Windows Update scheduled a BIOS update

[rapovsky]

Hello,
Windows (10) Update platform downloaded an update of BIOS on my laptop, so it asked me for restart in order to proceed with the install. I didn't know it was a BIOS update. When my laptop restarted, a prompt appeared saying BIOS will be updated in 60 seconds, with Yes and No choice. I chose No and it booted in Windows again. But again there's a message in the notification area of Windows saying the laptop needs to be restarted in order to complete the update, so I guess the BIOS update prompt will appear again when I turn my laptop on next time. I'm afraid of the update bricking my laptop - maybe Windows has downloaded a wrong firmware for BIOS.

This is my concern:

I have two Windows 10 installations on my laptop (same SSD, different partitions). I was installing the older one with Rufus (with installation downloaded from unofficial website), and the newer one with the official media creation tool for USB. I don't know whether the installations were installed as UEFI or Legacy.

Note that after I installed my second Windows (which was automatically set as default), no video showed during Windows Boot Manager at start up (just black screen with display backlight), but it was responsive to keyboard input, so it was technically there. I don't know what caused this, maybe wrong Legacy/UEFI setup and Windows installation.

When I press Del during boot, I get this menu:



and when I choose Use another operating system from there I get a normal visible Windows Boot Manager, so maybe there're two Windows Boot Managers installed, and only the older one is showing visually. And the system is set to boot in the newer one (note - not talking about two OS options, but two Windows Boot Loaders, which both have two OS options).

In the second installation, in System Information it says UEFI, but my BIOS device might actually be Legacy, so maybe there's a possibility it detected a wrong BIOS firmware?

Do you think there's a chance that Windows Update downloaded a wrong BIOS firmware?

 

[TechFreak1]

@rapovsky Personally, I'd be extremely weary of Windows Update doing any sort of bios of updates.

So in my view you have three options.

1) Create a live usb containing Windows PE such as Hiren's BootCD PE and remove the offending windows install after extracting your data.

2)Extract your ssd/hdd from the laptop - recover your data and delete the offending Windows 10 install.

3)regardless of which ever method you choose to extract your data, delete the windows partitions along with any windows created other partitions which usually are 100 Megs (system auto labels in disk manager - efi system partition), 513 megs (system auto labels in disk manager - recovery partition).

Once you have re-installed windows, presuming you are running 10 pro - you should use the group policy editor to disable driver downloads and this setting "device installation settings" in control panel (yes is default / enabled).

Even then the pesky Windows 10 update still downloads driver updates randomly :grincry: ... however, it's not once downloaded a bios update after doing these steps.

When I first built the PC in 2019 it queued firmware and bios updates - I got lucky, I set Windows update to notify download and notify to install before even connecting to the web. The moment I saw these updates queued, i reformatted the entire install and then disabled "device installation settings", that stopped Windows 10 from queuing any bios and firmware updates for the motherboard (options to disable driver updates in GPedit came online later on).

Good luck!