Today, we're going to update the BIOS of an Asus laptop - specifically the Asus
VivoBook 15 model M515. However, the procedure will be the same for all
recent Asus laptops and motherboards. There are several methods to update the
BIOS, but this tutorial will focus on a utility called Easy Flash that resides
in the BIOS itself. One major benefit in using this manual
method is that it doesn't depend on a BIOS upgrade program running in Windows,
so you don't need to worry about Windows compatibility, nor do you even need to
run Windows as your operating system. BIOS updates can introduce new hardware
support or more importantly, fix security problems such as the meltdown and
spectre vulnerabilities. Asus also recommends updating the BIOS for certain
motherboards if you're looking for Windows 11 support.
Please note that updating the BIOS is always a risky operation, so you're
applying the update at your own risk. With that said, however, I'll be following
Asus's own guidelines from their online articles. First of all, please back up any
critical data before starting and make sure that the AC adapter is plugged in,
especially during the update process. Your battery should also be charged to
at least 20%. If you have a Bitlocker- encrypted system, what you'll want
to do is suspend Bitlocker. I'm using Windows 10 Home, so I won't be able to
show you on this system, but if I move to a Windows 10 professional computer with
Bitlocker turned on, I can search for Bitlocker, launch Manage Bitlocker, and
then hit the Suspend link. You'll also want to have the recovery key handy just in case.
To find out the version of your current BIOS, let's enter the BIOS itself by holding down the F2 key, then pressing
the power button at the same time. Keep your finger on the F2 key until the BIOS
screen appears. If you have an older laptop or motherboard, the user interface
may look different, but on the VivoBook M515, you'll see the BIOS version in the
upper left hand corner, which indicates that I currently have version 302. With
that in mind, let's press Escape to exit, then press OK to quit without saving,
after which we'll boot into Windows. Here, I'm using Windows 10 to make all the
preparations, but you can really use any operating system, or even another
computer. What you'll want to do first is insert an empty USB flash drive to
prepare it for holding the BIOS update file, which is only several megabytes in
size - so you don't need a large drive. The one I'm using is only 1 GB. Once
file explorer launches, the flash drive will show up as drive E in my case, but
it may be a different letter on yours. If I right-click the drive and select
Properties, you'll see that I have it formatted as NTFS. However, according to
Asus, the drive has to be formatted as FAT32, so I'll right click, choose Format,
and finally select FAT32. Hit the button labeled Start,
confirm that you want to wipe the drive, and then wait a few seconds for the
format to complete. You can now close out the dialog box.
To download the BIOS update file, let's go ahead and launch a browser. You'll
want to search for "asus support" and look for the official support page in the
search results. After clicking on that link, navigate to
the Download Center by selecting the fourth icon on the page. At this point,
what you'll need to do is enter the model name of your laptop. How do you
find it? If you flip the laptop over, there will be a small label which shows
various pieces of information, including the model number. In my case it's the
M515U , or more specifically, the M515UA-ES56 -
but it's marketed as, and more commonly known as, the M515. So going back
to the Download Center, let's enter M515. Underneath the text box, it'll
automatically search for and return all models containing your keyword. In my
case, there's only one. On the right, you'll want to hit Driver and Tools, and
once that page loads, tab over to BIOS & Firmware.
After scrolling down a bit, you're going to see two sections, where each section
lists version 303 - which is the latest. If you recall, my current firmware was shown
as the older 302 version. One of the downloads is for Windows, which is an
installer and executable that you can run from Windows, while the other section
is simply called BIOS, which is just the update file. For the method that we're
using in this video, we're going to use the BIOS download. If you want to see all
of the previous versions that have been available for this laptop, click on See
All Downloads. Here you see that version 302 was released earlier this year, which
I'll be replacing with the newest. So I'll hit the Download button for 303, and
after the transfer's complete, I'll open up the file. Please note that this is a
compressed zip file, so what we're looking at right now is the content of
that zip. This file with the extension of 303 is the actual BIOS update file. What
I'll do is pull it out by dragging and dropping it onto my USB flash drive, as I
show here - and this will take a few seconds. Now when I click on my USB drive,
you'll see the uncompressed update file. I'll now eject the USB drive by
right-clicking it, hitting Eject, and taking the flash drive out of its port.
We can now go to the Start menu and shut down the laptop.
Once again, start the computer by holding down the F2 key while pressing the power
button, and keep F2 down until you see the BIOS screen. At this point in time, you
should not have your USB flash drive inserted. From this dashboard, click
Advanced Mode at the bottom of the screen or hit the F7 key, navigate to the
Advanced tab at the top of the screen, where you'll see an entry for the Asus
Easy Flash utility. That takes you to a section where you'll
see a cryptic list of storage devices, which are actually the IDs for the
partitions of all the drives you have in your system. In my case, I have five total
devices ranging from fs0 to fs4. What you'll want to do is exit the screen,
then hit yes. Now you can insert your USB drive into
your laptop and then return to the Easy Flash utility.
You should now see an extra device in your list, which is fs5 in my case. This
is an easy way to identify the USB drive since it's not immediately apparent
which drive is which when you initially enter the screen. After i click on fs5,
its contents are listed directly to the right. You'll see the 303 file that we
copied over previously. Go ahead and double-click on that file, which will
prompt you to confirm. Hit Yes, where you'll be presented with a final
confirmation screen. At this point, confirm that your AC adapter is plugged
in. After you select Yes again, it'll perform the actual update process. While
the BIOS is updating, don't force-shutdown the computer, avoid using the
keyboard or mouse, and don't unplug the USB flash drive. This will take a few
minutes, so I'll start up the toaster oven to bake some pizza rolls, and I'll be right back.
OK, I'm back. The entire process took about 3.5 minutes for me, but your mileage may vary. Clicking the
OK button will restart the laptop, and when I re-enter the BIOS to verify the
version, I can confirm that it has indeed been updated to version 303, and you can
now exit the BIOS to boot into Windows. If you suspended Bitlocker before you
applied the BIOS update, you can now return to the encryption screen and
click on the Resume Protection link. And if you run into any problems, contact
Asus support, or visit the Asus FAQ for updating the BIOS, for which I'll leave a
link in the description below. Not only does it provide a reference for this
manual method to update the BIOS, as I've done in this video, but it includes how
to use the Windows executable, as well as updating it using the WinFlash utility.
I hope you enjoyed! - thanks for watching.