Updating BIOS question

[Thornax22]

I bought a used i7 4770 off ebay, and my computer wouldn't boot with it installed. There is no visable wear on the 4770, and even though the seller refunded me, he's convinced it's a working unit. So I thought I should try a few other things before I decide the processor is bad. Apparently there's a BIOS update for my motherboard that updates the Intel CPU microcode, and that might add support for the 4770. The problem is, it says the update is for Windows 8.1, and while I do have Windows 8.1 on my harddrive, I'm currently running Windows 10 off my solid state drive. I'm just wondering if the operating system really matters when it comes to updating your BIOS. I really don't want to brick my motherboard.

I just booted from my Windows 8.1 drive. Everything went fine.

Problem solved

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

@Thornax22

To answer your question, yes the OS version matters, as HP locks their BIOS updates into specific OS versions.

You can certainly TRY to run the BIOS update under Win10, as it will almost certainly error out and tell you the OS version is not correct -- but it will not do any damage in that case; it simply won't run.

You would have to reboot using your Win8x drive and run the BIOS update from there.

Good Luck

[Thornax22]

Yeah, that's what I ended up doing. The BIOS update went fine, but it didn't fix the CPU. I'm pretty sure it's just bad. I'll get a new one instead of a used one.