i've downloaded the latest drivers, i mean when they were back in december.
it was a tedious task of ordering them too. i had to do that by seeing their size and then clicking on the drivers page to download which showed the size and cancelled it then because i had to only check the size to determine what drivers i had and thus name them.
after that i ordered them by looking at the driver order page. but then still it is not specified when to install the bios driver. i mean its an important one. my guess would be after i've installed the rest, that would be the time

here's the link of the driver installation order for dells
http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/downloads/en/driver_install_order

i really gotta install them 'cause i'm having a crashing laptop now. everytime i play a graphics intensive game or application, it just -bam- powers off, with a slight blackout screen thing, like a lightening inside.
so maybe the bios driver update would fix that, by updating the fan speed algorithms or whatever as one guy spoke in some google group.
oh yeah, and my fan doesn't work when i'm gaming. it stopped like .. in july or august last year
that was out of warranty period my 2 months.


bottom line: when do i install the BIOS driver. after or before or in between.

I have installed many hundereds of PC's and laptops and I have never once taken any notice of what order I install them in.

When you say bios driver do you actually mean bios update? If so, it should only be done if you have serious bios issues because if it fails, it can render your computer useless!

I have installed many hundereds of PC's and laptops and I have never once taken any notice of what order I install them in.

When you say bios driver do you actually mean bios update? If so, it should only be done if you have serious bios issues because if it fails, it can render your computer useless!

well how exactly could the bios update render the system useless? in what scenario? i will only be opening the driver, follow the instructions onscreen and that would be it. all else system will do. so where exactly can the problem occur 'cause i wanna know i can't risk my laptop i got so much to do everyday

As I said, if a bios update fails, it can render a computer useless. A failed bios update can corrupt the bios. Sometimes it can be re-flashed with software, sometime it requires replacement of the bios chip which is expensive. The most common cause is people thinking their computer has stopped responding and they turn it off and on again!

how long do you think it takes? specific to each system from different manufacturers?
any average kinda time?
i really need to update, it was marked 'Recommended' on the drivers page

It varies from computer to computer, it's impossible to put a time on it!

i just updated 4 drivers out of frustration of procrastinating the update thing - system software,chipset,video and audio in that order

till now i only got problems in video driver update. gave me some problems :

Could not load file or assembly 'MOM.Implementation, Version=something,Culture=neutral,PublicKeyToken=90ba9c70f846267e' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

could you tell me what the problem possibly might be? hopefully logically i don't think its related to BIOS updation,or the chipset update?

No idea, you haven't even said what version of windows you are using!

vista 32 bit home premium

Right, with Vista, you should be able to use the roll back option to roll them back one by one to see which is the cause!

no i know the video driver caused it because it said during the installation that application setup was unsuccesful but in the log it said installation of the main utilities of the driver were successful
so i don't know.. whether i should degrade the driver back to original version or just install again

Make sure you didn't accidentally get the 64bit version of the driver.

but, i downloaded specific drivers for my system. i entered the service tag code and then downloaded.
if it is 64 bit, wtf
i saw some 64 bit related txt files inside the extracted folder

okay inside the directory i saw a version.txt file and in it is given the supported dell laptops,and windows versions.
i pass both criteria

Hardware information
Name ATI Radeon Graphics Processor
Manufacturer ATI Technologies Inc
Device ID 0x9553
Vendor ID 0x1002
Class Code 0x030000
Revision ID 0x00
Subsystem ID 0x02be
Subsystem vendor ID 0x1028
Other hardware
Existing packages
Catalyst Control Center
ATI Catalyst Install Manager
ATI Display Driver
HDMI Audio Driver
Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable
Packages for install
Catalyst Control Center
Final Status: Success
Version of Item: 2009.0625.1812.30825
Size: 150 Mbytes
ATI Catalyst Install Manager
Final Status: Success
Version of Item: 3.0.732.0
Size: 20 Mbytes
ATI Display Driver
Final Status: Success
Version of Item: 8.631.0.0000
Size: 90 Mbytes
HDMI Audio Driver
Final Status: Success
Version of Item: 5.00.60000.50
Size: 1 Mbytes

Other detected devices
Manufacturer ATI Technologies Inc
Device ID 0xaa38
Vendor ID 0x1002
Class Code 0x040300
Revision ID 0x00
Subsystem ID 0x02be
Subsystem vendor ID 0x1028

Error messages
Application Install: install package failure!

this is the log

It might be worth trying a driver from the ATI website perhaps?!?

i googled up my problem and on a forum on some site, a guy posted the solution:
when installing the ati video card driver, change the installation location to "ATI" and not just "ATI Technologies"
so that worked seamless man!! perfect installation
and thank you for taking so much concern and replying

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.