"One must always update the BIOS." You might not be jumping at every new BIOS version your motherboard vendor releases, but I can safely assume that you update your BIOS fairly regularly. If you ask me, however, updating the BIOS is one of the scariest things I can do on my PC. I still adhere to the old-school belief of "not fixing it if it ain't broke." This is why I survived for 4 years without a BIOS update. Last month, my streak finally ended.

I was facing some weird behavior with my PC's sleep and hibernation modes — the system occasionally didn't go to sleep, the GPU stayed on during hibernation, and the Ethernet connection took around 30 seconds to connect after waking from sleep. After failing to fix these issues, I decided to update the BIOS as a last resort. I didn't brick my PC or anything, but the entire ordeal made me swear I'd wait for years before updating my BIOS again.

No flashing instructions on the Gigabyte website

Gave me a giga fright

Now, I know that updating the BIOS isn't supposed to be as risky as it used to be. After all, I have a UPS, and my Gigabyte motherboard has BIOS flashback (called Q-Flash Plus) for simple and quick BIOS updates. Being overly anxious about bricking my PC, however, I decided not to use the BIOS flashback process, as I had always updated the BIOS from within the BIOS. So, the regular Q-Flash utility was what I was going to use.

So, I went to the Gigabyte website, and downloaded the latest BIOS for my motherboard. I copied the BIOS file to a USB stick, rebooted the PC, and entered the BIOS to start the process. To my surprise, the Q-Flash utility failed to find the BIOS file on the USB stick. After trying for a few minutes, I rebooted the system and Googled the problem. To my surprise, I found that Gigabyte motherboards need the BIOS file to be renamed to "GIGABYTE.bin" to recognize it. I assure you never found this info on the Gigabyte website, though.

Anyway, I renamed the file and restarted the PC to repeat the process, and that's when the real horror began.

The post-flash anxiety was the worst

The BIOS update was successful, but it didn't feel like it

Now that my BIOS was able to find the new BIOS file on the USB stick, the actual update process went through without a hitch. The first reboot after that, however, almost confirmed all my fears about BIOS updates. My PC felt like it was going through a regular boot, but it got stuck on a black screen for a suspiciously long time. I was sure that something had gone horribly wrong when the Gigabyte logo finally appeared on the screen.

It was followed, however, by another black screen that had no intentions of going away. After I was sure I had waited long enough, I pressed the reset button on the case to force a restart. Thankfully, this didn't break anything, and I was able to enter the BIOS to enable EXPO, set the right boot order, and change a few other settings that had been restored to the defaults. The next reboot brought me to the desktop, and that's when I finally breathed normally.

If this anxiety is what I have to go through during every single BIOS update, I'd much rather stay with an outdated BIOS for another 4 years.

The BIOS update didn't even fix the underlying issues

What was the point?

The BIOS update failed to fix any of the sleep and hibernation issues I was facing. The whole reason why I gingerly accepted to update my BIOS after 4 years turned out to be a waste of time. I know not every BIOS version results in overt changes to performance or stability, but this was my last hope to fix problems that I had failed to solve with other fixes.

I really hoped this new BIOS version would get rid of any inadvertent changes to the power settings I had made in the BIOS. Alas, I'm still dealing with unresolved issues, but at least my PC didn't get bricked during the update, although it sure felt like it was on the way there. A silver lining to this whole thing is that I'm now slightly more confident about updating the BIOS, and might not 4 years before doing it again — 2 years seems like a good compromise.

Not every BIOS update is worth it

The age-old wisdom of delaying BIOS updates unless there's a strong reason still holds. Even Gigabyte's website says so at the bottom of the BIOS download page. Moving to the latest BIOS should only be done if you're updating to patch a security flaw, gain access to new features, or improve performance and stability. Otherwise, let the status quo continue. At least, that's what I still believe after failing to fix weird PC behavior with a BIOS update.