Some of the malware these days are targeting even the firmware stored on a small BIOS/UEFI chip that resides on your computer’s motherboard. At this point not many security products are capable of scanning the BIOS/UEFI firmware and therefore these kinds of rootkits are very dangerous. As we explained in a previous article – how to protect against Lojax rootkit, the only way to get rid of these type of malware is to re-flash the firmware in the BIOS/UEFI chip on your motherboard.
If you have a computer that uses Insyde BIOS/UEFI then it is very easy to re-flash or update the firmware. The first obvious step is to find and download the update. You won’t get these updates from the Insyde website. If you have a desktop computer, then you should get it from the motherboard manufacturer’s website. If you have a laptop/notebook computer, then you should get it from the device manufacturer’s website. Usually these updates are located in the “Support” section of their websites.
Once you have procured the firmware update file for Insyde BIOS/UEFI, then you can follow these steps:
- Attach the AC adapter cable to your notebook even if battery is fully charged.
- Close all the programs running in your computer.
- Launch the Insyde firmware update tool for your computer.
- When asked “Continue to update BIOS”, click on the OK button to proceed.
- It will erase the older firmware first, then it will continue to write newer firmware.
- When the firmware is flashed completely, your computer will be restarted automatically.
After computer has rebooted back into Windows, it should work without no problem. But an old method to ensure that the new firmware works properly is to reset the BIOS to default values and adjust the values again after each firmware update. This step is not really necessary, but you can take this step if you know how to change the values in the BIOS/UEFI settings for your computer.