). As an advanced user, it is my responsibility to realize "what if they misinterpret me and something goes wrong?"
 
I have (literally) typed responses with good detail, but then simply navigated away from the page with the thought "Someone might see this thread, assume it applies to them, and muck things up." To me, that is a big concern... I do not want people ever walking away from this forum worse than when they came... and many people have very specific issues that cannot be solved by a generic answer.
 
Please do not construe this as an attack... I do read your posts and enjoy your humor a lot. You contribute great things here. My only point (and I must stress only again), is that not everyone has your experience or the desire to ever have it, and this is perfectly fine... the challenge becomes giving a true definitive solution to someone like that (and I have seen you do this).
 
I am thankful the OP chimed back in... I often worry that when we muddy the discussion that the OP walks away more confused than before.

I upgraded my drivers.

Now I get to places faster and on time because my previous drivers were too slow.

All I ever assume is ability to read and to follow threads. Frankly if somebody decided to speed read a thread or not read what has already been written several times, I couldn't care less if they screw up. That clearly would be a lesson they need to learn. Some people need to learn the hard way. I don't dumb down but I try not to bring too much terminology in as well. Users generally are not idiots unless they start behaving like idiots. If you assume users are idiots to start with then life becomes just one giant disclaimer. I ain't got time for that. I was the first person for instance who mentioned backups. Hardly a cavaliar approach... If you don't bother reading that and then say a driver screwed up my system... Don't go knocking on my door!