On Tue, Jul 21, 2020 at 4:59 AM George N. White III <gnwiii@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, 20 Jul 2020 at 18:59, Sreyan Chakravarty <sreyan32@gmail.com> wrote:


On Wed, Jul 1, 2020 at 4:06 AM George N. White III <gnwiii@gmail.com> wrote:
In general, the earlier the mitigations are applied, the harder it is to exploit the bugs, and
some mitigations can only be applied at the BIOS level, so you need to check your BIOS
vendor's updates and forums.


Sorry for the late reply.

Does anyone here use an HP laptop ? 

Specifically this model:

This mentions FreeDOS under "Software" at the bottom of the page.  


I have a very weird problem it seems. In my BIOS startup screen there seems to be no option like "Update BIOS". 

The particular model I am using HP only publishes exe files that can be used from within Windows via which the BIOS update can happen within the OS.

They do not care about Linux. Hence my only option was to do the BIOS update from outside the OS. Now I can't find the option to update the BIOS from a USB.

I have contacted HP via their Community forum but I doubt that I will get a response. 

In the meantime if anyone knows anything about this problem let me know, or what the best place would be to ask about this issue.

https://support.hp.com/ca-en/document/c00042629 suggests that you can create a BIOS update USB drive
from a BIOS update .exe file using a different PC running Windows.  Some .exe files run in freeDOS and generate a .bin file.  Some HP laptops have "BIOS update from file" in the System Diagnostics (maybe press F2 while booting) with the .bin file on a FAT format USB key.


Well there was no "Update BIOS" option in my BIOS setup. I had to use Win + B to initiate the update.
--
Regards,
Sreyan Chakravarty