Whether you're one for sipping a cuppa while tuning into your favourite creator's 'Just Chatting' stream, or you simply find being the sole viewer of a small streamer oddly compelling, folks really will watch anything. This apparently includes the determined inching forward of a progress bar for a 100-hour BIOS update.
The saga began when a Reddit user with an incredible name, GoatWithAGun, first posted a week ago to grumble about their BIOS update breaching the four-hour mark. It's still unclear why the update progressed at a snail's pace, displaying 66% at the 24-hour mark. However, without a dual BIOS motherboard, or the option to use BIOS flashback, the user had no option but to let the update continue to run.
As the oh-so-slowly progressing update ventured into multi-day territory and the community of a certain subreddit began to get invested, the user set up a livestream, which enjoyed a peak of 88,000 views. Alas, this story does not end in victory; GoatWithAGun's latest update brings the saga to a close, sharing that after more than 100 hours, the BIOS update failed and the PC is now completely unresponsive.
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The Reddit user had previously explained the machine in question used a BioStar A320MH motherboard with the last update before this ill-fated one being from 2018. They chose to update for some stability fixes, which they wrote they are "definitely regretting" now.
Still, there are some silver linings. Mercifully, the dead machine isn't the Reddit user's main rig but just a backup they leave at their dorm. The user has yet to post much about troubleshooting the PC, but the rig's AMD Ryzen 3 1200 CPU and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 GPU may still have some life left in them (for things other than AAA gaming, at least).
Better yet, donations from the community have apparently already covered the cost of a replacement motherboard. Very occasionally, the posters are alright.
Be assured that BIOS updates don't usually cause so many problems, with most taking mere minutes and some BIOS screens even boasting a whole 1080p resolution. BIOS updates are generally worth staying on top of, especially as holding on to an old patch could leave your AMD CPU vulnerable to a microcode attack.
They may also help fix a brand new game that you've been waiting an age to play, too, as has happened to a few folk who have been struggling to get Monster Hunter Wilds working on their PCs.
Now, if a BIOS update could also excise those not-actually-that-helpful AI assistants like this Windows 11 update accidentally did with Copilot, I don't think I'd mind.
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