4. The reason why we only offer BIOS update under Windows for this motherboard, is related to the Intel bug that was on the Intel 6-series chipsets when they were first launched. You can read more below if you are interested.
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When the Intel 6-series was launched, a bug in some of the chipsets was found. This was the B2 stepping chipset. There has been a recall for the affected products, and we swapped many boards with a B2 stepping chipset for boards with the fixed B3 stepping chipset. Besides the SATA3 bug, it turned out that the boards with B2 stepping cannot support Intel ME8, which is required to support Ivy Bridge processors.
If B2 boards get a BIOS update with ME8, then some functions will not work properly anymore. And flashing back to a BIOS version with ME7 often will not work properly either. So we want to prevent that people with a B2 board update their BIOS to version 2.10 or later, and we want to prevent that people try to go from a BIOS version with ME8 to an older version with ME7.
Normally we offer various update methods. Under Windows, under DOS, and directly from a USB stick. Only under Windows the update tool can check if the motherboard has a B2 or a B3 stepping chipset. So that is why we removed the other update methods for those models which in the beginning used the B2 stepping chipset.
I hope it makes sense…
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