How To Create A Bootable DOS USB Flash Drive with Linux

If you run Linux a lot, like me, no doubt you’ve encountered one of the scourges of closed systems: Windows only BIOS flash utilities.

That’s right. We’ll sell you hardware, and technically you can run whatever you like on it. Except if you choose anything other than Windows, you can’t flash the BIOS, because we only supply utilities for Windows or DOS. Yeah, our BIOS has bugs, but you can’t fix them unless you shell out a coupla hundred bucks for a proprietary operating system.

Fuck that.

There’s a way around it, with one caveat: your system must support booting from a USB drive. Most nowadays do.

All you need now is this link: http://wiki.fdos.org/Installation/BootDiskCreateUSB

Using the instructions there, you can create a bootable USB drive that boots into FreeDOS. Copy your DOS flashing utility onto it, and you can flash BIOS by booting from your thumb drive. Problem solved.

I just used it, with great success, after trying a couple of other slightly more complex ways involving grub. The method in the above link was dead simple.

One more way to be free of proprietary lock-in.

And now hopefully my Asus laptop won’t lock up in X.org any more.

HUGE kudos to the folks at FreeDOS and whoever wrote that page, because it’s clear, simple, and works!

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One Comment

  1. since many days i am using wintoflash to create bootable flash disks, and after reading your tutorial on how to create a bootable usb drive using linux will be more helpful for me to use in comming days, thanks for this tutorial….

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