Boot MS-DOS on UEFI

[Jiniix]

Hey guys

I'm trying to update BIOS on an Alienware X51, and it's seemingly only possible via MS-DOS. But the BIOS is locked to UEFI, and there's no options to disable Secure Boot.

Any ideas to make a bootable DVD/USB with MS-DOS/FreeDOS that can be booted in an UEFI environment?
I've tried using Rufus 2.5.799 or Hiren's BootCD 15.2 (DVD and USB), but neither is bootable. Using a legit Windows 8.1 disk allows me to "click any key to boot" but then goes to BIOS right after.

Note: Rufus allows me to make a "MBR partition scheme for UEFI", but then I can't 'natively' select MS/FreeDOS. Copying files over is still not bootable. Also tried Rufus with GPT.

Any ideas?

I've toyed with the idea of using a different manufacturer's BIOS update tools that reboots the PC to DOS from within Windows, but you should never 'toy' around when it comes to BIOS updating.

 

[voyagerfan99]

That doesn't sound right. You should be able to just download the file and run it from Windows and it will update. Dell hasn't done any kind of DOS bios update in years.

 

[Geoff]

That doesn't sound right. You should be able to just download the file and run it from Windows and it will update. Dell hasn't done any kind of DOS bios update in years.

I thought the same until I found this on the update page:

"This file format consists of a BIOS-executable file. To use it, download the file and copy it to a DOS-bootable USB flash drive, then boot the system to the USB flash drive and run the program."

 

[Jiniix]

I can't believe we over-complicated the issue this much. I read specifically on Alienware's forums/support that you had to flash via DOS, so we didn't even try to run the .exe file. Guess what, it worked flawlessly (except couldn't go from A01 to A14 directly, had to flash A06 and A07 as well).
But thanks Voyager You made me try.
Now we can upgrade from HD 4890 to GTX 750 Ti wooo

 

[voyagerfan99]

I can't believe we over-complicated the issue this much. I read specifically on Alienware's forums/support that you had to flash via DOS, so we didn't even try to run the .exe file. Guess what, it worked flawlessly (except couldn't go from A01 to A14 directly, had to flash A06 and A07 as well).
But thanks Voyager You made me try.
Now we can upgrade from HD 4890 to GTX 750 Ti wooo

Glad that worked for you.

I thought the same until I found this on the update page:

"This file format consists of a BIOS-executable file. To use it, download the file and copy it to a DOS-bootable USB flash drive, then boot the system to the USB flash drive and run the program."

Yeah I saw that too. Don't know why it says that when you just run it in Windows.