Dell BIOS
Recently I got a new notebook, a Dell Latitude E6400. Everything has been working great since I got it.
Once thing I wanted to do was update the BIOS to the latest vendor recommended version. Unlike my old D620, the E6400 BIOS is some kind of Windows/GUI thing and no longer fits on a DOS boot disk (~2.88MB for BIOS update alone). Since I run Gentoo Linux I have no way to update the BIOS.
It was suggested I try using something like BartPE to boot into a Windows Preinstalled Environment. This failed as well because for some reason WinPE just hangs on boot. I’ve tried numerous things to workaround but nothing helped.
Asking Dell about it, they explained the E6400 only supports Windows Vista. That’s just lame. They should be able to provide a Linux-compatible way to flash the BIOS or at the very least provide a WinPE boot disk to do it.
Update:: Found a solution using FreeDOS/syslinux here