UIU Support Case Example - Firm up your firmware.

With the release of Windows 8, now is an opportune time to revisit the software core to your PCs, namely the firmware (BIOS). This software controls the identification of components in a system along with corresponding features of those components and affects the very bootability of the PC itself.

Why is it a good idea to keep your BIOS up-to-date?

• Faulty BIOS firmware can negatively affect a variety of components and systems.

• Out-of-date BIOS firmware can result in security vulnerabilities.

• Out-of-date BIOS firmware can result in OS incompatibilities, rendering the PC unbootable or unusable.

• Out-of-date BIOS firmware can prevent or interfere with the installation of an OS.

While updating the BIOS might seem like a no-brainer, it's remarkable how often even we forget to upgrade our firmware. One example that we observed in our lab relates to the video display of a common Dell laptop. Upon deploying an image of Windows 8 to the laptop, we identified that the display presented only a black screen with no opportunity to provide input. Troubleshooting efforts revealed that the OS image did in fact deploy, but the machine could not handle calls Windows 8 was making to the display. As a matter of routine, the BIOS was upgraded and voila!, the display functioned as expected. This obviously encouraged us to review the firmware levels of all of our lab hardware and we thought we'd pass the reminder along to our customers/blog followers.

A note on UEFI:
What is it? Unified Extensible Firmware Interface is a 64-bit replacement for BIOS and provides many advantages over BIOS, including support of GPT or GUID Partition Table (replaces the MBR) schema allowing for large boot partitions, a pre-OS environment with networking, architecture supporting intuitive user interfaces and cryptography; all operating independent of the CPU architecture and drivers.

Why might this be important?
Windows 8 offers the integration of Secure Boot technology, available only with UEFI, which will allow systems to authenticate before the PC boots; virtually eliminating the impact of malicious software that attempts to load at boot, including those pesky rootkits. More on UEFI from MSDN

Summary:
If your organization is investigating or planning to migrate to Windows 8 in the future, now is a great time to reassess your firmware interface technology. Perhaps consider UEFI over BIOS or simply maintain your BIOS firmware levels and update them as necessary to avoid conflicts or difficulties when deploying Windows 8 within your environment.