We've pushed Dell BIOS updates out using SCCM. One lesson learned is that you should force the user to reboot after the BIOS update is applied.
When you push out a BIOS update - it just kind of sits there in a pending state. Then when the computer REBOOTS the update is applied. If, however, the computer is turned off instead of rebooting, the computer will not start up without intervention - like booting from WinPE to reapply a BIOS - at least that was my experience more than a year ago. Our plan was to push out a BIOS update and then let it apply when the machine was rebooted naturally by the user. This turned out to be a bad plan, because if the user turned off the machine instead of rebooting, it required a trip to the computer. So my advice is to notify the user of the reboot, apply the BIOS and then reboot immediately. In the end, to apply the BIOS update you just call BIOS.exe -nopause -noreboot Then you handle the notification and reboot with some other script - - SMSInstaller, AutoIt, VBScript etc. and push the whole thing out with SCCM. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Adm Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2013 9:00 AM To: mssms Subject: [mssms] Flashing BIOS on Multiple Dell Machines Corporate shop almost exclusively Dell. Because of some misbehaving McAfee Encryption and DLP, we have a need to upgrade the BIOS on a number of machines. Has anyone ever attempted this? What tools did you use? I know testing, testing, and more testing is paramount. Any other tips? Thx in advance -- smsadm ________________________________ Notice: This UI Health Care e-mail (including attachments) is covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. 2510-2521, is confidential and may be legally privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any retention, dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication is strictly prohibited. Please reply to the sender that you have received the message in error, then delete it. Thank you. ________________________________
