If your computer crashes or is somehow malfunctioning, a BIOS update may help. I tried to run Microsoft Virtual PC on my Gigabyte GA-MA790XT-UD4P mainboard with AMD Phenom II X4 955 processor, but it refused to start due to lack of Hardware Virtualization support although I enabled it in the BIOS setup. Updating my BIOS to the latest version with Q-Flash using an USB memory stick helped, so this tutorial will show you how to do it.
- Get the latest drivers for your mainboard from www.gigabyte.com.tw
- Extract the 7-zip archive to some folder, e.g. C:\bios_flash\

- Plug in your USB memory stick and format it using the FAT32 file system (enable Quick Format).WARNING: When formatting, all data on the memory stick will be lost!

- Go to the directory with the extracted BIOS update files and locate the actual BIOS data file, called something like M79XTUD4.F7, where the .F7 stands for version 7 and the stuff before for my mainboard model. Copy this file onto the freshly formatted memory stick
- Restart your computer. When you see the BIOS image, press END to enter Q-Flash mode

- A blue box will show up asking you what to do. First of all, backup your original BIOS to your USB thumbdrive. Select “Save BIOS to Drive”, then your USB memory stick and type in a name for your backup. Once you press enter, it will start backing up your data which may take up to 5 minues.
- Once you are done backing up, return to the previous menu and select “Update BIOS from Drive” and locate the BIOS file you downloaded. Press enter to start flashing. WARNING: Do not switch off your computer while flashing your BIOS. This may permanently corrupt your mainboard!
- When the flashing is finished, restart your computer, enter BIOS setup (press DEL when seeing the mainboard image) and “Load Optimized Defaults”.

- After loading the default settings, “Save and Exit Setup”. Your computer should start normally with the latest BIOS version, hopefully solving the problems you encountered before!
- If you did any adjustments to the BIOS before (enabling Virtualization, memory timings, CPU clock, etc.) you will have to set it again.
If you have problems following this guide, please comment! You can take good pictures of your computer screen using the Xshot! camera stabilizer!